What's the saddest song on your playlist?

Cafe Society
21

During my mom’s final six weeks in hospice with level 10 pain, the following number was a 24/7 earbug that I can’t listen to anymore:
Life On Mars (@ 9:42)
Despite it being relatively mainstream, this somehow slipped my radar until mom’s decline - I’m sure if I had heard this way back in the day (along with all his other gazillion records that my sisters were always playing)* it wouldn’t have hit me in the yarbles like it did, being not really on top of my game, at the time.

*pffffft they had every album EXCEPT Hunky Dory

Then again Elton’s Sad Songs - no - not a sad song. Treacly, by-the-numbers, and pedestrian, sure, I’ll go with that, though.

22

Ian Tyson singing Barney. Note: this song is not about a purple dinosaur.

23

Although the purple dinosaur song makes me cry, too.

24

Bridge Over Troubled Water is a good crying song.

25

I never expected to find another DA fan on the Dope, although I really haven’t thought about them much since the late '80s/early '90s. I was more an Adam Again or The Choir guy.

Speaking of Adam Again, their songs “River on Fire” and especially “Stone” are also pretty depressing.

26

Tossup between Asleep by The Smiths, God Damn The Sun by Swans or Atmosphereby Joy Division or possibly, just tonight, it’s Severanceby Dead Can Dance…

27

Probably this one, Beth Nielsen Chapman’s “No One Knows But You”, written shortly after the artist lost her husband to cancer.

Or this one: Melanie’s I Really Loved Harold

Runner up: Carly Simon’sDo the Walls Come Down?

Runner up: Tori Amos’s Me and a Gun

Runner up: Bloodrock’s dystopian America, America

Honorable mention: Pink Floyd’s Nobody Home

28

Harris and the Mare by Stan Rogers. I usually can’t handle it, and skip it 19 out of every 20 times it comes on.

29

From Warren Zevon’s last album, The Wind. Keep Me In Your Heart is just. . … Man, it’s been almost 14 years and I still choke up when I hear it.

30

I kinda like The Old Blue Suit, which is elegaic. I see it as a celebration of a man’s life, but my b.i.l. thinks it is incredibly sad.

31

“You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” by David Frizzell and Shelley West.

32

I grieve by binge-listening to an artist*, tearing up as I drive to work.

So right now it’s a lot of Bowie and Cohen, specifically Bewley Brothers:
“Leave my shoes, and door unlocked / I might just slip away… just for the day, hey…”
and Famous Blue Raincoat: “Did you ever go clear?”
*(so Daniel Amos’ll be on my playlist as soon as “Uncle Terry” Taylor buys the farm)

33

Kilkelly Ireland performed here by Robbie O’Connell & Finbar Clancy.

I dare you to be dry-eyed by the end of that song. Song starts at 0:57 on the link if you want to skip the intro. Although the story really sets up the background of the song.

34

How about Elvis Costello’s ‘This House is Empty Now’…

These rooms play tricks upon you
Remember when they were always filled with laughter
But now they’re quite deserted
They seem to just echo voices raised in anger

Do you recognize the face
Fixed in that fine silver frame
Were you really so unhappy there
You never said

So this house is empty now
There’s nothing I can do to make you want to stay
So tell me how am I supposed to live without you

35

One year, in my chorus’s Holidays concert, one of the songs was “Christmas Without You” (not the Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers song or any other one I could find online). Less than a week before the concert, one of the singers suddenly died of meningitis. It hit everyone very hard. But you know, the show must go on. I don’t know how we made it through that song with tears running down our cheeks. And the audience too, including the guy’s family. I still think of him when I hear that song.

36

Came to say this. My version is by Michael Moloney and Green Fields of America.

37

Daisy a Day by Jud Strunk.

38

Chopin nocturne op 48 no.1 c minor. Funny, I always seem to be cutting onions when I listen to Arrau tickle the ivories on this piece.

39

“Well, she walks these hills in a long black veil…”

40

Probably a 3-way tie between Pearl Jam “Black”, Rush “Losing It” and Porcupine Tree “Even Less”.

There’s also The Cure and Type O Negative, but I actually find those kinda cheery.