Sad Songs

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Where is the line between the music whose sadness you enjoy and the music whose sadness you don't?

What is the saddest song you can listen to? And the saddest song you can't?

Comments

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

wonder if the saddest songs are often the most spacious songs (not really including instrumental dance in this tho) too - that sense of there being almost nothing there, numbness etc.

esp. if you think of songs like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' where misery is evoked but never really felt by the listener (at least not in the sense intended) because of the defiant, euphoric release towards the end.

the saddest songs for me are ones that don't change much musically and probably don't offer any real glimpse of hope - but you can still enjoy that (as I do with a lot of Broadcast songs e.g. 'Lights Out').

sad rap songs? wu-tang's 'i can't get no sleep' maybe, but again it's kinda angry/defiant at the same time. i might take that to ILM to see what people suggest that's not particularly angry or just evokes melancholy with choice of samples (countless hip hop tracks do this).

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think there's a LOT of rap which runs heartbreaking music against non-heartbreaking vocals -- and actually the sadness of the music is contextual almost (ie in its original context it was there for another emotional effect, but the effect once sample and placed in the rap story operates by reflective distance from what WAS MEANT TO BE vs what NOW IS)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

haha also props for noting the hiding-in-plain-sight misery in BoRhap!

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

'Bohemian Rhapsody' used to reduce me to tears when I was about 12, largely because the lines "I don't want to die/Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all" introduced me to all sorts of adolescent gloomy thoughts. See also 'King of pain' by The Police. I'm over it now...

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I can't listen to anything by Robert Wyatt because of extreme sadness. Other people tell me he is uplifting but i don't see it...

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I enjoy Wyatt sadness - probably because altho the tone of things like 'Shipbuilding' is otherwise beautifully judged I have trouble taking him srsly with that voice.