Jeeze, it’s the middle of May and only now is it starting to look like spring. Yes, love (and allergies) is floating in the air. The days are longer, the nights are warmer, and everybody is finding a kindred spirit to share this beautiful weather with. That is, except you. Here are five of the saddest songs that will help you get through this time where everything reminds you of how cripplingly alone you are.
Bob Dylan – “Girl from the North Country”
Bob Dylan has written hundreds of sad songs that could satisfy this hastily compiled list – he’s a master at evoking any emotion but he’s especially ingenious at tugging at sorrowful heartstrings – still, “North Country” remains at the top of my list of Dylan songs to soundtrack my crying into pillows at night. It finds him seeing to the well-being of his once true love as he hopes that she will simply remember his name. I can relate, as none of my ex-girlfriends have ever referred to me by name – but simply as, “Hey asshole.”
See Also: “Boots of Spanish Leather” – They’re pretty much the same song.
Otis Redding – “Tennessee Waltz”
Originally written as a country song by Pee Wee King and made popular by Roy Acuff in 1950, Otis Redding claimed it as his own on his 1996 album “Dictionary of Soul” as he belted out its verses in that anguished, beautifully flawed deep soul voice that soared out of Memphis and to the top of the charts before it came crashing back down in a passenger plane over Wisconsin. The song recalls a night of dancing to the Tennessee Waltz before an old acquaintance came along to steal his baby away. “I introduced him to my baby, while, while they kept on playing. That friend stole my sweetheart away from me.” Otis bleeds the verses as if on the verge of tears, proving that cockblockers have been a thorn in the side of good-intentioned gentlemen for generations.
Leonard Cohen – “Famous Blue Raincoat”
The opus of the Canadian master of sparse, heartbreaking anthems of isolation and emotional despair laments a lover’s letter written to his brother who is having an affair with his future wife. “And you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody’s wife.” The song recalls the way she looks in her tattered famous blue raincoat and concludes with the speaker being relieved with having the woman off his hands, whose troubles he knew he could never tame. So cheer up and forget about that chick who stomped on your heart ’cause she was probably a psycho anyway.
Radiohead – “Creep”
You remember just as well as I do when you were in the eighth grade you would sing this song into your bathroom mirror and cry and cry. As hilariously pathetic as it is to look back on this humiliating time in your life, when you saw your best friend walk hand-in-hand to the bus with the girl you thought was the love of your life, it was like the holocaust thrown into the great plague. Well, if you’re reading this, congratulations; you got through it, and I believe you owe thanks to Thom Yorke, his lazy eye and the girls (just about all of them) who turned him down and inspired this masterpiece of gloom and rejection.
Peter Paul and Mary – “Puff The Magic Dragon”
No, this song is not about smoking marijuana, so scrape the resin out of the crevices of your brain and pay attention, you damn hippie. What are you, on drugs? Seriously, why is this song such a staple of childhood listening? Had I known what this song was really about when I was a kid, I probably would have been found hanging by my blanky. The song tells a story of an ageless dragon that has a best friend, Jackie Paper, who grows up and loses interest in the imaginary adventures of Puff and leaves it alone and depressed. Honestly, what kind of childhood values does this song promote? That if our imaginary dragon friend gets lame we should just leave it in a ditch? No wonder this generation is so heartless.
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