Prepare to spiral down.And down.
And down.
I present you these songs only a few at a time (for your sake) and in no particular order of decreasing or increasing intensity of sorrow. I should confess that I'm not going to share the dozen or so songs I find the saddest. That nearly defeats the purpose of me creating a list, but there's still plenty of sad out there to share. (So we got that going for us.) Even on an erstwhile semi-anonymous but now probably completely transparent blog, shameless confessional vulnerability has its limits. Some of these songs are old, some are new. Several of them are just average as songs (or worse), but they all punch me in the gut--even the Janet Jackson schlocky song.
1. How it ends. Devotchka
2. Days go by. Dirty Vegas (acoustic version)
3. Beautiful Boy. John Lennon. (Meant to be cheery, I know, but it's heartbreakingly sad to me. "Out on the ocean sailing away/I can hardly wait/To see you to come of age/But I guess we'll both just have to be patient." When John Lennon died, I was in 6th or 7th grade, and he was my hero. Hearing about his death was one of those moments of clarity when I understood viscerally that, okay, things on this side of the divide will be cosmically unfair. I was so sad, and being a boy and all, I was ashamed of myself for crying when I heard the news. In terms of emotional impact, his death was one of the top twenty-five or so most important events in my life.) Other Lennon or Beatles songs: "Watching the Wheels Go 'Round" and "Yesterday" and "Eleanor Rigby."
4. Samson. Regina Spektor
5. Sweet dreams. Patsy Cline
6. Long long time. Linda Rondstadt
7. Hide and Seek. Imogen Heap
8. Breathe me. Sia
9. Never fall in love again. Janet Jackson
10. Skyline Pigeon. Elton John
11. I can't make you love me. Bonnie Raitt
12. Baby--Lost and Found
13. Drowning Man--Darden Smith
14. Lost Cause--Beck.
15. No Woman, No Cry. Bob Marley
16. Quelqu'un m'a dit. Carla Bruni
17. Mother. John Lennon
18. Waiting for my Real Life to Begin--Colin Hay
19. Death Cab songs: I will Follow You into the Dark; Title and Registration.
20. Requiem for my Mother--Durutti Column
21. Song for a Deckhand's Daughter--James McMurtry
22. The "rainbow" songs: "Connection" and "Somewhere over the.." Yes, the Rainbow Connection (Sarah McLachlan) is just terribly sad. Heartbreakingly so. Go ahead and laugh. But you know it's true. Admit it.
23. Now and then there's a fool such as I--lots of artists
24. U2--One.
25. First Day of my life. Bright eyes
26. And as far as music alone goes, the "requiem" section (only) of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" is....well, devastating. I also find "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "Exit Music" quite cry-worthy.
27. If you could read my mind. Gordon Lightfoot. True, incredibly schlocky, but it's one of the very few "story songs" that I buy into.
28. Finlandia--Indigo Girls
29. More than this. Roxy Music
30. House of the Rising Sun. Patty Ann Smith version.
31. Afterglow. INXS
32. Rod Stewart--Forever Young. Broken Arrow. Also (I confess with great shame) that I find Alphaville's Forever Young to be tender and touching as well.
33. Why Does My Heart feel so bad? Moby
34. By Willie Nelson. Virtually too many to mention. "Getting over you." "Your Memory Won't Die in my grave." "Angel flying too close to the ground". "Home Motel". "Loving her was easier than anything I'll ever do again."
35. Paul Simon--Another Galaxy. American Tune.
36. Please, please, please let me get what i want this time. The Smiths.
37. Nomad. Geoffrey Oryema
38. Girl in the War--Josh Ritter
39. There are scores of songs I find shattering but I'm can't pinpoint why. Just the feel of them. To give a few examples: U2's Stuck in a moment. Bush's Glycerine. Nirvana's All Apologies. The Beatles' ending medley on Abbey Road, Side Two. Otherside by R.H.C.P. Romeo and Juliet by Lou Reed. "It's My life" by Bon Jovi--just it's desparation.
40. And several of the songs already mentioned by you, the dear readers.
gotta go to bed.
to weep.
---
Okay, it's morning now. So I looked over this list, and four things come to mind. 1. Okay, so that wasn't just a "few at a time." I got a little carried away. My apologies. 2. Man, I find a lot of songs to be sad. 3. I should have said up front, that I'm more of a music guy than a lyric guy. 4. This list makes me look like a saturated sponge, ready to weep as soon as the needle touches any record. And yet I'm not really a cry-at-the-movies kind of guy (with exceptions, of course), so go figure.
Weirder still, I never cry at funerals.
Yes, I do.
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12 comments:
All time favorite photo from your blog: this one. The empty chair belongs in a sad song.
All time saddest song: The Circle Game (Joni Mitchell). Go here http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joni+mitchell/the+circle+game_20075378.html for the lyrics and see if you don't sigh.
Wow! that is some list, list man. very impressive.
"sad" is very nuanced, isn't it? we can mean sad words, music, implications, assciated memories, induced feelings. they're all in there. Harry Connick Jr's "drifting" is a great example of, i think, both sad words and very moving music. i find it impossible to distinguish between the effects of the two.
(forgive me as i continue to give ancient examples. i grew up in a house stocked with burt bacharach and montovani and his orchesetra. i'm not kidding. it's possible my parents were really my great-grandparents. i consider myself a success because i rebelled and moved on by 50 years.)
then there are songs that are sad because they point out your own life's harsh realities. when HC, Jr. came out with "jill" (about his wife), i had to abandon my dream of moving to New Orleans, finding him, marrying him, and having kids with half a chance of being able to sing. sigh.
then, just one fret up from sad is simply emotional. that could be a whole other thousand songs, but Bach's Air does that for me. it's so moving, it's sad. crazy?
then you have songs which would be sad, if only faulty brain wiring (the only explanation) didn't keep you from understanding lyrics half the time. (For fun, my spouse, who has computer-like lyric memory, listens to my version of whatever song is playing.) take Simon & Garfunkel's "Slip Sliding Away". if you think they're saying "slip slide in the rain", it becomes less about not reaching your life's goals and more about fun with funky weather. not so sad.
then there are songs that are sad because they are based on weak usage of literary vehicles and leave a wake of depressed english teachers. granted, this may be a much smaller category, but think alanis morrissette's "irony" and its incorrect usage of... irony. oh, where are we headed as a world?
finally, we have songs that are sad simply because of their location. i've tried to expose my kiddos to a wide range of music through music in the car and house, concerts, kindermusik, lessons, etc. but what does my daughter have on her ipod? high school musical, miley cyrus, and the theme from the beverly hillbillies. the one thing that makes me think she isn't going straight to music hell? the beatles are on there as well.
For the flip side of Cat’s in the Cradle in the parental sad category – Pink Floyd’s Mother. Those damn kids. You neglect them, they rebuff you. You hover, they blame you for their hang-ups and insecurities. And of course all along the continuum between hovering and detachment are copious ungrateful accusations and complaints. Grow up already.
Thanks to Rogers Waters and David Gilmour I can’t even tell my boys not to jump off a cliff without hearing the instrumental and the accompanying lyrics “Momma’s gonna fill you with all her fears…ooooooo babe….”
And hey, I wasn’t trying to be anonymous. I thought I told you I would check out the blog and respond with my trueoutlier account (of course that was a long time ago - it takes me a while). Oh well, so much for having your utter and undivided email attention. Guilt and passive aggression – Didn't David Gilmour tell you? They're in the fun-filled bag of maternal weapons they give out in the maternity ward. You don’t want to see what else is in there, kids.
Applebee--
Thanks so much about the photo. I never know who will respond strongly to one of my photos.
I'm going to download the JM song, and I'll let you know my thoughts on it.
trueoutlier--
"the wall." I used to listen to that album for endless hours at night in bed. (like every other teenage boy.) just feeling my suffering in solidarity with all the other tender creative individual souls so brutally crushed by the system--i.e. by mom, dad, teachers, and all the other persons who in reality make life bearable and decent and semi-civilized. and while i still purchase into the marcuse-inspired 'civilization is brutality" idea for about ten minutes every other month, for the most part i purchase what Freud said: yeah, rules suck, but thank god we have them. i guess i'm more pro-wall than i could have ever guessed. or as you put it: "grow up already."
and if you did indeed tell me about the "outlier" persona, then i deserve all the guilt and passive aggression you can dish my way. but now you have my undivided attention. (and, i must say, the problem probably lies with my memory, not my attention.) if one of your weapons is the guilt/passive aggression cocktail, then excuse making and rationalization is one of my shields. So maybe we're evenly matched.
but here's what i want to say. I'm glad you're who you are (how's that for a postmodern thought?), and i'm going to send you a private email. and always feel free to comment on the blog anytime you want to. just because i find you intimidating doesn't mean i don't like being intimidated, right?
justcurious--
yeah, the word "sad" is just a gathering place, a starting point for talking about something fundamentally complex. for example, one brand of music i always find very sad is especially joyful music built on hope and yearning. most christmas music strikes me as sad for precisely this reasons--because despite what we're singing, the world isn't so joyful. most church music makes me sad for the same reason. also, songs that sing of a commitment to making things better also strike me as powerfully poignant.
i didn't include lots of songs on the list of that nature--songs that strike others as hopeful but that strike me as wishful thinking.
(your parents were your great grandparents. very nice. i like that, jc. very funny. i hope you never run out of the funny.)
moving is sad. right. exactly. hey, some people don't get that. but you and i do, don't we. we're great, aren't we? you and i rock. unlike "them."
faulty wiring has NOTHING to do with my sad-o-meter working. i never understand words, and when i don't my default position is to fill the most tragic words imaginable. of course now i can't think of an example. (i'll come back to this point later.)
irony. okay, now you're just being snarky, and that violates the rules of this post, right? just because you have a special exemption for so many things in this blog doesn't mean you should abuse them. believe me, irony is nowhere the bottom half of stupid when it comes to lyrics. it just overreaches.
i don't think i understand your location point. if what you mean by that is "associated memories," than i'm with you. the saddest songs are, for me, always personal. or nearly always so. something that highlights a sad or bittersweet or tragic memory.
sorry, i guess technically i was breaking the rules again, slipping toward talking about pathetic. by location, i meant it is sad that those songs reside on my daughter's shuffle because they're so sadly pathetic (at least the first two), but obligatory for her age, i suppose.
that makes sense now. just chalk my stupidity up to my stupidity. and you do know, right, that you're entitled to break any rule.
"Playboy Mommy" by Tori Amos
"Names" by Cat Power (I don't even listen to this one. It's way too depressing. It's like depression porn.)
"Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman
"This Was Pompeii" by Dar Williams
anonymous, i downloaded "names." everything that cat power does is....depressing, but really that song takes the cake. my one listen may have been sufficient.
how come you didn't mention The Story by, who is it, Brandi Carlisle? too obvious, i guess. that one makes everyone ache.
i didn't mention every song
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