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.

Sad songs, angsty albums, and a twilight tune

Yesterday, I promised to give my current playlist of melancholy songs, but perhaps I promised too much. My playlist is ever-evolving, my purposes changing. While I wanted to listen to depressing music this weekend, when the weather was cold, today with temperatures finally promised to hit above freezing for the first time in weeks, I find myself wanting to venture outside and to listen to something more uplifting.

Oh, well, for the next miserable or cold day, here's the playlist I was able to compile since the weekend (in no particular order, or in any order of preference). If you're wondering about inclusions, see the criteria I listed yesterday.

• River - Joni Mitchell (Blue album)
• Clouds - Joni Mitchell (orchestral version)
• Amelia - Joni Mitchell (orchestral version)
• One - U2
• Taxi - Harry Chapin
• How Soon Is Now - The Smiths* (video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U5HpeA_WSo)
• Handbags and Gladrags - Rod Stewart
• Dancing Barefoot - Patti Smith
• Creep - Radiohead
• Gethsemane - Richard Thompson
• I Still Dream - Richard Thompson
• Blood And Roses - Smithereens
• John Barleycorn - Traffic
• Somewhere in America There's a Street Named After My Dad - Was Not Was
• All Of This And Nothing - Psychedelic Furs
• Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

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Favorite moody/melancholy albums from my past:

Wave - Patti Smith

Low - David Bowie/Brian Eno

Joshua Tree - U2

Shoot Out the Lights - Richard and Linda Thompson

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And the exhilarating/depressing video I mentioned yesterday? Johnny Cash performing "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails. It's a stunning marriage of music and imagery, and particularly poignant since Cash knows he's near the end of his life when he made it. It's heart-wrenching to hear him sing about his "empire of dirt" since he's sitting in his house amid memories and accolades. But it's also exhilarating, for me, because it offers a summary of a creative life that few people get to leave behind. And I'm not even, usually, a Johnny Cash fan.

It's on YouTube now at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go - but if it's not there in the future, you should be able to find it by googling ("Johnny Cash" and hurt video).

[I found this on my own, but it's also listed near the top of Spike TV's 11 most depressing songs of all time.]

Perhaps a better word for it is "melancholy"

In my last post I asked the question: "What is the most depressing song ever?" The post title itself reveals my problem with writing late at night. My use of language diminishes as the evening goes on, leaving me with only a limited number of adjectives to call upon.

I think the more appropriate word for what I am looking for is "melancholy"—not depressing or, for that matter, morose or morbid. In other words, I like to listen to songs that let me experience a temporary gloominess, not songs that make me want to go stick my head in the oven.

But my criteria are more specific than that. These are some of the things I've ruled out in compiling my current playlist:

• Songs from the lovesick, unless the experience shared in the song is recognizable, and speaks of more than mere narcissistic longing—U2's "One" meets this criteria because the "we" in the song seems universal and not just limited to one couple/one frustrated man.

• Songs that speak of personal tragedy yet are more cathartic for the singer than evocative for the listener, e.g., "Mother" by John Lennon, listed on another web page that polled readers about their favorite depressing music.

• Songs with gloomy lyrics but happy music. On that same web page, people voted for "Luka" by Suzanne Vega. Yes, the subject matter of child abuse is depressing, but the music itself is a little too upbeat for my purposes. Likewise, the subject matter of "Layla" is a little depressing, but the music rocks (and it really could be categorized as a lovesick song).

• Songs that create bitterness or anger, no matter how beautiful the melody or poignant the lyrics—I can't include Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" because I find it too upsetting.

• Songs that are so depressing they cause me despondency and despair, e.g., "Gloomy Sunday."

• Songs that are schmaltzy or cloyingly sentimental. In this category, I'd put Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally," which surprisingly is listed among some people's favorite depressing songs on other web sites. Yet, I'd include Harry Chapin's "Taxi," perhaps because I've always had a certain fondness for Harry Chapin, having seen him live and upclose when I was in college, and also because I like the cello in the song even if the recorded song's orchestration veers towards the overly sentimental.

But the other reason that "Taxi" makes the cut is that I've realized, in compiling my playlist, that one of my favorite themes (currently, and ongoing) is the dashing of the wide-eyed hopes of youth. Is there anything more melancholy than this? Richard Thompson's "Gethsemane" is a perfect example of this, as well as Joni Mitchell's middle-aged rendition of "Clouds."

Perhaps the overall theme here (which includes this optimism-dashing) is the unfairness of life—which, for my listening comfort, cannot include songs about brutality, hatred or helplessness.

Of course, your criteria may be different. Maybe you're without a mate and loneliness is the more compelling theme for you. Or you're young and you don't want to hear anyone sing about the dashing of dreams because you're optimistic it won't happen to you.

But if you, too, long for songs of middle-aged and middle-class malaise, as well as songs that sound deliciously gloomy, tune in tomorrow for my current (short) playlist, as well as a list of sad albums I remember fondly from my own youth, and the most depressing/exhilarating music video I've ever seen.

What is the most depressing song ever?

I am a big fan of depressing music, especially on long winter nights. While other people might crave Christmas music come early December, I long for sad songs.

Why? Maybe because feeling depressed in a concentrated way, for three or four minutes, makes me feel better afterwards. It's not catharsis, exactly, more like a lifting of spirits similar to taking a painful and accidental weight off one's foot or pouring alcohol into a cut and then washing it off.

I listen to depressing music until the days start to get noticeably longer, usually around the end of February. Right now, my two favorite depressing songs are "Gethsemane" by Richard Thompson and "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell (sung not by the golden young woman who wrote the song, but the world-weary, too-many-cigarettes-throated singer she destined herself to become).

Sure, there are probably bleaker songs, but bleak isn't the same thing as depressing. [For example, see the lyrics to "End of the Rainbow" by Richard Thompson, or listen to it on YouTube.] There's no hope at the end of bleak, just more bleakness.

I'd like to extend my current playlist beyond these two songs, so let me know what your favorite depressing music is.

[Note: To view my current list of depressing songs, as well as my vote for the most depressing video ever, see the post: Sad songs, angsty albums, a twilight tune and an antidote of absurdity; to view my criteria for depressing songs, see the next post: Perhaps a better word for it is "melancholy".]

(FYI, Joni Mitchell doesn't start singing in this video until 44 seconds in).