Interesting fact: so many people in the UK take Prozac that traces of the chemical are now present in the water supply, the effect of so much Prozac passing through so many bodies. It sounds like something from a science fiction novel, but it’s true. Taking anti-depressants has almost become a kind of rite-of-passage, like smoking your first cigarette, or wetting the bed whilst helplessly inebriated. (What? What do you mean you’ve never done that?)

What is it about modern life that is so spectacularly depressing? The inescapable competitiveness of consumerism? Impending global environmental catastrophe? Another series of Pacatul Evei? I’m not sure: but as Blur succinctly put it, Modern Life Is Rubbish. I’d genuinely consider moving to Maramures to spend the rest of my days tending to a flock of goats, if it wasn’t for the fact that all this misery has produced a huge range of amazing music to keep us entertained. I’m not talking about the pent up testosterone-fuelled insecurity of rocker Neanderthals like Limp Bizkit, but nagging, self-indulgent existential angst of the highest order. And in case you didn’t know, happiness is so 2005. This year, misery is going to be the next big thing – I can predict it.

In any case, most happy music makes me want to be physically sick. The only excuse for making unapologetically happy music is if the people in question were so off their faces on drugs at the time that they hardly knew what they were doing. The whole of the Hippy movement can be excused in this way: they were so high that they had literally no idea what crimes against humanity they were committing by recording songs about talking hedgehogs and flying kites. By the time the LSD wore off, they realised what a terrible mistake they’d made, and started the punk movement, a kind of musical penance which made everything OK again.

It’s time to prepare for the Summer of Self-Loathing. Forget about buying a new bikini – all the cool kids will barely be venturing out of their bedrooms, never mind hitting the beaches. Instead of fake tan, you’re going have to cultivating a sickly paleness and spend your time faking alarming-looking scars on your arms. And with the following bands and singers to provide the soundtrack to your misery, who could blame you? Clinical depression has never been so much fun! Load up your i-Pod, lock yourself away in your bedroom, and indulge in feeling utterly sorry for yourself:

Morrissey : There’s literally no better soundtrack to the futility of mortality that the unchallenged King of Misery, who has a new LP out soon. Tell your boyfriend / girlfriend, that you no longer love them, move into a garsoniera with no central heating and get a job cleaning toilets. You think I’m joking? You’ll all be doing it by the summer, I promise.

Nick Drake : The depressive singer-songwriter took his own life in the mid-1970s, but left behind three albums of astounding melancholy and other-worldly beauty. If you’ve never listened to him, prepare to be amazed.

Will Oldham : For a start, Will Oldham looks like a vagabond who’s recently escaped from a mental hospital – consider him your role model for the essential look of the summer. Forget the hugely over-rated Johnny Cash – this is the real dark side of Country music. Oldham writes melancholy songs with unnecessary swearing and that make passing references to vaginal fisting, which make him pretty much essential in my book.

Belle & Sebastian : “It’s not music – it’s a lifestyle choice’. Listening to Belle and Sebastian means that you’re going to have to dress up as a sexually frustrated librarian from the 1950s and start writing unspeakably pretentious poetry. Their new album, ‘The Life Pursuit’, is full of stories of insecure teenagers, fumbled sexual encounters and general social insecurity that you just can’t dislike. Viva misery!