So the thread idea for this came from one of the times last week when I went to the gym at 3am to BS with my friend Dylan. In Planet Fitness, you can request songs to play over the radio. We decided to have a sad song emo off which is funny for the people that workout without headphones and had to endure our sad songs being played. They were supposed to be sad emo songs but I quickly realized they were mostly just sad alt rock songs.
In this thread I want sad songs from all genres it doesnt matter. Come up with your saddest song recommendations and post them.
You want emo? I'll give you emo.
Dick Curless - Bury the Bottle with Me
This might be more despair than sadness:
Love it, though!
This is one where I prefer the cover to the original. It's a song by Hank Williams, but he originally recorded it in a fairly upbeat style which baffles me considering the lyrical content. The Residents version conveys the sadness in the lyrics far better...
The Residents - Six More Miles (To the Graveyard)
When the title includes the word
dirge , that's a clue that you're in for a sombre song:-
In this version, the bottom line, "
...and Christ receive thy soul" is delivered as bare, bleak and gloomy as you can get.
Willie Nelson - Blue eyes crying in the rain
The best/worst post-breakup song, depending on what way you look at it.
Red House Painters - Katy Song
I mean, the chords are smooth but the overall sentiment is quite heavy.
y'all better cry to this because I went out of my way to upload it to youtube, wasn't on there yet
Since I mentioned Loudon Wainwright III someplace else, here's his lovely bummer of a song Motel Blues. This is a re-recorded version, though the original is also good - a bit more nasal and desperate.
Some fan made vid, but ah well.
Léo Ferré - "Avec le temps" (with EN subtitles)
Gotta love Jerry Reed. He's known for his comedy and while this song is sad... It's also pretty funny and awesome.
Listen to the reveal as the orchestra swells and tell me you held in the tears!
I don't know if this is really sad.
Kronos Quartet - Lux Aeterna
^ Good call, Meatwad!
I have that Kronos track on my computer: tbh, I don't play it very often, even though it's really good, especially after it picks up at 1:30 mins in.
Quote from: DJChameleon on Jan 14, 2024, 11:27 AMIn this thread I want sad songs from all genres it doesnt matter. Come up with your saddest song recommendations and post them.
I'm going to take DJ at his word because this song is about grief in a long ago era:-
Robert W Service was an ambulance driver during the First World War, and so earns the right to compose war poetry - although "poetry" is not what he, or others, called it:-
QuoteService did not call his work poetry. "Verse, not poetry, is what I was after ... something the man in the street would take notice of and the sweet old lady would paste in her album; something the schoolboy would spout and the fellow in the pub would quote. Yet I never wrote to please anyone but myself; it just happened. I belonged to the simple folks whom I liked to please."[
If you are intrigued to learn more about this guy who was combination man of action + writer, you could start here at wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Service
You probably know this one; a sad song about a guy going to see his girlfriend's dead body. Who doesn't love Cab.
And Nina Simone's version of Strange Fruit is haunting.
This Elliott Smith tune needs to be here
Quote from: DJChameleon on May 10, 2024, 03:34 AM
This Elliott Smith tune needs to be here
^ I'm not very familiar with Elliott Smith's songs, so thanks for posting that one, DJ.
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Lots of good songs in this thread, of which I personally consider
Strange Fruit to be exceptional: it's so powerful that I don't really play it for entertainment, but rather put it on occassionally but only when I am ready to give it the attention that it deserves.
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Given all the songs here, it's hard to imagine that at one time (blues apart) the topic of feeling sorry for yourself was something of a rarity in music. It was ok to be broken-hearted over a specific lost love, but feeling down in a general way was rather under-reported, or perhaps (according to J Lennon) under-observed. He famously had to point out to fans that the cheerful-sounding smash hit
Help was actually a song about him feeling terrible.
Here are a couple of examples of songs about not finding love, a topic I could relate to as a teenager:-
The chronology:
Help (1965),
A Single Girl (1966),
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)
Who does self-pity best? I'm going with Neil Young, not for this song, but for his
After The Goldrush and
On The Beach albums
One of the saddest songs I know. Used to do a college radio show with my buddy. I played this and he goes: "Why the hell are we putting this on the airwaves? Listening to this makes me wanna hang myself." :laughing:
Strange Fruit is always haunting to me when I listen to it. It makes me visualize everything she's singing about.
Quote from: Lisnaholic on May 10, 2024, 04:45 PMLots of good songs in this thread, of which I personally consider Strange Fruit to be exceptional: it's so powerful that I don't really play it for entertainment, but rather put it on occassionally but only when I am ready to give it the attention that it deserves.
Yes, I feel the same. I typically don't put it on, but I've listened to a lot of Nina Simone and especially Billie Holiday over the years so the algorithms might play one of their versions if the streaming service is in radio mode.
That Neil Young song is lovely 🙂
I may have posted this earlier, but not in this thread, I think. It's Squirrel Nut Zipper's song where Katharine Whalen sings about her depression called My Drag.
The number 1 sad band for me is Pink Floyd. Everybody knows how deliciously melancholic they can be on songs like Hey You, Breathe or The Great Gig in the Sky.
Predictably, Dogs is a favourite bummer.
Just another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer 🎶