Patty Griffin’s Rain from 1000 Kisses:
*It’s hard to listen to a hard hard heart
Beating close to mine
Pounding up against the stone and steel
Walls that I won’t climb
Sometimes a hurt is so deep deep deep
You think that you’re gonna drown
Sometimes all I can do is weep weep weep
With all this rain falling down
Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
When I’m holding on underneath this shroud
Rain*
Kathy Mattea’s song Where’ve You Been
I’m fine until the last verse, then I’m a bawling idiot.
I posted this one in the “most depressing songs” thread, but I think it’d be much more appropriate for this one;
Billy Falcon – Heaven’s Highest Hill
S^G
While we’re on a Sinéad O’Connor trip, her version of Silent Night is guaranteed to make evey Christmas a heartbreak.
Currently, it’s A Comet Appears by The Shins
*We can blow on our thumbs and posture,
But the lonely is such delicate things,
The wind from a wasp could blow them,
Into the sea,
With stones on their feet,
Lost to the light and the loving we need,
Still to come,
The worst part and you know it,
There is a numbness,
In your heart and it’s growing*
Remember When by Alan Jackson
remember when, the sound of little feet was music
I heard it last night and was thinking of starting a thread on Most Perfect Song ever but realized mine are all perfect because they are painfully beautiful. So this thread is timely!
Also
Lies by Stan Rogers
*is this the face that won for her the man, whose amazed and clumsy fingers put that ring upon her hand?
she’ll look up in that weathered face that loves hers line for line, and see that maiden shining in his eyes*
Goodnight Saigon by Billy Joel
I’m a Stan Fan, and I’ve always loved that song, and agree whole-heartedly.
I find many of his songs could fit into this category, because he often writes about the hardships of life of Everyman, so many people can relate on one level or another –
-Make & Break Harbour
-Sailor’s Rest
-The Field Behind The Plow
-White Squall
… and many others
S^G
Honey and the Moon- Joseph Arthur
Here’s a clip (that also happens to be a tribute to Audrey Hepburn).
Fast Car- Tracy Chapman. The girl starts out full of hope, just to end up in the same circumstances that she tried to escape.
Good choice. This one is made even worse when you consider that he’s gone.
Nick Cave - The Ship Song is very beautiful, and is personally painful.
Ditto on the Dire Straights ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Don’t Give Up’ by Gabriel and Bush.
Mine is ‘Kryptonite’ by Three Doors Down.
Of late, “Asleep and Dreaming” by Magnetic Fields:
Well you may not be beautiful
But it’s not for me to judge
I don’t know if you’re beautiful
Because I love you too much
If you like the Arvo Pärt piece mentioned above, I’ll toss in the cellos-only version of “Fratres.”
That film clip makes me cry with the poor old fellow in the superhero costume. I just feel so sorry for him because he seems so lonely…
Making Gravy, by Paul Kelly
One Crowded Hour, by Augie March
In My Arms by Nick Cave, because the song is amazing and because it is the song my wife and myself danced to at our wedding.
I curse whoever brought up ‘Remember When’ by Alan Jackson in the Depressing song thread yesterday.
I was listening, and just broke down. It was part of the traditional Homecoming pep rally slow cheer which sounds kinda dumb, and I thought it was too, till I was a senior. That song brings back Friday nights out at the football field, cheering as hard as I could and wearing my letter jacket and screwing around in class and making a senior mum that I was proud of and that game being a first date and friends at different colleges who I don’t see and knowing I fit in with just about everyone.
I don’t miss a whole lot of things about high school, but that song last night made me think of all the good things.
Leavin’ on a Jet Plane by Peter, Paul and Mary
I gotta second that one. I listened to that song a lot when I was young and first fell in love (it was unrequited, making it even more poignant).
Up to about two weeks ago, my heartbreak song was a Swedish folksong by the name of Vem Kan Segla Förutan Vind (Who Can Sail Without the Wind?). You see, last November, I took a little vacation in Sweden to visit my girlfriend, who was studying there for the semester. I had planned to sing that to her on parting, as a ridiculously sappy romantic gesture (and to show off how quickly I was learning Swedish), but wouldn’t ya know — we broke up instead, the very last morning I was there. Ouch.
Yeah. OK. Oh, Christ. That’s too sad to even think about. My condolences.
Schmaltzy, I know, but two songs that do it to me are It Was a Very Good Year by Frank Sinatra and When October Goes by Barry Manilow. Same basic idea–the bittersweet feeling that comes with getting older.
“The Dance” by Prince.
I could probably list about 50 Prince songs that are painfully beautiful just based on his voice - a technically gorgeous voice, and damn he knows how to use it.
“Worlds Apart” by Vince Gill.
“Hurt” by Christina Aguilera.
I like k.d. lang’s version of “Hallelujah” better than anyone else’s.
I had my friend put Hallelujah on my ipod, and I was very disapointed to realize he thought I meant Jeff Buckley. I needed the beautiful piano of the Rufus Wainright version.
Summertime by the great Lady Ella Fizgerald and Lois Armstrong.