LISTENING to sad, beautiful songs by the likes of Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen can help you beat the blues, scientists say.

They found that depressed or sad people prefer to listen to beautiful music that triggers important memories.

Psychologists from the University of Kent in England investigated the moods of people listening to "self-identified sad music" and asked them their reasons for picking the tracks.

While there were many reasons a depressed person might select a piece of music, researchers found that sometimes they did not necessarily want to pick tracks to cheer themselves up.

The study, published in the Psychology of Music, found choosing music identified as "beautiful" was the only way to stop people feeling glum.

Previous studies showed that people choose to listen to sad music when they feel down.