Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

Saddest Song in the World Challenge!


caley

Recommended Posts

Isaac: it's the word "media" [in brackets].

 

 

You know what really fucking sickens me?  The sheer number of videos on Youtube which force you to watch an advertisement first.  Okay, I know the 'Tube has gotta pay its bandwidth costs somehow.  But the ads are typically shown on much-watched videos and the money is typically split with whoever posted the video, right?  That means countless people are making cash from copywritten material that they had precisely jack and shit to do with making in the first place.  Meanwhile, the actual creators and artists don't get a dime.  How's this any different than selling bootlegs on the sidewalk and pocketing the dough?  

 

BECAUSE OF EDDY, DAMMIT!!!

It ain't too often that one can truthfully say "gee, this cover of a Trent Reznor song is so much SADDER than the original", is it?

 

 

Just when you'd written off gloriously celebrated the Dropkick Murphys as a punk band, they come back and kill you. I cry every time.

fixed that for ya.  But seriously, most artists who are good enough to be successful in any field are usually hiding a whole bunch of other talents which media typecasting & public pigeonholing refuse to let them do.  Like how everyone giggled at the idea of Bruce Willis or Michael Keaton as action heroes until they actually did it and then transformed the genre forever.  

 

 

You can probably use most versions of this song here.

I may be on my usual island-of-one here, but I think "Hallelujah" would tremendously benefit from just straight chopping out all the lyrics except the chorus.  All that nonsense about listing which chords "pleased the Lord" is just hilariously awful.  

 

And if I was gonna pick my go-to Sad Cohen Song, personally I'd go with this one: 

 

 

And the fact that it's eventually revealed that the entire song is basically just some impotent dude whining about some woman's alleged promiscuity, makes it even sadder.  "Waaaah, everyone says she's fucking everyone but me!!!"  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

LET THE WARREN ZEVON ONSLAUGHT OF SHEER DEPRESSION BEGIN NOW!

 

 

You mean like when he wrote a goodbye song to his family while dying of cancer?

 

Waren Zevon could make you laugh/think/cry at the drop of a hat. Truly one of the great American song writers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

i never would think of William Shatner as somebody to mention in a music thread.

but this song, especially when paired with "What Have You Done", the next song on the album, is just emotionally wrecking.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jesus, three pages in and no one posts Fast Car by Tracy Chapman? This song, to me, is absolutely soul crushing. It's the "Will's father walking out on him" of songs. I was at the mall one day looking for a Father's Day present for my Dad and this song came on in the Bose store and I had to leave and go to a different store, I couldn't shop and listen to this song just absolutely couldn't.

 

http://youtu.be/TO9Qa7MpAvw

 

God damn you Tracy Chapman.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Wesley Willis is remembered mostly as a comedy figure, because he was often hilarious. But hearing "Chronic Schizophrenia" is probably the closest i'll ever get to understanding the condition. I remember just sitting there for about five minutes the first time I heard it, agog at how unsettling and depressing it was.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This cover by Rebekah Del Rio from MULLHOLLAND DRIVE always gets me.  The combination of being a capella, and the reverb making it sound like she's in this huge empty space makes it the loneliest song ever.  Like, Roy Orbison in his version is singing about being abandoned and obsessing over someone and it's pretty normal.  He's depressed but he's still in the world...like, literally he's surrounded by the sounds of other people in the band and so we recognize him as a sad guy in the world.

 

But this is different.  If you forget the visuals (and I'm not putting up the version from the movie for this reason)...listen without watching the video, this is like someone trapped in the empty space of their own mind.  It takes this already pretty good heartbreak song and turns it into something totally solipsistic and catastrophic.  This is someone singing to themselves in a space inhabited by no one but themselves.  No light.  No warmth.  No other life.  It's like mythic or something, like the song you'd imagine some mythological figure locked in a cell at the edge of the universe would sing.  And so it becomes a really powerful and kind of terrifying metaphor for just how lonely you can be when you feel you've drifted so far away from the world that you can't even see the light of it or hear the sounds of it anymore.

 

Just blackness and your own voice, stirring from slumber every so often to sing this one lament and then falling back into sleep and this goes on forever.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMD87e5be5I

 

If you want to see it as it was in the movie:

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Harry Chapin's greatest song. And it'll fuckin' wreck ya.

 

"The waitress, she took her bar rag, and she wiped it across her eyes

And as she spoke, her voice came out as...something like a sigh.

She said "I wish that I was beautiful, or that you were halfway blind.

And I wish I weren't so god damned fat..I wish that you were mine.

And I wish that you'd come with me when I leave for home,

for we both know all about emptiness, and livin' all alone."

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's another Queen song that gets me, for different reasons. Simply because it's the last one Freddie sang, and he never got to finish it.

Then there's this one, written about him dying of AIDS, and the last track on the last album he worked on. . .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...