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Survey: top 20 saddest songs of all time


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A survey in the British journal The Telegraph has found these to be the 20 saddest songs of all time:

 

 

Everybody Hurts - REM

Candle in the Wind - Elton John

The Living Years - Mike and the Mechanics

I will always love you - Whitney Houston

Nothing compares to you - Prince/Sinead O'Connor

Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen/Alexandra Burke/Jeff Buckley

My heart will go on - Celine Dion

Fix You - Coldplay

Seasons in the sun - Terry Jacks

Without You - Harry Nilsson

Yesterday - The Beatles

All by myself - Eric Carmen

My Way - Frank Sinatra

Sound of silence - Simon and Garfunkel

Aint no sunshine - Bill Withers

Love will tear us apart - Joy Division

Leaving on a jet plane - Peter, Paul and Mary

Eleanor Rigby - The Beatles

Annie's Song - John Denver

Everybody's got to learn sometimes - Korgis

 

 

 

Link to article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/9051673/REMs-Everybody-Hurts-voted-most-depressing-song-of-all-time.html

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How about Tears In Heaven? I can barely listen to that song.

 

Also, I don't consider Everybody Hurts all that sad, I think it has more of a Bridge In Troubled Water type message.

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Two that get me every time are Long, Long Time by Linda Ronstadt (was there ever a relationship or was it all a fantasy?) and I Can't Make You Love Me by Bonnie Raitt. Aaaack! Maybe that's why I tend to listen to more men singers!

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I cant see those vids (yay work filters), so apologies if this is redundant:

 

1) I always have a hard time picking a single Elliott Smith song. I don't like the sad-sack label he gets nailed with. He had his demons, but to just say that dismisses the brilliance of his work. Many of his songs are so deeply affecting.

2) Call me cheesy - but Last Kiss made a little boy cry (parents played me the J Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers version). And despite the mountains of mediocre tripe they've put out since, Pearl Jam's cover in '99 made a grown man tear up again.

3) Daniel Rossen can slay me too. In Ear Park and his new one, Saint Nothing, both rip me to pieces.

4) How about this one... I have a hard time making it through this until I build up some immunity via frequent listens. The first time I hear it after a break it is so raw that it is difficult to get through:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijf8MN0-nEI

 

(Antlers - Kettering)

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Steve Earle's Goodbye (also recorded by Emmylou Harris and separately by Chrissie Hynde) - I'm sure somewhere in there I made you cry, but I can't remember if I said "goodbye"

 

Love Hurts - Everlys, Gram and Emmylou, Keef and Nora Jones, lots of good versions, what a great great song

 

I know he can be a pathetic idiot and makes it so easy to dislike him AND some of the lyrics in this song exemplify these qualities, but Come Pick Me Up by Ryan Adams is still a song I love to hear.

 

I could go on and on. Ditto on Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me and The Band It Makes No Difference and Hot Burrito.

 

A Song For You - Leon Russell "when my life is over, remember when we were together, we were alone and I was singing this song for you"

 

A Song For You - Gram Parsons "I loved you every day and now I´m leaving And I can see the sorrow in your eyes I hope you know a lot more than you´re believing Just so the sun don´t hurt you when you cry"

 

Dark End of The Street - Dan Penn, many versions

 

Never Again, Withered and Died, The End Of The Rainbow - Richard and Linda Thompson

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Personally there is a clear winner. The Tom Waits track 'I'm Still Here' from the Orphans box set is sadness absolute. The way I see it the songs relates the story of an old married couple. The woman has tired of romance and the man is feeling empty and unloved'. I'm still in my thirties but I can imagine the old guy in the song and it breaks my heart everytime.

 

"You haven't looked at me that way in years

You dreamed me up and left me here

How long was I dreaming for

What was it you wanted me for

 

You haven't looked at me that way in years

Your watch has stopped and the pond is clear

Someone turn the lights back off

I'll love you til all time is gone

 

You haven't looked at me that way in years

But I'm still here"

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