I think most people are getting hung up on style over substance. Like I said, the first band that really made me stop and notice this was Korn. And one of the hardest all time dudes was Gordon Lightfoot. But to your bigger point, I wasn't speaking about sadness, that is endemic to so much great music. Though I'm not a big Cure stan I must confess. It's an emotional stunting, and I'm not sure passive is exactly the right word. Somewhere between passive and reactive maybe is more accurate. It's the notion of events happening to you as opposed to you being an active player in them, a complete lack of agency. In quote it would be the difference between "Well fuck man, this shit sucks" and "Poor me, life's unfair wahhh". People like to point out all the travails of the millennials, which there are a bunch ( 9/11, 08' crash, etc..) but as I said this predates all that. I think it's suburban boredom and ennui personally.
There's obviously too many great songs about shitty things than I can count, but just off the top of my head a song from the early aught's that is the opposite of what I'm saying is Pretty Fucked UP by the SUpersuckers, It's about his girl cheating on him, which is no fun, but the message isn't poor me, it's fuck that bitch.
This obviously isn't some super heavy aggressive song, that's not what I mean. It's relating to it's subject in a proactive manner.
That's definitely a crime in and of itself.