*I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
I wish I were a maid again
But a maid again I can never be
Until apples grow on an ivy tree
For love is pleasing and love is teasing
And love is a treasure when first it’s new
But as love grows older then love grows colder
And it fades away like the morning dew
There is an alehouse in the town
And there my love he sits him down
He takes a strange girl on his knee
And he tells her things that he once told me
For love and porter make a young girl older
And love and whiskey make her old and grey
And what cannot be cured, love, must be endured, love
And now I am bound for Amerikay.*
(I’m fairly sure the lyrics are out of copyright.)
I want to sing this for the laugh at my friend’s wedding.
Kenny Rogers’s “Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town” And if I could move I’d get my gun and put her in the ground.
Ruby, don’t take your love to town.
Ruby…For God’s Sake, turn around.
Racing in the Street is a major favourite. I don’t know why, I’ve very few cultural connections with the song, but it’s a great song off one of Bruce’s best albums.
*And the carny had a horse, all skin and bone
A bow-backed nag, that he named “Sorrow”
How it is buried in a shallow grave
In the then parched meadow. * Rest of the lyrics and video.
This may be the all time most depressing album ever.
Another song that always makes me tear up: Nothing Compares to U (Sinead O’ Connor version). Of course, my reaction likely has something to do with events in my life at the time…
*My lips are shakin’ my nails are bit off
Been a month since i’ve heard myself talk
All the advantage this life’s got on me
Picture a cup in the middle of the sea
And i fight back in my mind
Never lets me be right
I got memories i got shit
So much it don’t show*
Good Lord, when I was young (prob’ly around 10), that one used to make me bawl, and I had no idea why, at the time.
another James Blunt ‘miserable song’ is Goodbye My Lover.
The first time I heard that one was when he was a guest on Oprah.
(Satellite^Gal nominates JB’s No Bravery, off the same album)
On a related note, I remember reading in (I think) Stranger Than Fiction, about a song that drove many people to suicide, many years ago, and they supposedly had every copy of the song destroyed. true or UL?*
Nomination: Sam Stone , song by John Pryne. “There’s a hole in Daddy’s Arm where all the money goes”
Nomination: Theme of Eric Satie by Blood Sweat and Tears on the eponymous album. No lyrics. The saddest instrumental I’ve ever heard. Beats Barber’s Adagio for Strings, even though it is short. Maybe even because it is short.
Nomination: Manhattan Kansas by Glen Campbell. Google the lyrics.
Serious Full-Album Nomination, and you probably haven’t heard it: the entirety of the album Sand and Water by Beth Nielsen Chapman. Once you know it was written as/after her husband died from cancer, so you know the context, this album will tear you up into little crying pieces. Seriously damn, this woman was in love and hurting. Even not knowing the story behind it it affected me pretty strongly.
Nomination. [Simon & Garfunkel* Old Friends and Bookends, the latter of which is, as with the instrumental from Blood Sweat and Tears listed above, one of those short little things that sticks a sad little knife in you and then leaves, and you never forget it. Old Friends is decently sad in a different way but deserves mention.
