I have long thought Nao E Desgraca Ser Pobre performed by Amalia Rodriguez with Don Byas on saxophone and the rest of the band is the saddest musical perfomance of all. Here is one translation if it helps. This style of music is pretty much all about sad- I am told the Fado style is demanding in such a way that the performers’ vocal chords are slowly destroyed over a smallish number of years, automatically rendering the singer a tragic figure on top of the material. And this is the best of all the Fado songs I’ve heard, though I admit I’m not an expert on it.
Is this in fact the saddest performance ever? If you know a sadder song- prove it! Post it in this thread and let’s see once and for all which is the all-time saddest song.
*note- you need to click the ‘play’ button in the link, sorry.
(note: the translation in the youtube link above is pretty good. The English lyrics typically sung to this song are not in any way a translation of the French)
This subject has come up before, and I’ve always given the same answer:
“And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda,” which tells the story of a young Australian maimed at the Battle of Gallipoli during the First World War. My favorite version is by Ronnie Drew of the Dubliners.
Thanks for posting that. I’ve been listening to Amalia’s music ever since we discovered fado while living in Lisbon. We saw her in what turned out to be her last concert. Her voice was nowhere what it had been, but her presence was undeniable. I have never heard a fado tune that included anything other than the usual Portuguese guitars, so it was jarring to hear her sing with Don Byas toodling in the background. Her arranger wrote such lush accompaniments that no other instruments are needed. No fado singer has ever come close to her emotion and power.
I have trouble remembering lyrics but for some reason I always remember and can sing this and The Green Fields Of France, even though they’ve tonnes of verses.
One of my personal favorite very sad songs is One Last Goodbye by Anathema. The two main members of the band are brothers and, as I understand, it is their coming to terms with their mother’s death from cancer, but it’s also written in such a way that it can relate to any sort of such a loss. Almost everyone I know who has heard it was moved.
That said, if you’re really looking for sad songs, I’d suggest looking into the Doom genre. It tends to be on the heavier side, but the main aspect of the genre is exploring the depths of saddness, sorrow, grief, despair, and all of that sort. For example, one of my favorite such songs is The Giant by Swallow the Sun, in which the giant is a metaphor for sadness itself and it’s overwhelming nature, and the song proceeds through several different types of it, lyrically describing the emotion with physical aspects and perfectly capturing the aspects musically, and it even ventures into some of the more unexpected aspects such as a hopeful sort of melacholic type.
Or a more recent example from the same genre from earlier this year would be What Could Have Been by Novembers Doom. It’s a soft acoustic piece and a duet guesting Anneke van Giersbergen (everything this woman touches is just… perfect). The song itself is about a couple grieving the death of their young child. Its easily the saddest song I’d heard in a long time; it brough tears to my eyes.
Whenever we have one of these threads, I always nominate “Marie” by Townes Van Zandt. If you were ever lucky enough to see him perform this live, you can attest there wasn’t a dry eye in the house!
Pretty much everything that Glenn Yarbrough ever sang. The guy could make you cry over the phonebook. I would mention “I’ve Been to Town” as particularly weep-inducing.
