Readers recommend: songs about confusion and delusion | Peter Kimpton

Mass public frenzy, hype and hysteria? Or private panic and adolescent crisis? Suggest songs all about seeing it wrongly, whether in history or just in your head

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." Moving from the joyous musical stampede of last week's songs about farming to an entirely different herding instinct, come the words of Scottish writer and journalist Charles Mackay, from his classic study of history's key moments of mass hysteria, panic and frenzy - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841). He goes on to say how "whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."