I know we do “The Saddest Song in the World” every so often, and usually I pop in for “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”, which is kind of unfair because I heard about it in one of these very threads. (Why do I torture myself iTunesing from those lists? I always cry.)
“Kilkelly, Ireland” came up on my iPod today and I didn’t have the good sense to skip it, so I was all in tears on my way to work, 'cause at heart I’m the world’s biggest softie. (Seriously - halfway through watching “Carrier” Himself said, “Will you please stop being so compassionate? My dad was in the Navy when I was a kid and I don’t like you crying about it!”) So I was looking up alternate versions to see what they sounded like (I have the Blackthorn version and all the others I found were too overwrought to be as devestating) and found out that it’s from real letters. Well, great.
The lyrics are all from letters written by Pat MacNamara as dictated by John Coyne to his son in America.
This might be too specific a category to get results, but I was wondering if there any other really good but also true-story sad, sad songs out there that are personal favorites. So I can buy them and show up at work again with a red nose.
I seem to remember hearing that Clapton wrote “Tears in Heaven” before his son died, but most people think he wrote it for him. Seems that I heard that on this very board. Or am I mistaken?
Well, my choice is sorta melodramatic as opposed to true sadness, but I do think of what terror must have gone through the real sailors’ minds as I listen to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
148 garment workers – most of whom were low-wage immigrant women – died either from the flames, from asphyxiation, or by jumping to their deaths.
Lyrics for Mayn Rue-Platz, together with the English translation, are at the website of the excellent “Kitka & Davka: Old and New World Jewish Music” concert DVD here:
Point fingers at me and laugh but I think Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is sea worthy. It makes me cry every time I play it in my whatever whatever rotation.
There are a couple lines in that song that have really gotten to me every time I’ve heard it since it was first released. The old cook came on deck…and said “fellas, it’s been good to know ya.” The captain wired in “the good ship and crew was in peril”. It makes me think that they all knew they were doomed.
And I’ll add Al Stewart’s Roads to Moscow. All that pain, suffering and hardship, and then, at the moment of victory and deliverance, the ultimate, irrevocable betrayal.
For some reason I still can’t fathom, in a little primary school in New Zealand we used to sing a very inappropriate song at school assembly.
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
I met her on the mountain
There I took her life
Met her on the mountain
Stabbed her with my knife
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
This time tomorrow
Reckon where I’ll be
Hadn’t a-been for Grayson
I’d a-been in Tennessee
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Maybe it’s because I learnt this song at about 6 yrs old but it still makes me sad.
I watched the memorial service for the bombing victims in Oklahoma City, and Tears was sung at that. The camera cut once to a young woman who was the mother of two children who died in the day care center. Poor gal was clutching their pictures to her chest, doubled over in pain, with long red hair hanging down. I haven’t heard the song since without crying a little.
“Vimy” by Tanglefoot. All about the Canadian assault on Vimy Ridge in WWI; specifically three guys who participated. The song is told from the point of view of one of them, who assures the others that in spite of the fierce fighting, they will all die in their hometowns. The other two end up being destroyed by shells–and later, the shell craters are named for the guys’ hometowns. The singer’s prediction came true, but not in the way they expected.