The saddest songs ever (Melancholy music redux)

In the midst of my seasonal melancholy a couple of years ago, I wrote a few blog posts about the music I use to heighten my misery, which concluded with a short list of sad songs.

Now Adam Brent Houghtaling has taken the list many steps further, cataloging the saddest songs of all time in his book This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music (Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" is number one on his list of top 100 sad songs, which is why the video is embedded above). Houghtaling said he began writing the book after he realized that the soundtrack of his life was composed of artists with a defining attribute, of "having an uncommon understanding of the varying shades of sorrow."

As the days grow shorter and darker, my soundtrack gets a little gloomier each day, until it reaches a delicious dismalness just before the Winter Solstice. So, of course, I am putting Houghtaling's book on my Christmas Wish List.