Someone mentioned Les Miz - the song that makes me cry, ever since I first saw the play in high school, is “On My Own.”
Others that make me cry:
“Goodbye My Lover” by James Blunt
“Where’d You Go” by Fort Minor
“Whiskey Lullaby” - I forgot who sings it
As another Leonard Cohen fan, I’m suprised he’s not getting more mentions. He’s been the standard for depressing music for years. The last review of his album I saw in a mainstream paper carried a health warning, and I saw a satire article from years ago linking a spate of suicides to his album making it onto a morning radio playlist while people were shaving…
Outside Cohen’s library, Joan Baez has done some decidedly downbeat songs and Richard Marx’s “Hazard” isn’t the cheeriest of lyrics. “St James Infirmary” tends to get me, depending on the version.
Tom Paxton has a few
Leaving London
About the Children
Cindy’s Crying
Mister Blue
Crazy John
But his topper is Jimmy Newman
He was the first person that came to mind but I basically thought, what do I do, write down his entire library?
**Solitude ** by Black Sabbath
Pale Blue Eyes by The Velvet Underground
A thread on sad music and no mention of Radiohead. I find High and Dry and Fake Plastic Trees to be particularly depressing. Smashing Pumkins Mellon Colly and the Infinite Sadnes album is full of depressing songs.
I’m gonna have to go with Josh Radin’s Winter. But I probably only find it sad because I associate it with the final appearance of Ben Sullivan in Scrubs, which was the saddest television moment ever.
Quite a lot of Everclear’s stuff is pretty damn depressing. For example, Strawberry, which is about the relapse of a former heroin addict. The end of the last verse coupled with the chorus really gets to me:
*Ten long years in a straight line
They fall like water
Yes I guess I fucked up again
Don’t fall down now
You will never get up
Don’t fall down now
Don’t fall down now*
Wondered when anyone was going to mention this.
“It’s a bittersweet symphony, this life
You work all day, you’re a slave to money
then you die.”
Also, Tracey Chapman - “Fast Car.” The song starts with the narrator leaving a bad home life in her lover’s fast car with a sense of hope, and her hopes are slowly crushed by life and a man that lets her down:
“You got a fast car
And I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do your kids
I always hoped for better
Thought maybe together,
You and me, we’d find it
I got no plans, I ain’t going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving.”
And Bruce Springsteen, “One Step Up,” also about a failed marriage and dashed hopes:
“Its the same thing night on night
Who’s wrong baby, who’s right?
Another fight and I slam the door on
Another battle in our dirty little war
When I look at myself I dont see
The man I wanted to be
Somewhere along the line I slipped off track
I’m caught moving one step up and two steps back.”
I find these songs so sad because I know real people who suffered through essentially the same events. It doesn’t make me eager to get married.
I’ve got another one:
Cake- The Palm of Your Hand.
The line about Turtle Wax shreds my heart every time.
Oops!! I meant to say She’ll Hang the Baskets on the Walls!
(Just woke up and too stupid to know how to edit. sheepish grin)
Paul Kelly How To Make Gravy - a Christmas song from a brother in jail
And later in the evening, I can just imagine,
You’ll put on Junior Murvin and push the tables back
And you’ll dance with Rita, I know you really like her,
Just don’t hold her too close, oh brother please don’t stab me in the back
I didn’t mean to say that, it’s just my mind it plays up,
Multiplies each matter, turns imagination into fact
Andy Prieboy Tomorrow Wendy - pretty straight forward
It is complete now the two ends of time are neatly tied
A one-way street, she’s walking to end of the line
And there she meets the faces she keeps in her heart and mind
They say ‘good bye’ Tomorrow, Wendy, is going to die,
They say ‘good bye’ Tomorrow, Wendy, is going to die,
Most of Nick Drake’s catalog
Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”
The Flaming Lips have a bunch of good ones:
“Five Stop Mother Superior Rain”
“You Have To Be Joking (Autopsy Of The Devil’s Brain)”
“Suddenly Everything Has Changed (Moments of routine and boredom that cause you to daydream or reflect on the nature of reality sometimes with maddeningly melancholy results)”
All come to mind.
Their song “Do you realize” is both depressing and life-affirming. Go figure.
“This Used to Be My Playground,” Madonna.
“All By Myself,” Eric Carmen
Brian’s Song by Blink-182
I never thought I’d die alone
Another six months I’ll be unknown
Give all my things to all my friends
You’ll never step foot in my room again
You’ll close it off, board it up
Remember the time that I spilled the cup
Of apple juice in the hall
Please tell mom this is not her fault.
Argh, makes me want to commit suicide myself.
heh I used to listen to that whole album (good stuff) over and over when I was a kid. There was a skip in this part of this song, so it said, “I took the life of pretty Flo of pretty Flo of pretty Flo of pretty Flo …”
Damn, you took mine! So I’ll just quote from Wikipedia:
“Jones stated in a 2002 CMT interview that he told the producer he “…would record the song,” but did not think it would sell “because it’s too damn sad.” Jones also bet the record producer that it would do poorly. Jones gladly lost his bet, for it would be the biggest hit of his career and for nearly three decades would be his trademark song.”
Anyway, I would also like to nominate everything in Pink Floyd’s catalog (at least the hits, which is pretty much all I’ve heard), though I can’t say that it’s the lyrics. I’ve just always found their music to be very depressing for some reason.
Bob Dylan
“Don’t Think Twice”
It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don’t matter, anyhow
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don’t know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on
Don’t think twice, it’s all right
“Desolation Row”
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row
LOL. I don’t find anything by Laughing Lenny truly depressing, because there’s always that element of sour gallows humor, or at least amused detachment, in even his darkest material.
Barry McGuire - Eve Of Destruction Lyrics | LetsSingIt Eve od Destruction …merely about the end of the world.
It’s Adam’s Song. Brian’s song is a movie. There’s also another song about suicide called Song for Adam by Jackson Browne.
Fancy, by Rebe McIntyre.