Category: Music

Sad songs say so much

 

I’m causing a mild sensation
With this new occupation
I’m permanently glued
To this extraordinary mood so now move over
Let me take over
With my melancholy blues
–Queen/Melancholy Blues

 

I was singing along with the iPod on my way home from work (as usual) and decided something: I really like singing along to sad songs. I really like sad songs in general. When I’m happy, they make me even happier. Being happier is always gooder, right? When I’m sad they make me sadder. Nothing cheers me up like a good sing-a-long mope during my commute home from work. It’s very cathartic. Yes, people do look at me funny. No, I don’t give a shit.

On the commute to work, I also sing  but I tend to focus on the more upbeat tunes. No one wants to mope at work. That is clearly untrue–let’s just say that I don’t want to mope at work. I prefer veiled hostility to moping.

A really clever girl would put a list of people here and let you all  play pin the sad song to the person. A really mean clever girl. I prefer to be more passive-aggressively mean, but by all means do feel free to out yourself as the reason I love any particular song in the comments.

 

Everybody Hurts — sad REM. Obviously, I sing this one on my commute home when I am stuck in traffic. So hold on. Also a great video.

Almost Blue— sad Elvis. Being sad in love is the saddest sort of sad. Elvis is the master of the super-literate sad song. Also the creepy sad song. Just listen to  I Want You for some proof.

No Birds Today— sad Cowboy Junkies. Desolation and isolation are a great musical combination.

Am I Blue —sad Bette. Old school melancholy.

Melancholy Blues and Love Of My Life–sad Queen. No one does sad like Freddie. I miss him.

Atlantic City— sad Bruce sings about sad America and the losers therein. Everything dies, babe, and that’s a fact.

Ne Me Quitte Pas— sad,  pitiful, forlorn Jacques Brel. This would probably win the contest for Saddest Lyric Ever. At one point he offers to be the shadow of her shadow, the shadow of her hand, the shadow of her dog if she will just not leave him. If you’ve ever had someone not love you back, this is your song. The linked video has a handy translation for the non-francophones.

Creep— sad Radiohead. I was far too old to be a Loser Teen when this came out, but if I had been this would totally have been my anthem. I have been known to play this several times in a row. Huh. Maybe I am a loser teen…

Too Drunk To Fuck— OK. This isn’t sad. It’s funny. Well, not if it happens to YOU. If it happens to you, it’s sad. I could out some guys here, but I won’t.

The Crane Wife 1, 2 and 3 –sad Decemberists. This grouping of songs is one of my favorite sad song cycles of the last 10 years. It’s about 15 minutes of music based on a Japanese folk tale, and it’s about the sadness of loving someone to death because you don’t understand them.

Boys of Summer –sad Don Henley singing “I see you walking real slow and smiling at everyone” Kills me. KILLS me. And I don’t even like Don Henley. Definitely reminds me of someone in particular.

Breakeven—sad the Script. They’re right–when a heart breaks, it doesn’t break even at all.

Stubborn Love—sad Lumineers. The sadness of being in love with someone who is just going to hurt you, lie to you, and probably ruin your life. And you love them anyway.

 

OK–pick a song and tell us all why you are the reason it makes me sad!!!

I’m not going to get any takers on that, am I?

It doesn’t have to be true, you know.

Just make some shit up. That’s what I do.

 

 

And all I ever meant to do was to keep you

And under the boughs unbowed
All clothed in a snowy shroud
She had no heart so hardened
All under the boughs unbowed

Each feather it fell from skin
Till threadbare while she grew thin

–the Decemberists/the Crane Wife 3

 

Sound the keening bell
To see it’s painted red
Soft as fontanel
The feathers in the thread
And all I ever meant to do was to keep you

–the Decemberists/the Crane Wife 1 and 2

 

Sometimes you love someone and end up hurting them without meaning any harm. Maybe there is something fundamental about them you didn’t understand,  Maybe you didn’t understand what the cost would be to them or to yourself for letting something continue.

 

I only wanted to…

I just meant to….

All I wanted was to…

 

Followed with the almost inevitable

I never meant to…

 

Keep you. Not lose you. Stay with you. Be near you. Love you.

Love you.

Not

Hurt you. Kill you. Break your heart.

 

In an English class, about a million years ago, a teacher once told us that what makes a merely  sad story tragic is  inevitability.  Romeo and Juliet have to die. There’s no way around it.

I’m not sure that’s true.

Is it the inevitability that makes it tragic, or the heartbreak?

Certainly a certain amount of heartbreak is inevitable if you have a heart that feels anything at all.

 

Isn’t it?

Inevitable.

 

People come together and offer each other their gifts, and their flaws.

We don’t always knows what the gifts are really worth, or how much the flaws draw from us.

Sometimes, we find out and it’s too late.

 

 

 

 

How were my eyes so blinded?
Each feather it fell from skin

And I will hang my head low.

–the Decemberists/the Crane Wife 3

Losing my religion

I haven’t said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing I thought that I heard you sing

I think, I thought, I saw you try

But that was just a dream

–REM/Losing My Religion

 

I lost my religion gradually while I was a teenager.

As a child, I was quite religious. Or maybe I just really enjoyed singing. I’ve never been completely sure, but singing definitely kept me in a religious environment long after I’d otherwise lost all interest in organized religion.

 

The first blow to my life as a Believer was in Vacation Bible School when I was 11 or so. We were having a discussion about choosing between right and wrong, and how we had the ability to choose because God had given us the gift of free will. We could choose to do either right or wrong because God loved us so much he allowed us to choose. That confused me a bit. I’d been taught that God was both omniscient and omnipotent, so I didn’t understand how letting us choose when he must KNOW we were going to screw up could possibly be a loving thing to do. The teacher attempted to explain by explaining that God wanted us to freely choose to do the right things.  When I asked “but, you said he knows everything we are going to do as part of his plan for us! It seems kind of mean of Him to let us choose if he already knows we’re going to fail. Why let us choose? What doesn’t he just make us want to only do the right things?”

 

That was not well received.

 

I wasn’t trying to be argumentative (really!) but the woman teaching the class thought that I was questioning the will of God, and didn’t appreciate my curiosity one little bit.  I persisted (nicely! really!) in my questions and was asked to leave. Kicked out of Bible school. I was mortified. I also assumed that I was completely in the wrong.

 

That was the first crack in my religious armor.

 

The hole in my armor got bigger when Elton John came out. What does that have to do with religion? To me, as it turned out, it had everything to do with religion.

In one of my churches, when I was 9 or 10, someone had overheard me singing an Elton John song and commented that I probably shouldn’t listen to him because he’s a homosexual and the Bible says that’s wrong. I don’t think I knew what homosexual meant, but assured him that if Elton turned out to be a homosexual I would have to stop listening to him if the Bible said so.

A few years later, in  1976, when I was 12 or 13, Elton came out as bisexual in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. By that time I had a better understanding of what homosexual meant, and also knew that I was not about to quit listening to my favorite performer because a book said some of the things he did were morally wrong.

 

Free will, right?

 

I chose music.

 

God clearly saw that one coming.

 

By that time, I’d already more or less stopped going to church. I attended a youth group through much of High School just because it involved very little preaching and a whole lot of singing.  As I got older, my religious beliefs fell away more and more.  For a while I tried to keep up a semblance of religious belief. First I would identify as an agnostic, but eventually had to admit that I simply did not believe in any kind of God at all any more.

 

I still don’t.

 

But I still love Elton John.

 

Music is one of the things I will always believe in.

 

 

 

 

Here is what Elton (via Bernie’s lyrics) has to say about criticism in the song “All the Nasties.”

 

 

 

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