The perfect soundtrack to long solo walks beneath Boston’s overcast sky, dodging leaf-strewn puddles and uneven cobblestone sidewalks, will land on Spotify this fall. 

Shorter days and sub-60 degree temperatures signal the start of  “Sad Girl Autumn,” the morose sister to “Hot Girl Summer.” The nor’easter that flooded New England Oct. 25 to Oct. 27 finally brought Boston’s on-and-off-again sunny days to a screeching halt. We’ve officially broken up with “Hot Girl Summer.”

A black sheep in the festive moniker realm of “pumpkin spice” and “spooky” season that conjures up images of Starbucks lattes and pumpkin patches, “Sad Girl Autumn” marks the beginning of an unrelenting slew of releases from musicians with infamous reputations for the dreary and depressing. 

Emotional enough on their own, this year Adele, Mitski and Taylor Swift make up the holy trinity of “Sad Girl Autumn,” slated to top every chart and playlist with their most emotionally torturous songs yet. 

In October, “Easy on Me,” Adele’s first single after six years, walks listeners through the lessons she learned during the collapse of her marriage. In “Working for the Knife,” Mitski’s new single, the singer grieves over the lifetime she is destined to spend beneath the weight of capitalism.

Regardless of whether Northeastern students have yet to divorce their Marriage Pact spouse or lament their co-op semester, Adele and Mitski are veterans in bringing listeners to tears and building fervor around their fast-approaching albums, entire collections of songs with the same potential to wreak emotional havoc.

Students are likely better acquainted with the memories recollected in Taylor Swift’s “Red (Taylor’s Version)” album, a re-recorded copy of her original 2012 album that dominated the radio a decade ago. Now, many college-age listeners are “22” themselves; happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time, with a handful of heartbreaks to carry them through the emotional rollercoaster of an album. 

More than a happenstance serial delivery of severe emotional blows, this year’s “Sad Girl Autumn” playlist is a testament to the artists’ mastery over songwriting as their music invites listeners to dwell with them in their heartbreaks and hardships.

“There’s not a seasonal strategy timed to a release of a song or album,” Nate Sloan, an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Southern California told NBC News. “These artists aren’t trying to capture the zeitgeist or general social and economic anxiety of the world, but they are tapping into their emotions and broadcasting it to a larger audience.”

If misery loves company, record executives have never been blessed with a hungrier audience than in this year’s “Sad Girl Autumn.” 

About one in 20 people in the northern United States experience seasonal affective disorder, appropriately abbreviated as SAD, a form of depression that arrives alongside the fall and winter months.

College students in Boston who find themselves stuck indoors through a never-ending midterm season watching the sun set at 4:30 p.m. know the phenomenon all too well. Last year, student burnout, anxiety and depression rose drastically over the fall and winter seasons, but this fall, increased vaccinations and decreased isolation measures on campus still have not eliminated the onset of seasonal depression.

“Adjusting to the reopening also takes a great deal of energy, meaning that it is exhausting. Under any circumstances, experiencing a major life change like going to college is stressful, and experiencing it as the world finds its footing again is especially challenging,” Naomi Torres-Mackie, PhD, a psychologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and head of research at The Mental Health Coalition, told Healthline. 

This fall, students navigating their way through an exhausting year are eager for cartharcism from the “Sad Girl Autumn” musical lineup. 

“It’s no coincidence that some of the most talented, innovative women artists — like Mitski, Adele and Taylor Swift — are tapping into these emotional and musical gray areas, and that’s why people are responding to them,” Sloan said to NBC News.

From the dread of the sun that disappears earlier and earlier to the joy of wandering through Beacon Hill with a pumpkin spice latte in hand, where words fall short, the music of “Sad Girl Autumn” articulates all the highs and lows of the season. 

As Taylor Swift said, it’s miserable and magical.