Thursday, February 11, 2010

Sad Songs

I've been playing Bob Dylan's "North Country Blues" for the last week or so. It's relentlessly melancholy. Two chords and despair.

It got me thinking about the saddest songs I know. Here's my very short list.

(Okay, I was going to link to songza here, but it looks like they grew discontent with their niche in the Internet and are trying to be Pandora and/or Grooveshark. Grooveshark's embedded songs take too long to load. So . . . the links go to YouTube.)

"North Country Blues" by Bob Dylan
"The Snowy Downs" by The Roe Family Singers (sorry, I couldn't find this one online)
"Last Kiss" by Pearl Jam et al.
"Top of the World" by the Dixie Chicks

These are different kinds of sad song. Some are sentimental, some are horrific, some are just bleak.

What's the saddest song you know?

2 comments:

Adam said...

what about Sufjan's "John Wayne Gacy"?

Unknown said...

Not the saddest song, but some of the saddest lyrics:
She lost her husband after sixty years,
and as he slipped away she still had things to say.
From Sara Groves's "What do I know"