Top Sad Songs

[kompressaur]

As per usual we can let this run in gc for a while then move it over to music forum if we want to continue the discussion. Here's some fellas top 25 and i'll add mine as the day goes on. Just up Hopefully that will be me on the 9-5 for a while.

What do Pink Floyd, Bette Midler and Metallica have in common? They've all written horribly depressing tunes, according to Tom Reynolds, author of I Hate Myself and Want to Die. He offers his top 25 miserable tracks....


25. Sam Stone John Prine (1972)
A grim song about a strung-out former soldier that remains a favourite of audiences who prefer their Vietnam vets to be total losers. Over finger-picked guitar, Prine sings about Sam Stone, a drug-addicted veteran who injects morphine and neglects his impoverished family before overdosing in a decrepit room "that smelled like death". Sam Stone is basically a composite for Hollywood's ideal Vietnam veteran: an hallucinating psycho with a Fu Manchu moustache who goes barking mad every time a Doors song comes on the radio.

24. My Immortal Evanescence (2002)
A whimpering post-breakup tune in which lead singer Amy Lee pitifully mourns the end of a relationship over a piano accompaniment that sounds like Pachelbel after the Prozac wore off. My Immortal closely follows the "quantum tragedy paradigm": the shorter the time two people spent together as a couple, the more overwrought the song is that describes their break-up. Judging by the lorry-load of anguish Lee spews out, she split from someone she dated for about an hour (if her lyrics are to be believed, the guy was a real freak, too).

23. You don't bring me flowers Neil Diamond & Barbra Streisand (1978)
Neil and Babs phoned in this turgid song with all the energy of a ping-pong match played in zero gravity. Though performed as a duet, Streisand should have recorded it alone, since the lyrics are clearly from a woman's point of view; no self-respecting guy ever complains about not getting flowers or hearing any love songs. You Don't Bring Me Flowers is the most egregious example of middle-of-the-road music, so named because if you drive in the middle of the road, you'll eventually die in a head-on collision.

22. The River Bruce Springsteen (1980)
The title cut from Springsteen's fifth album, The River is the blue-collar hero's 473rd song about how bad blue-collar life is, featuring yet another unemployed dope from New Jersey hitched to an unhappy girl named Mary (every girl in Springsteen's songs is called Mary). As teenagers, the couple went "down to the river" where they swam, frolicked, had sex, got pregnant and ruined their lives. The River makes one wish Springsteen would write a song about getting plastered on Cristal and driving a Bentley into a swimming pool.

21. Tell Laura I love her Ray Peterson (1960)
Tell Laura was the first of the infamous teenage car-crash songs of the early 1960s, where adolescents get incinerated in fiery auto wrecks due to their altruism and stunning lack of common sense. A love-struck teenager named Tommy impulsively enters a stock car race so he can buy a wedding ring for his girl Laura with the prize money. One problem: he knows nothing about racing and flips his car which bursts into flames. As he's pulled from the wreckage coughing carbon, Tommy's dying words of "Tell Laura I love her" permeate the song's weepy chorus. It was covered in the UK by Welsh singer Ricky Valance the same year and topped the charts.

20. All By Myself Celine Dion (1996)
The Canadian superstar's bombastic cover of Eric Carmen's 1970s hit about loneliness is the audio equivalent of the fire-bombing of Dresden. Celine's vocal histrionics surpass the blood-soaked psychic fury which slaughters the prom-goers in the movie Carrie. Had Ms Dion been around during D-Day, the Allies could have dropped her off at Omaha Beach with a PA system and have her sing All By Myself until the German infantry bayoneted themselves.

19. Woman's Prison Loretta Lynn (2004)
Despite her extensive catalogue of tears-in-your-beer country songs, the legendary Loretta Lynn outdoes herself with this mind-blowing murder tune which puts her on death row for blowing away her cheatin' husband. Produced by White Stripes' Jack White (who knows jack about country music), the song climaxes with Loretta being strapped into the electric chair to await the juice. As the banging music drops down to a humming organ, she sings Amazing Grace to herself before getting fried to a crisp. Unsettling and bizarre, Women's Prison sounds like a roots rock band jamming with their death-obsessed grandmother.

18. Prayers for Rain The Cure (1989)
The following are some of the words found in the lyrics to Prayers for Rain: shatter, dull, kill, stifle, infectious, hopelessness, rain, suffocate, dirt, nowhere, desolate, drab, killing, fracture, stale, strangle, entangle, deteriorate, drearily, tired. Drop in a few pronouns and conjunctions and you have the entire song. Music-wise, the band lumbers back and forth between two menacing chords like Frankenstein's monster deciding which villager to pummel, while Robert Smith's neurotic vocals sound like he just got punched in the stomach after eating a three-course meal.

17. The Freshmen The Verve Pipe (1997)
Not to be confused with the Verve, the American faux grunge band the Verve Pipe hit no 1 in the US with this tragic number about two young men dealing with the suicide of a girl they both dated and later dumped. Though it offers some fine musical dynamics, the song alienates the listener with its oft-repeated chorus of "I can't be held responsible." Note singer Brian Vander Ark's vocal similarity to Kurt Cobain.

16. The Rose Bette Midler (1980)
The Divine Miss M's biggest and most manipulative hit was first heard over the final scene in the movie The Rose where Midler's rock-star character drops dead in front of a live audience. The Rose has a disturbing air of Songwriting 101 around it, with a rudimentary melody right out of an instruction book. The lyrics sound like they were borrowed from a 13-year-old girl's diary, offering up awkward metaphors like how love is a river that "drowns the tender reed". Treacly and miserable.

15. Maggie's Dream Don Williams (1984)
Nashville may have a rich heritage of depressing music but this hemlock-gulping country weeper will force listeners to throw themselves into a vat of possum poo. Over a soporific music track, Williams sings about Maggie, a waitress who's spent 30 years working at a diner and never had anyone to go home to. She plays the saddest songs on the diner's jukebox while lamenting how she's destined to die alone. It doesn't help that Maggie is the size of a whale. We're never told this but, hey, waitress, truck stop, platters of fried food? You work it out.

14. Comfortably Numb Pink Floyd (1979)
This classic rock dirge appears on Pink Floyd's notorious magnum opus The Wall, the one album you can never listen to in its entirety unless you own a bong the size of a mop. In Comfortably Numb, bassist/grump Roger Waters plays the unctuous doctor who medicates tortured rock star Pink voiced by guitarist/better singer David Gilmour. Disturbing references to pricking needles and hallucinatory ships abound, with Waters singing like a demented Peter Lorre. A great pile-driver guitar solo by Gilmour at the end prevents us from wanting to bury ourselves alive.

13. Brick Ben Folds Five (1997)
(NB: Many listeners, including me, first assumed Brick was about a relationship ending. We discovered later that it's about a couple getting an abortion. The following is based on the first scenario. Therefore it's all wrong.) A gloomy piano-and-voice song about a couple breaking up (wrong), Brick tells of a guy who picks up his girlfriend, bitches, takes her someplace, bitches, waits for her, bitches, then brings her back home, referring to her as a "brick" (this is true). We never learn what's transpired in between (this is wrong). All that's certain is the couple wants to split up (this is wrong). Brick offers the same pleasure that comes with dropping one on your foot (this is really true).

12. Ruby, Don't take your love to town Kenny Rogers and the First Edition (1969)
Upbeat music does nothing to obscure the creepiness of this early Kenny Rogers song. Ruby is about a paralysed man who sits at home every night while his trampy wife Ruby dolls herself up before heading out to pick up any Billy Bob, Wyatt, or Bubba she can find. The man finally threatens to get his gun and shoot her but he can't move to retrieve it. Instead, he begs Ruby: "For God's sake, turn around." A skipping drum fades off, leaving the poor sap stranded in his wheelchair listening to her car drive off. Even Kenny Rogers doesn't sing it anymore.

11. One Metallica (1988)
The heavy metal band raised the depression bar dramatically when it based its gruesome song One on the world's most depressing novel, Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun; it makes Foxe's Book of Martyrs read like Helen Fielding. A frenzied metal jam underpins the screaming interior monologue of a blind, deaf and dismembered war veteran, similar to the narrator of the 1939 book. Though falsely accused of promoting devil worship in their music, Metallica would have been better off borrowing from some demonic tome on goat slaughtering rather than Trumbo's novel.

10. People Who Died The Jim Carroll Band (1980)
While most punk music sounds like screaming winos crammed inside a runaway shopping cart, this violent death anthem goes way beyond the usual mohawk bellowings. Over a bed of crystal meth rockabilly, writer/former junkie Jim Carroll speed-rants his way through the factual obituaries of 13 friends and associates who "died, died!" in various horrific ways, including three who were thrown off buildings and one who killed himself on his wedding night by drinking drain cleaner. People Who Died remains a cult favourite of budding nihilists who sigh wistfully whenever one of their piercings becomes infected.

9. Sister Morphine Marianne Faithfull (1979)
Though not as well known as the Rolling Stones' earlier version she helped write, Marianne Faithfull's 1979 cover version of the morbid Sister Morphine is infinitely more debilitating, if only because of the craggy quality of her voice. She croaks about lying in a hospital bed while waiting for Sister Morphine to appear, recalling ambulance sirens, faceless doctors, and red sheets. Curiously, Faithfull suffered most of the pitfalls her lyrics warn against in the years after she wrote them.

8. Hurt Nine Inch Nails (1994)
Marvellously covered in 2002 by Johnny Cash, the original version of Hurt closes out Nine Inch Nails's The Downward Spiral, the perfect album to crank while you're tossing live hamsters into a blender. Featuring strident hisses, tortured singing, and mentally defective guitars, the six-minute long Hurt is a woe-is-me addiction song overloaded with excessive details; after listening to it, you need a penicillin shot. Cash's superior acoustic remake of Hurt, however, does away with the compressor noises and goes straight to the song's wounded heart.

7. Strange Fruit Billie Holiday (1939)
Strange indeed and insufferable, too. This notorious anti-lynching song unfortunately helped cement Billie Holiday's reputation as a wounded torch singer, gardenia optional. Musically tedious, Strange Fruit is outfitted with grotesque lyrics ("bulging eyes", "twisted mouth", "burning flesh") which exploit the horrors of lynching more than they condemn it. Holiday began her career as a superb interpreter of swinging pop songs but eventually succumbed to the melodramatics of songs like this. While some Holiday acolytes feel that no vocalists are worthy enough to cover the song, it's really the other way round. It's impossible for anyone to sing Strange Fruit without sounding like an agitprop fanatic.

6. DOA Bloodrock (1971)
An ode to the ephemeral joy that comes from being a corpse who perished in a plane crash, the sick DOA describes the searing pain in the victim's body, his blood oozing out of him while his mangled girlfriend lies nearby. A see-sawing organ resembling an ambulance siren slogs its way through the entire track. The song became a minor hit for Bloodrock, leading to the song's most depressing aspect: being forced to play it over and over again. Weary of waking up screaming at night, the band refused audience requests to perform it during their concerts, causing mass walkouts. The group soon broke up.

5. Seasons in the Sun Terry Jacks (1974)
This mawkish translation of the Jacques Brel song Le Moribond hit no 1 and tormented a generation of radio listeners with its mortal sappiness and earworm chorus ("we had joy, we had fun ... "). Seasons in the Sun is about a dying man bidding farewell to a close friend, his father, and some girl named Michelle. Featuring four superfluous key changes, the song has not lost its power to fold and mutilate listeners.

4. Total Eclipse of the Heart Bonnie Tyler (1984)
The Welsh singer's collaboration with Meat Loaf producer Jim Steinman still vanquishes all those who turn around to gaze into its bright eyes. Under Steinman's direction, Tyler rasps her way through a million permutations of the phrase "every now and then, I get a little bit [insert neurosis here]" before losing it during the song's demented chorus. Clocking in at over seven minutes, Total Eclipse is Wagner's Ring Cycle without the funny hats; the equivalent of an opera company pelting you with copies of Anne Rice novels. You're completely drained when it's over and desperately in need of a shower to rinse off the raven droppings.

3. Honey Bobby Goldsboro (1968)
The world's wordiest dead wife song, Honey is jammed full of blooming flowers, puffy clouds, singing robins, planted trees, and a puppy, all of which just make you want to swallow a hand grenade. The narrator mourns Honey, his deceased spouse, while condescendingly describing her as kinda dumb and kinda smart. If you feel inclined to listen to Honey, please drink heavily and then bale out after Honey dents the car. Otherwise, you'll get hit with angels carrying Honey away and clouds crying on flower beds. You won't make it out with your senses intact. It is that bad.

2. The Shortest Story Harry Chapin (1976)
The most misguided song ever written, the ghastly The Shortest Story features the late songwriter/activist Harry Chapin adopting the persona of an African baby who dies of malnutrition. From the infant's viewpoint, we hear about his hunger pangs, weeping siblings, and how his mother's shrivelled breast cannot produce milk. He finally expires while sickly birds "crawl across the sky". The song ends with the portentous clang of a tubular bell, the banshee of musical instruments. Though it was meant to instill awareness about world hunger, The Shortest Story is like 50 tons of nuclear waste dumped in the middle of a park to show how bad it is to drop litter.

1. The Christmas Shoes Newsong (2000)
Never heard of it? Well, you should. This serotonin-draining Yuletide song, based on an apocryphal story passed around the internet, hit no 1 on the adult contemporary charts in the US while spawning a best- selling novella and a top-rated TV movie. It tells of a disgruntled holiday shopper who encounters a lone dishevelled little boy trying to buy a pair of shoes for his dying mother. The lad doesn't have enough money and pleads with the man to help so mummy can look good when she "meets Jesus tonight". The man's Grinch facade melts and he chips in some cash. The little boy runs out of the store by himself while the guy thanks God for reminding him about the true spirit of Christmas. Following this logic, then, Christmas is about afflicting a boy's mother with a terminal disease so a self-absorbed moron can feel good about giving a few quid to an unaccompanied seven-year-old. The Christmas Shoes is smug, saccharine and more depressing than the Cure's entire career. And because it's Christmas-themed and we have to hear it year after year in the US, it gets my vote as the most depressing song ever. Download at your own peril.


nice stuff from that fella

[kompressaur]

Crosby Still & Nash - 4+20
http://a425.v8384d.c8384.g.vm.akamai...81_1_16_05.asf

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
4+20
FOUR AND TWENTY YEARS AGO I COME INTO THIS LIFE
THE SON OF A WOMAN AND A MAN WHO LIVED IN STRIFE
HE WAS TIRED OF BEIN' POOR
AND HE WASN'T INTO SELLIN' DOOR TO DOOR
AND HE WORKED LIKE THE DEVIL TO BE MORE
A DIFFERENT KIND OF POVERTY NOW UPSETS ME SO
NIGHT AFTER SLEEPLESS NIGHT I WALK THE FLOOR AND WANT TO KNOW
WHY AM I SO ALONE?
WHERE IS MY WOMAN?
CAN I BRING HER HOME?
HAVE I DRIVEN HER AWAY?
IS SHE GONE?
MORNIN' COMES THE SUNRISE AND I'M DRIVEN TO MY BED
I SEE THAT IT IS EMPTY AND THERE'S DEVILS IN MY HEAD
I, EMBRACE THE MANY COLORED BEAST
I GROW WEARY OF THE TORMENT, CAN THERE BE NO PEACE?
AND I FIND MYSELF JUST WISHIN' THAT MY LIFE WOULD SIMPLY
DECEASE

[kompressaur]

25. Sam Stone John Prine (1972)
http://a425.v8384d.c8384.g.vm.akamai...856_1_4_05.asf

I actually like John Prine as ive been introduced to him lately by a pal. This is nice enough. I know Vietnam must be important to the Americans as they keep talking about it. Suppose it affected a generation.

24. My Immortal Evanescence (2002)

http://a425.v8384d.c8384.g.vm.akamai...06_1_10_05.asf

A bit winey to begin. I bet its gonna get all 'hard' sounding and shes gonna start calling all men bastards. Aye i know this song. Can i tyurn it off please?

23. You don't bring me flowers Neil Diamond & Barbra Streisand (1978)
http://a425.v8384d.c8384.g.vm.akamai...889_2_9_05.asf

This song makes me sad. It was my mum and dads song and it reminds me of them sitting in opposite end of the sofa facing away from each other full of the drink and both contemplating divorce for years. My mum would tease my dad with the song too as i think he didnt bring her flowers anymore. I think he stopped bringing her wages too some weeks.

22. The River Bruce Springsteen (1980)
http://a425.v8384d.c8384.g.vm.akamai...46_1_12_05.asf

I aint a Springsteen fan but i quite like this one. Wasnt it from a 'Black' album he brought out? I suppose the song is a bit formulated but its pleasant enough. Reminds me of lots of other songs.

21. Tell Laura I love her Ray Peterson (1960)
I always found this sad as i actually used to see a girl called Laura when i was about 13/14. She was beautiful with the bluest eyes youve ever seen. For a year we tried to get it on but i was either going with someone or she was. It was a standing joke at school between everyone about me and Laura not getting together. I used to spend my times alone singing that song She married a tv producer and lives in Hollywood now. Well she did the last i heard 10 years ago.

I'll add the rest later.

[taval]

I liked Total Eclipse of the Heart in fact I'm gonna get it now from Winmx.
I think the fella is a bit harsh in his comments though albeit amusing!

[slick]

Billy dont be a Hero and Terry Jack's 'seasons in the sun'

Always used to give me goose bumps as a kid.

oh and 2 little boys by Rolf Harris, always surprised me why Jacko never did a cover version.

[taval]

lol

[kompressaur]

Aye Terry Jacks Seasons was always a good sad un. Its th lines

"...i was the black sheep of the family"

"goodbye papa its hard to die, when all the birds are singing in the sky'

Im takling notes for our Eurovision song contest entry.

Try Limewire or Ares Nick for song downloads these days if you want an easy p2p with no messing. Direct Connect if you want the best of files though. Mention in Tech forumks if you want any info. Try a search first though as there should be some links

[fasteddy]

' Honey' by Bobby Goldsboro..I remember buying my copy and sitting on the bus back home from school , couldn't wait to play it...sad little fuckwad that i was...

How about 'Nobody's Child' Alexander Brothers...absolute classic...tell you this..true as well...when I was about 3 or 4 yrs old I loved this song. My gran ( she's with the angels now..sniff) told me that when I visited her house I'd run past her, open up the old TV/Radio/Record player combo she had, slap on ths track and then sit, listen and cry..I was some sort of masochist for it....

Still, even today just thinking about it makes me scream./." Choose the blind kid, you snotty nosed bastards!!..eh? what's wrong with him?...fucking child-adopting-lazy-can't be bothered having one myself-shite bags!!...take him...they'll put him down next week if nobody takes him...it's just like the Dog and cat home...same system!!...Pick him for Chrisssakes!!"

Music, eh? Fair has an affect on you.

[Winrew]

Seasons in the sun .

That was the first 7" single i ever bought.
We had joy we had fun ......didnt it used to be a football chant as well ?

[kompressaur]

...but the joy did not last as the b'stard ran too fast.

Something like that Winrew. It depresses me to this day when kids want Westlife's version on a cd Blink182(??) done a not bad punked up version of it.

I remember Honey Eddy but not that one by the Aexander Brothers but ill have a listen at it later when im dloading.

Honey always reminds me of another song errrr....thingmyjig..errrr...you talk like marlene a detrich and you dum da dee dum dara dum.. ...where do you go to my lovely. when your alone in your bed...etc etc

I always find Piano Man a bit sad even though its quite a happy song. Saddest song i know and i aint even sure its a sad song but makes me sad is Whichita Lineman by Glen Campbell. Think its the line 'and i need you more than want you...and i want you for all time;. Makes me sad.

Radiohead's Let Down makes me cry too

[Winrew]

One of the saddest songs for me is " Superman " By a group called Five for Fighting.

Heres the lyrics.....

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me

I'm more than a bird...I'm more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It's not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I'll never see

It may sound absurd...but don't be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed...but won't you concede
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It's not easy to be me

Up, up and away...away from me
It's all right...You can all sleep sound tonight
I'm not crazy...or anything...

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
Men weren't meant to ride
With clouds between their knees

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me

It's not easy to be me.

Well recommend downloading it .....

[kompressaur]

I'll put a link to it when i put up my other song on the RW thread in about 20mins Winrew.

I thought you meant Oh Superman by musician and proffesional oddball Laurie Anderson. Actually looiking back on it that depressed me a bit too

[madaxeman]

Hip young band the Killers do Ruby(not as well as kenny did) I wonder if they'll do it at T in the Park

[kompressaur]

Is Ruby as sad song?

[GaNgStA kEeKs]

Luther Vandross - Dance with my father

Song he made once his father had died - brought a tear to my eye listening to it.

I have some great rap "ballads" but i dont think anyone would be interested