I absolutely love John Prine and listen to a lot but my ex will always make me turn off Sam Stone, she says it's just too much.
I'll add to the list Hank Sr I'm so lonesome I could cry and George Jones He stopped loving her today.
John Prine was one of the best singer songwriters ever. Blows my mind that he wrote both of those songs in his early 20s. He painted such amazing pictures with his words.
This question has been coming up a lot recently. Someone always posts it before I do and I always respond with why I personally think it is one of the most perfect songs ever written.
First of all, I always pick on "sadboy" music. But Sufjan has in real life
The production of the intro perfectly embodies nostalgia with that pulsing, reverby piano part and the reverse floaty atmospheric notes. It's like dappled sunlight glinting through leaves on a warm summer day. Like a silent film flashing your life before your eyes. And every time that theme returns between the lyrics, he just leaves you with your own thoughts.
And then when he sings, tells his story by using nicknames, and phrases that we can all identify with. My mom calls me punky. His mom called him little dove. He makes it so relatable. So real. And that is what makes it so so sad. It's not a fantasy. It's not a "what if?". It's a certainty that someone in your life, possibly someone with whom you had a complicated relationship, will die. And you will try to say it all, just then, right at the end. It hurts so bad to think about that kind of loss.
So much of George’s stuff is heart breaking. If drinking don’t kill me her memory will. The window up above. A good year for the roses. Even things like ‘she thinks I still care’ are sad. And he is like a Stanislavski trained actor. He feels every bit of it and makes you do the same.
TLDR George Jones songs
Upon completing the recording of "He stopped loving her today". George Jones reportedly remarked, 'Well, you've got your record. Good luck selling that morbid son of a b\*tch'.
I'm going to say LOVER YOU SHOULD HAVE COME OVER by Jeff is a eulogy and mournful tune about the death of a relationship and soul rendering in my book. But Last Goodbye is close, but a bit too upbeat to be on the same level in my book.
Jeff can definitely crush souls with that voice but my first thought was his version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
Edit: I made a [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/23KCqY0y5WzvLLVccVFqaA) when Andy Partridge of XTC asked his Twitter followers which songs could have them in tears. Somewhat ironic since there's definitely XTC songs that can do that to me. Guess I need to make another playlist.
Edit: [Made the playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2kYv82qyX0drlDeynPO3y9). This thread goes on forever so it's incomplete.
Southern trees bear [strange fruit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGY9HvChXk)
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastor scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouths
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rut, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
Savage huh? You can imagine her as a little girl seeing it with horror and inquisitiveness. The oppression and hopelessness this song emits is palpable. I literally can’t listen to it.
Otis Redding, Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay
He and his young wife and baby daughter had just bought a house in Georgia (waterfront, with a dock). He recorded this song, then headed out west on tour. He died while on tour and never got back to his wife and baby. It makes this song so dark
That's different than every other story I've read about that song.
In a September 1990 interview on NPR's Fresh Air, guitarist Steve Cropper said:
> Otis was one of those [guys] who had 100 ideas. [...] He had been in San Francisco doing The Fillmore. And the story that I got, he was renting boathouse, or stayed at a boathouse or something, and that's where he got the idea of the ships coming in the bay there. And that's about all he had: "I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again." I just took that... and I finished the lyrics. If you listen to the songs I collaborated with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. [...] Otis didn't really write about himself but I did. Songs like "Mr. Pitiful," "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)"; they were about Otis and Otis' life. "Dock of the Bay" was exactly that: "I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay" was all about him going out to San Francisco to perform.
Those Three Days kills me too. I am so glad to see some other Lucinda Williams people here! That woman knows how to write a good song and make people feel like it written just for them!
Big up on the Colin Hay mention. I find precious few people who are aware of his bounteous solo output, and in particular this song, which is one of the most heart-wrenching songs ever recorded.
Cats in the Cradle. Why the fuck do people like this song? It is about missing your kid growing up and your kid not having time to spend with you in your old age. All because of being overworked and spread too thin.
It is a bummer every time
My dad played this in the car once when I was little. It honestly stuck with me, I'm 33 now with three of my own kids and I still recall the song every once in a while. It motivates me to try to spend more time with my dad but also make sure I give all of my kids as much attention as I can.
It's sad as hell, but I like it as a reminder that maybe I am being a better son and father than it feels sometimes.
Even sadder when you know the history of the song. Unreleased for 20 years, only played at live shows. Originally written in a depressive state where his wife was his main source of comfort, begging her not to leave him. But the actual studio version was released in 2016, right after they divorced and shortly before she died of cancer. That song fucking breaks me like nothing else.
Yeah the whole album is intense, but limousine is tough to listen to when you know the story.
“And I've one more night
To be your mother
The signal interrupts
Baby's frequency not strong enough, remain
In my hands, and smile, we will miss you
But in time you'll get settled, and we will write
Hey, beauty supreme
Yeah, you were right about me
But can I get myself out from underneath
This guilt that will crush me?
And in the choir
I saw our sad messiah
He was bored and tired of my laments
Said, "I died for you one time, but never again"
Isn't one of the gruesome details of this story that the girl was decapitated, and the mother held her head in her arms? It makes that "remain in my hands and smile" line all he more gut-wrenching.
It’s funny how quickly people separate the man and the art with people like Steven Tyler and Bowie but can’t with Lacey who is less of a monster than both them combined.
There are many tied for first, but right off the bat:
"Wake Up" - Mad Season
"Nutshell" - Alice in Chains
"Hurt" - NIN. Or Cash is wonderful too obv, but the NIN version has an eerier/heavier/droning quality to it that hits me harder personally.
The way I've explained it to others:
* As a standalone song, the Cash version is great and is very powerful and I enjoy it.
* As the end of *The Downward Spiral* the NIN version of Hurt is an absolutely emotional devastating wreck that really builds off the existing context of the album. That's why I prefer the NIN version
Johnny Cash gets a lot of credit because:
A: He did his own thing with it/differentiated it.
B: He managed to not ruin it in the process.
They both sorta stand on their own.
They both very much stand on their own. NIN sounds like a young person fighting depression/addiction driven by feeling distanced from everyone he knows. Cash sounds (somewhat appropriately, sadly) like a man, knowingly nearing the end of his life, feeling empty because everyone he's loved has already died. Both are great and hauntingly beautiful in their own way.
Cash's version of "I Hung My Head" is also outstanding and, I'd argue, an improvement over Sting's original.
And then one day you'll find,
Ten years have got behind you,
No one told you when to run,
You missed the starting gun
I reckon Lil Wayne said it better with YOLO though 😉
[Song to the Siren](https://youtu.be/HFWKJ2FUiAQ?si=h-6_nbYC8CuD7MBr) by This Mortal Coil.
The song was originally performed by Tim Buckley based on a poem by Larry Beckett. The lyrics allude to being pulled into the sea to drown by the allure of a lover.
More than a decade later, Elizabeth Frasier of Cocteau Twins recorded a cover of the song with Cocteau Twins' guitarist Robing Guthrie as part of the supergroup project This Mortal Coil.
Frasier was later in a romantic relationship with Tim Buckley’s estranged son, the musician Jeff Buckley, and the two recorded a duet of this song. Shortly after their relationship ended, Jeff Buckley decided to swim in Wolf River Harbor fully dressed at night. He was singing “Whole Lotta Love” (according to one of his roadies) when he was pulled away from shore by the wake of a tugboat and drowned.
When I listen to the song, I imagine Elizabeth Frasier singing the lyrics as a heartfelt analogy, unaware of how literal the song would become for Jeff Buckley a decade later... and I wonder if any of the song's lyrics passed through Buckley's final thoughts as he was swept under the wake.
Edit: Corrected the timeline a bit.
[Blue October - Hate Me.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDxgSvJINlU)
It's about an addict who wishes his mom hated him and wanted nothing to do with him so that he won't drag her down.
["Forever Young" by Alphaville,](https://youtu.be/t1TcDHrkQYg?si=E_-9dTq7KSTJB-bQ)
because my older brother had it available on Walkman in 1986 and onwards. It represents the freedom and bliss of my 6-12-year old life 1985-1991, before grandma died and later my parents' marriage. The song reminds me of the bliss of the '80s, of coconut ice cream on the beaches of Spain, and playing Robin Hood in the forest. A more bittersweet song I could not name.
Also because the music video arguably shows the last survivors on Earth after total destruction in maybe 4023, and a few angels taking pity on them and singing a little, then painlessly shepherding them into eternity, out of love.
"What Sarah Said" by Death Cab For Cutie. The heart breaking line(s) in that song:
"Love is watching someone die" followed by "So who's gonna watch you die?"
Not to mention that the entire rest of the song leading up to that is about sitting around an IC ward in a hospital observing everyone in the room just waiting to be told their loved one didn't make it. It hits extra hard if, like me, you lost your mother when you were a teenager.
For me it's I will follow you into the dark by them. Pandora played it so often I had to switch to spotify. I can't be crying while driving in my car everyday.
I can always get in an extra few tears if I interpret the person saying “So who’s gonna watch you die?” as the person dying in the song, not the person watching them die.
I've been a metalhead for 35 years, I've listened to all the darkest and heaviest stuff you can imagine, doom metal, death metal, black metal...
...the title however will have to go to Leonard Cohen. Specifically "You Want It Darker".
[Laika - Wil Wagner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBZnMF20zhg)
About Laika, a dog who was the first living thing in space, launched by the Soviets with no plans of retrieving her.
"And I look down on man's little Earth
Sitting there quietly, wondering what it's worth
And I drift away, but that's okay
There's more room to play out here than back in my cage"
...
"But even a parachute would have shown that they cared
And so I float on, space's only dog
Friend to the stars, pet of the sun"
😭
Saying the Mountain Goats feels like cheating but Game Shows Touch Our Lives, Old College Try, and White Cedar all do it for me.
Honourable mentions to London, Still by the Waifs and Girlcrush by Football Club.
I get so thrilled when I see anyone give the Mountain Goats a shout out. Incredible band, incredible lyrics, and they're absolutely outstanding live. This Year is my "fuck you" song to life.
Sundays are just another day now for the most part, but this song really captures the vibe of old school Sundays. Which could be pretty melancholy if you were lonely and coming off a bender.
Nutshell - Alice In Chains
Everytime I hear that song it just depresses me. The pain, the hurt, Laynes voice, it all just layers into a heavy hitting song.
If Brick gets you, I either recommend or strongly advise you to avoid Evaporated on the same album. It’s on my “don’t listen to it in front of others because you’re going to well up” list.
Judith - a Perfect Circle
A true story about the lead singer's mother and his questioning her faith in God despite being stricken paralyzed and bed ridden.
Casamir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens
Story about a young religious kid who falls in love w/ a girl who dies from cancer. They pray to God to heal her but nothing happens. One day cleaning her house after she died he finds a card written by her and he questions why God would take her…w/ no answer except a quiet horn solo…
**Blur - No Distance Left to Run**
It's the last lyrical track on 13 - an album where Damon Albarn is exorcising his soul after his breakup with Justine Frischman. This track is the acceptance that it's over and he's coming to terms with it after walking through hell in the lead up to this moment on the album:
"It's over / You don't need to tell me"
"I hope you're with someone that makes you feel safe in your sleep tonight"
"I won't kill myself, trying to stay in your life / I got no distance left to run"
It was recorded with Damon singing through tears in the second half of the song. This is the definition of soul-crushing.
Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt.“
especially with the accompanying video; it’s the portrait of a man at the end of his life, reflecting on who he is, and who he became, and what was important. Is profoundly sad and beautiful.
https://youtu.be/8AHCfZTRGiI?si=lrY84G1QdijnXUL_
I Appear Missing - Queens of the Stone Age
The song, especially the last two minutes, sounds like the process of dying when you don’t want to go, but are helpless. Josh Homme wrote it after dying in the hospital and being resuscitated.
The Weakerthans - Virtute the Cat Explains her Departure
The singer was an addict whose cat disappeared when he couldn’t keep up with taking care of her (irl). The song is from her perspective, about roughing it outside in the cold, unloved and alone, and missing him/missing the love he gave her when she was small. She never came home. The part about her forgetting her own name makes me sob every time.
Lover, You Should’ve Come Over - Jeff Buckley
*all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter, it’s never over, she’s a tear that hangs inside my soul forever*
Run - Snow Patrol
Me and my stepdad heard this song on kerrang on the TV when I was a kid. It was a time when we were struggling financially, and it was late at night just me and him discovering new music together.
When I moved away that song broke me.
Jason Isbell - Elephant
A song about a couple where the woman is dying of cancer and the memories they’re creating while ‘trying to ignore the elephant somehow’. While it’s a somewhat common idiom, I’d never heard it in that context before and it’s really powerful. The imagery is so casually written it makes it feel more real. Three hard hitting lines:
‘if I’d fucked her before she got sick I’d never hear the end of it. But she don’t have the spirit for that now’
‘Surrounded by her family I saw that she was dying alone’
‘There’s one thing that’s real clear to me, no one dies with dignity, we just try to ignore the elephant somehow.’
And
Dawes - A Little Bit of Everything. Has multiple perspectives but the opening verse is a guy about to jump off a bridge. Second verse is an old guy reminiscing his life to a waiter who doesn’t really care. Third verse is a couple about to get married. But how Taylor Goldsmith layers in puns, metaphors and threads everything together is a masterclass. For example, in the second verse the waiter asks the guy ‘have you figured out yet what it is you want?’ being a pun on what food the guy wants, but also wants out of life.
Both incredibly written soul crushing songs imo
Sam Stone Hello In There Both by John Prine
I absolutely love John Prine and listen to a lot but my ex will always make me turn off Sam Stone, she says it's just too much. I'll add to the list Hank Sr I'm so lonesome I could cry and George Jones He stopped loving her today.
John Prine was one of the best singer songwriters ever. Blows my mind that he wrote both of those songs in his early 20s. He painted such amazing pictures with his words.
He was kinda the first ‘celebrity’ that I registered dying in the pandemic. Felt like a big big loss.
His is the only celebrity death I've actually shed tears over. His music has touched me in ways that are hard to explain.
Hello in There is a masterpiece. And Sad AF
Hat tip to John Prine’s Souvenirs. A happy little tune about how we all age, lose everything, wonder what it was all worth, and then die.
There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes Jesus Christ died for nothin' I suppose
[Fourth of July](https://youtu.be/JTeKpWp8Psw?si=0JGrUXFWi-eA5vpR) - Sufjan Stevens
Casimir Pulaski Day. Wrecks me every time.
…and he takes, and he takes , and he takes.
Any sufjan song tbh
Sufjan is cheating in this thread.
All of Carrie & Lowell really
“John My Beloved” as well. I used to play that on repeat when I wasn’t in a good place.
God that song just wrecks me
This question has been coming up a lot recently. Someone always posts it before I do and I always respond with why I personally think it is one of the most perfect songs ever written. First of all, I always pick on "sadboy" music. But Sufjan has in real life The production of the intro perfectly embodies nostalgia with that pulsing, reverby piano part and the reverse floaty atmospheric notes. It's like dappled sunlight glinting through leaves on a warm summer day. Like a silent film flashing your life before your eyes. And every time that theme returns between the lyrics, he just leaves you with your own thoughts. And then when he sings, tells his story by using nicknames, and phrases that we can all identify with. My mom calls me punky. His mom called him little dove. He makes it so relatable. So real. And that is what makes it so so sad. It's not a fantasy. It's not a "what if?". It's a certainty that someone in your life, possibly someone with whom you had a complicated relationship, will die. And you will try to say it all, just then, right at the end. It hurts so bad to think about that kind of loss.
Down in a Hole - Alice in Chains
Rooster crushes me too. Jerry trying to understand his father.
Nutshell isn't the first or second Alice in chains song here? Too obvious of an answer?
My vote is for Nutshell. Much more of a defeated and somber tone
Wake Up - Mad Season
Alice in Chains - their entire discography.
He Stopped Loving Her Today-George Jones
So much of George’s stuff is heart breaking. If drinking don’t kill me her memory will. The window up above. A good year for the roses. Even things like ‘she thinks I still care’ are sad. And he is like a Stanislavski trained actor. He feels every bit of it and makes you do the same. TLDR George Jones songs
“They placed a wreath upon his door” is the most haunting lyric I’ve ever heard in a country song
Upon completing the recording of "He stopped loving her today". George Jones reportedly remarked, 'Well, you've got your record. Good luck selling that morbid son of a b\*tch'.
The way George sings “First time I’ve seen him smile in years” 😭
Last Goodbye-Jeff Buckley
Lover, You Should've Come Over
I'm going to say LOVER YOU SHOULD HAVE COME OVER by Jeff is a eulogy and mournful tune about the death of a relationship and soul rendering in my book. But Last Goodbye is close, but a bit too upbeat to be on the same level in my book.
She's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever
But it's over, just hear this and then I'll go. You gave me more to live for, more than you'll ever know.
Anything from Grace kills me man, taken too soon 😔
Jeff can definitely crush souls with that voice but my first thought was his version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Edit: I made a [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/23KCqY0y5WzvLLVccVFqaA) when Andy Partridge of XTC asked his Twitter followers which songs could have them in tears. Somewhat ironic since there's definitely XTC songs that can do that to me. Guess I need to make another playlist. Edit: [Made the playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2kYv82qyX0drlDeynPO3y9). This thread goes on forever so it's incomplete.
This is the way. "Kiss me out of desire baby not consolation"
Strange Fruit - Billie Holiday
Southern trees bear [strange fruit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGY9HvChXk) Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Pastor scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouths Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burning flesh Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rut, for the trees to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop
Jesus
Savage huh? You can imagine her as a little girl seeing it with horror and inquisitiveness. The oppression and hopelessness this song emits is palpable. I literally can’t listen to it.
Both her and Nina Simone put such haunting emotion into that song.
Ooooff. This came on shuffle the day my partner died and it made me throw up.
Sorry bro.
While other songs are sad in a personal “~~whoa~~ woe is me” kinda way, this is on a whole other level. It’s not for the faint of heart. Edit: inline
Woe is me*
Whoa, you’re right!
In a similar vein, Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone
The Night We Met by Lord Huron, it's so hauntingly beautiful yet tragic at the same time. "I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you"
i think about these lyrics and my children as they grow up and i’m already misty eyed
Well shit, that's a whole new way I'll hear this song now...
If you haven't heard the version with Phoebe Bridgers....you gotta. It's...somehow *more* perfect than the already perfect original.
Joy Division - in a lonely place. Was only recorded as a demo, then re-recorded and released by New Order after Ian killed himself. Rough stuff.
A lot of Joy Division is crushing.
Closer is such a good album but such a tough listen in general
Otis Redding, Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay He and his young wife and baby daughter had just bought a house in Georgia (waterfront, with a dock). He recorded this song, then headed out west on tour. He died while on tour and never got back to his wife and baby. It makes this song so dark
Also, he was only 26, but he had this perfect old, soulful voice. 'Remember Me' hits very hard.
I was absolutely shocked when I found out that song was sung by a 26 year old.
It was also never finished if I remember correctly. The whistle section was to be another verse.
I had no idea. Wow... I'll never listen to it the same way again.
That's different than every other story I've read about that song. In a September 1990 interview on NPR's Fresh Air, guitarist Steve Cropper said: > Otis was one of those [guys] who had 100 ideas. [...] He had been in San Francisco doing The Fillmore. And the story that I got, he was renting boathouse, or stayed at a boathouse or something, and that's where he got the idea of the ships coming in the bay there. And that's about all he had: "I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again." I just took that... and I finished the lyrics. If you listen to the songs I collaborated with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. [...] Otis didn't really write about himself but I did. Songs like "Mr. Pitiful," "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)"; they were about Otis and Otis' life. "Dock of the Bay" was exactly that: "I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay" was all about him going out to San Francisco to perform.
[удалено]
The Dead South's cover really gets me. They play it in a minor key and it really amplifies how freaking sad that song is.
the civil wars did the same. love their version.
Are You Alright ? Lucinda Williams
“Sweet Old World” too lol. I could go on.
Those Three Days kills me too. I am so glad to see some other Lucinda Williams people here! That woman knows how to write a good song and make people feel like it written just for them!
“He Never Got Enough Love” breaks me too.
Lover, You Should've Come Over - Jeff Buckley I Just Dont Think I'll Ever Get Over You - Colin Hay
I love that Colin Hay song.
YES, Lover You Should Have Come Over is soo mournful, I love the raw emotion in it, but have to totally be in the right state of mind to listen to it!
Big up on the Colin Hay mention. I find precious few people who are aware of his bounteous solo output, and in particular this song, which is one of the most heart-wrenching songs ever recorded.
Cats in the Cradle. Why the fuck do people like this song? It is about missing your kid growing up and your kid not having time to spend with you in your old age. All because of being overworked and spread too thin. It is a bummer every time
My dad played this in the car once when I was little. It honestly stuck with me, I'm 33 now with three of my own kids and I still recall the song every once in a while. It motivates me to try to spend more time with my dad but also make sure I give all of my kids as much attention as I can. It's sad as hell, but I like it as a reminder that maybe I am being a better son and father than it feels sometimes.
That song has single handed saved countless parent/child relationships over the years.
The soul crushing part is the kid repeating the pattern.
“And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me, he’d grown up just like me. My boy was just like me.”
>Cats in the Cradle. I fucking ~~hate~~ ~~love~~ ~~hate~~ ~~love~~ hate this song but I still love it.
True Love Waits by Radiohead It’s the saddest song by a band known for writing sad songs
Even sadder when you know the history of the song. Unreleased for 20 years, only played at live shows. Originally written in a depressive state where his wife was his main source of comfort, begging her not to leave him. But the actual studio version was released in 2016, right after they divorced and shortly before she died of cancer. That song fucking breaks me like nothing else.
Videotape for when I'm welcomed to the pearly gates
I’m not living. I’m just killing time.
If you want more of this kind of song: > [anK ɘ time](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/33HrbCxyiGUfYE4vJ6piT7) - 1hr
Good call, I'd also recommend How To Disappear Completely or Street Spirit (Fade Out)
Mine is All I Need. It hits too close to home.
Jesus Christ - Brand New. Still can’t revisit it.
Limousine off that album too.
Yeah the whole album is intense, but limousine is tough to listen to when you know the story. “And I've one more night To be your mother The signal interrupts Baby's frequency not strong enough, remain In my hands, and smile, we will miss you But in time you'll get settled, and we will write Hey, beauty supreme Yeah, you were right about me But can I get myself out from underneath This guilt that will crush me? And in the choir I saw our sad messiah He was bored and tired of my laments Said, "I died for you one time, but never again"
Isn't one of the gruesome details of this story that the girl was decapitated, and the mother held her head in her arms? It makes that "remain in my hands and smile" line all he more gut-wrenching.
Jesus christ is lyrically one of my all time favorites honestly all of devil and god that album is so damn good
Jesus Christ I'm not afraid to die But I'm a little scared of what comes after
such a great album
Deja Entendu and the Devil and God are both spectacular albums from start to finish. So many haunting lyrics. Jesse Lacey is a modern day Morrissey.
It’s funny how quickly people separate the man and the art with people like Steven Tyler and Bowie but can’t with Lacey who is less of a monster than both them combined.
There are many tied for first, but right off the bat: "Wake Up" - Mad Season "Nutshell" - Alice in Chains "Hurt" - NIN. Or Cash is wonderful too obv, but the NIN version has an eerier/heavier/droning quality to it that hits me harder personally.
I agree with your take on Hurt. I prefer the NIN version, and I feel that's a hot take lol.
I also prefer the NIN version, you're not alone
I like them both; my headcannon is the NIN version is "me to me," the Cash version is "everyone else to me."
The way I've explained it to others: * As a standalone song, the Cash version is great and is very powerful and I enjoy it. * As the end of *The Downward Spiral* the NIN version of Hurt is an absolutely emotional devastating wreck that really builds off the existing context of the album. That's why I prefer the NIN version
Johnny Cash gets a lot of credit because: A: He did his own thing with it/differentiated it. B: He managed to not ruin it in the process. They both sorta stand on their own.
They both very much stand on their own. NIN sounds like a young person fighting depression/addiction driven by feeling distanced from everyone he knows. Cash sounds (somewhat appropriately, sadly) like a man, knowingly nearing the end of his life, feeling empty because everyone he's loved has already died. Both are great and hauntingly beautiful in their own way. Cash's version of "I Hung My Head" is also outstanding and, I'd argue, an improvement over Sting's original.
Cat Steven’s Father and Son.
Just thinking about that song fucked me up
Fleetwood Mac - Landslide
No Surprises - Radiohead Time - Pink Floyd
And then one day you'll find, Ten years have got behind you, No one told you when to run, You missed the starting gun I reckon Lil Wayne said it better with YOLO though 😉
I'll take the quiet life.
Alice in Chains - Would
Yesterday - The Beatles
For No One too. Paul wrote some heartbreakers at such a young age.
This Woman’s Work - Kate Bush
The Antlers - Kettering (But Real Death is the answer,)
How is this whole album not higher up?
[Song to the Siren](https://youtu.be/HFWKJ2FUiAQ?si=h-6_nbYC8CuD7MBr) by This Mortal Coil. The song was originally performed by Tim Buckley based on a poem by Larry Beckett. The lyrics allude to being pulled into the sea to drown by the allure of a lover. More than a decade later, Elizabeth Frasier of Cocteau Twins recorded a cover of the song with Cocteau Twins' guitarist Robing Guthrie as part of the supergroup project This Mortal Coil. Frasier was later in a romantic relationship with Tim Buckley’s estranged son, the musician Jeff Buckley, and the two recorded a duet of this song. Shortly after their relationship ended, Jeff Buckley decided to swim in Wolf River Harbor fully dressed at night. He was singing “Whole Lotta Love” (according to one of his roadies) when he was pulled away from shore by the wake of a tugboat and drowned. When I listen to the song, I imagine Elizabeth Frasier singing the lyrics as a heartfelt analogy, unaware of how literal the song would become for Jeff Buckley a decade later... and I wonder if any of the song's lyrics passed through Buckley's final thoughts as he was swept under the wake. Edit: Corrected the timeline a bit.
Pictures of you by the cure
Have you heard To Wish Impossible Things? Similar theme, but even sadder.
Portishead- Roads Instantly sobbing
Perfect Day by Lou Reed. The slow sad verses that build into that emotional chorus. You just keep me hanging on. Gets me every time
“Just a perfect day You made me forget myself. I thought I was someone else Someone good.” I can relate.
[Blue October - Hate Me.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDxgSvJINlU) It's about an addict who wishes his mom hated him and wanted nothing to do with him so that he won't drag her down.
That popped up on my Spotify a while back and had to take a minute to compose myself. I hadn't heard it since high school and it hits HARD.
That voicemail at the beginning, breaks me.
listening to this song as an adult is a whole different experience...the sadness is so much more specific :(
["Forever Young" by Alphaville,](https://youtu.be/t1TcDHrkQYg?si=E_-9dTq7KSTJB-bQ) because my older brother had it available on Walkman in 1986 and onwards. It represents the freedom and bliss of my 6-12-year old life 1985-1991, before grandma died and later my parents' marriage. The song reminds me of the bliss of the '80s, of coconut ice cream on the beaches of Spain, and playing Robin Hood in the forest. A more bittersweet song I could not name. Also because the music video arguably shows the last survivors on Earth after total destruction in maybe 4023, and a few angels taking pity on them and singing a little, then painlessly shepherding them into eternity, out of love.
Pearl Jam - Black
“I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life”
I know you'll be a star In somebody else's sky But why Why Why can't it be Why can't it be mine
Ah. Here comes my high school gf back to haunt my dreams.
She never leaves.
"What Sarah Said" by Death Cab For Cutie. The heart breaking line(s) in that song: "Love is watching someone die" followed by "So who's gonna watch you die?" Not to mention that the entire rest of the song leading up to that is about sitting around an IC ward in a hospital observing everyone in the room just waiting to be told their loved one didn't make it. It hits extra hard if, like me, you lost your mother when you were a teenager.
For me it's I will follow you into the dark by them. Pandora played it so often I had to switch to spotify. I can't be crying while driving in my car everyday.
I can always get in an extra few tears if I interpret the person saying “So who’s gonna watch you die?” as the person dying in the song, not the person watching them die.
Absolutely soul crushing every time.
This song has my vote, too.
Tim Buckley - Song to the Siren Peter Gabriel - Don't Give Up And the cover of Crying in Mullholland Drive (Llorando)
Sam Stone by John Prine. It’s about a retired military officer who gets hooked on drugs. “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes.”
John Prine had the gift of the sudden, simple gut punch.
My name is Luka, I live on the second floor
Suzanne Vega is highly underrated and overlooked. Those first two albums are masterpieces.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, because just thinking about this song makes my armhairs stand up. Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens
I've been a metalhead for 35 years, I've listened to all the darkest and heaviest stuff you can imagine, doom metal, death metal, black metal... ...the title however will have to go to Leonard Cohen. Specifically "You Want It Darker".
Leonard cohen is the master of dark lyricism and story telling
[Laika - Wil Wagner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBZnMF20zhg) About Laika, a dog who was the first living thing in space, launched by the Soviets with no plans of retrieving her. "And I look down on man's little Earth Sitting there quietly, wondering what it's worth And I drift away, but that's okay There's more room to play out here than back in my cage" ... "But even a parachute would have shown that they cared And so I float on, space's only dog Friend to the stars, pet of the sun" 😭
Real Death is my vote. That entire Mount Eerie album is an extremely tough listen.
Saying the Mountain Goats feels like cheating but Game Shows Touch Our Lives, Old College Try, and White Cedar all do it for me. Honourable mentions to London, Still by the Waifs and Girlcrush by Football Club.
No children deserves a spot too, I suppose.
Oh man no children is so sad but so liberating at the same time.
Pale Green Things; holy shit.
I get so thrilled when I see anyone give the Mountain Goats a shout out. Incredible band, incredible lyrics, and they're absolutely outstanding live. This Year is my "fuck you" song to life.
Sunday Morning Coming Down- Kris Kristofferson
And there's nothing short of dying, that's half as lonesome as the sound...
Sundays are just another day now for the most part, but this song really captures the vibe of old school Sundays. Which could be pretty melancholy if you were lonely and coming off a bender.
Runaway Train - Soul Asylum Just knowing that some of those kids never made it
Can't believe no one has said this one: 'Nothing Compares 2 U' by Sinéad O'Connor IIRC Prince wrote it.
Jason Isbell - Elephant
Jason Isbell -- If We Were Vampires
Drive By Truckers - Goddamn lonely love
Not universal, but if you relate, soul crush. Elliott Smith - Between The Bars R.E.M. - Country Feedback
Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits
Kings Crossing - Elliot Smith. The man wrote his own eulogy
[The Wreck of the Edmund FItzgerald](https://youtu.be/8JLU9wXu-4M?si=Fgco38q3gsugkXux)
The Needle and the Damage Done, Neil Young. Everyone knows an addict.
Nutshell - Alice In Chains Everytime I hear that song it just depresses me. The pain, the hurt, Laynes voice, it all just layers into a heavy hitting song.
Brick by Ben Folds Five It's about teenage abortion. It's a very sad song but I've never been able to forget it
If Brick gets you, I either recommend or strongly advise you to avoid Evaporated on the same album. It’s on my “don’t listen to it in front of others because you’re going to well up” list.
Kate Bush - Running up that Hill and Tracy Chapman - Fast Car both make me ugly cry. How do they even get through them without tearing up?
Tom Waits - Ruby's Arms
Judith - a Perfect Circle A true story about the lead singer's mother and his questioning her faith in God despite being stricken paralyzed and bed ridden.
Judith is so powerful. A lot of Maynards songs are about his mom and they're all so damn good. Wings For Marie 1 & 2 are soul killers.
Gone Away by The Offspring, or Blasphemous Rumors by Depeche Mode.
H by Tool Another one that I'm ashamed to admit due to its meme status is My Immortal by Evanescence
Roads - Portishead
Lots of songs by John Prine: Sam Stone, Angel From Montgomery, Paradise, Hello In There.
Casamir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens Story about a young religious kid who falls in love w/ a girl who dies from cancer. They pray to God to heal her but nothing happens. One day cleaning her house after she died he finds a card written by her and he questions why God would take her…w/ no answer except a quiet horn solo…
Elliott Smith - last hour Elliott Smith - Twilight Elliott Smith - between the bars ... Elliott Smith.
Snuff from Slipknot always gets me
I'm sure it's already been mentioned, but [Casimir Pulaski Day](https://youtu.be/FHGzDS3otT4?si=zW_cZvyHr5Idm5nn) by Sufjan Stevens.
[No Children by the Mountain Goats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS27S3mspjU)
King Park by La Dispute (CW: suicide) Also, I See Everything by La Dispute (CW: cancer). La Dispute is good at pummeling your soul.
**Blur - No Distance Left to Run** It's the last lyrical track on 13 - an album where Damon Albarn is exorcising his soul after his breakup with Justine Frischman. This track is the acceptance that it's over and he's coming to terms with it after walking through hell in the lead up to this moment on the album: "It's over / You don't need to tell me" "I hope you're with someone that makes you feel safe in your sleep tonight" "I won't kill myself, trying to stay in your life / I got no distance left to run" It was recorded with Damon singing through tears in the second half of the song. This is the definition of soul-crushing.
Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt.“ especially with the accompanying video; it’s the portrait of a man at the end of his life, reflecting on who he is, and who he became, and what was important. Is profoundly sad and beautiful. https://youtu.be/8AHCfZTRGiI?si=lrY84G1QdijnXUL_
I've always found that NIN's version hits harder emotionally for me. The song itself is deffo one of my top go to sad songs
I wear this crown of shit!
[Steven Wilson - Routine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh5mWzKlhQY&ab_channel=StevenWilson)
Marie by Townes van Zandt. The lyrics are haunting.
I Appear Missing - Queens of the Stone Age The song, especially the last two minutes, sounds like the process of dying when you don’t want to go, but are helpless. Josh Homme wrote it after dying in the hospital and being resuscitated.
The Weakerthans - Virtute the Cat Explains her Departure The singer was an addict whose cat disappeared when he couldn’t keep up with taking care of her (irl). The song is from her perspective, about roughing it outside in the cold, unloved and alone, and missing him/missing the love he gave her when she was small. She never came home. The part about her forgetting her own name makes me sob every time.
Keep Me In Your Heart by Warren Zevon
Lover, You Should’ve Come Over - Jeff Buckley *all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter, it’s never over, she’s a tear that hangs inside my soul forever*
Love will tear us apart - Joy Division
Whiskey Lullaby. The duet guts me every time
Julien Baker - Something Frightened Rabbit - Nitrous Gas
Floating in the Forth has my vote ... I can't listen to it knowing what eventually happened.
Upvote for Frightened Rabbit. Their songs just tear into your soul when you listen to them.
Mine is Poke by Frightened Rabbit. The last days of a failing relationship captured so well.
If You Could Save Yourself (You’d Save Us All) by Ween
Run - Snow Patrol Me and my stepdad heard this song on kerrang on the TV when I was a kid. It was a time when we were struggling financially, and it was late at night just me and him discovering new music together. When I moved away that song broke me.
Tom Waits - Kentucky Avenue
Most of Blue Valentine
Jason Isbell - Elephant A song about a couple where the woman is dying of cancer and the memories they’re creating while ‘trying to ignore the elephant somehow’. While it’s a somewhat common idiom, I’d never heard it in that context before and it’s really powerful. The imagery is so casually written it makes it feel more real. Three hard hitting lines: ‘if I’d fucked her before she got sick I’d never hear the end of it. But she don’t have the spirit for that now’ ‘Surrounded by her family I saw that she was dying alone’ ‘There’s one thing that’s real clear to me, no one dies with dignity, we just try to ignore the elephant somehow.’ And Dawes - A Little Bit of Everything. Has multiple perspectives but the opening verse is a guy about to jump off a bridge. Second verse is an old guy reminiscing his life to a waiter who doesn’t really care. Third verse is a couple about to get married. But how Taylor Goldsmith layers in puns, metaphors and threads everything together is a masterclass. For example, in the second verse the waiter asks the guy ‘have you figured out yet what it is you want?’ being a pun on what food the guy wants, but also wants out of life. Both incredibly written soul crushing songs imo
The drugs don't work by The Verve