I finally found a clip of Townes Van Zandt perfoming “Marie”.
Frank Turner’s Long Live The Queen, which he wrote after the death of his friend from breast cancer. Her family, including her children, appear in the video.
- You’ll get to dance another day.
Now you’ll have to dance, for one more of us. *
That’s who it was, all right. 
I don’t know, but it’s not Stairway to Heaven.
Until Keep Me In Your Heart, I always thought this classic Latin salsa tune, El dia de me suerte, was pretty sad. It is autobiographical and pretty upbeat music wise but the lyrics. . …
The chorus translates into something like:
Soon my lucky day will come
I know before I die
My luck will change
The first verse traslates to
When I was a little kid my mother died
Left me alone with dad.
Dad always told me I’d never be alone
Because he never expected disease
When I was ten, dad died
He went with mom to a better place
When the people saw me cry they’d say
“Don’t cry. Your luck will change.”
Yeah? When?
It goes on like that for, like, 5 verses.
As a total aside, I just found out that Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez made a biopic of Hector’s life. I’m gonna try to find it,.
There were a few posts earlier about sad Christmas songs.
For that, I nominate Luther Vandross, Every Year, Every Christmas.
Am I the only one who finds that song bathetic?
Nick Drake’s Black Eyed Dog. Mister Drake suffered from depression for most of his life and this was one of his last recorded songs. Winston Churchill referred to his own depression as his “black dog”.
Producer John Wood on the 1974 recording session: “It was chilling. It was really scary. He was so…he was in such bad shape he couldn’t sing and play the guitar at the same time. We put down the guitars and overdubbed the voice.”
I can’t find the SDMB post that brought this song to my attention, but the poster described it as the voice of someone who is obviously staring into the void and has reached his limit.
Drake died of “Acute amitriptyline poisoning - self-administered when suffering from a depressive illness” in November of that year, aged 26.
This song isn’t sad in a comforting, maudlin way. It’s goddamn brutal, especially in the light of his other wonderful songs like Pink Moon.
There are a lot of songs on Lou Reed’s New York that could qualify, but “Xmas in February” is especially bleak.
For me it’s Rabbit in your headlights by UNKLE and Thom Yorke - it’s not the lyrics specifically or the music or the video but a combination of all three
Lou Reed, “Street Hassle”:
Spacemen 3, “Ode to Street Hassle”:
Mokira, “Ode to the Ode to the Street Hassle”:
http://open.spotify.com/track/7Glx4PF6wQ0PErcjmNoZdW (sorry, wasn’t on Youtube)
Clearly someone needs to do a fourth.
That’s what I thought of when I read the thread title. I’ll go with that or Danny Boy.
Taps
The Magdalene Laundries. Haunting music recounting real atrocities to women and children that only ended in 1996.
Champagne High – Sister Hazel
It's about a man watching his ex get married.I don’t know what this song is, but the song when Homer’s mom leaves him for a second time.
Also maybe Mazzy Star. I think the song is about suicide, it sounds like it.
Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, Hard Times. The lyric theme is actually hopeful, but not the delivery.
Every time this topic comes up, this is my response. “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes” just cuts clean through.
Another good sad song - Chris Knight’s Hard Edges.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
Damn you. I can’t take any song about suffering animals, especially cats. I couldn’t even listen to,the whole thing.