Readers' Sad Songs: No.14

This song... I have a love/hate relationship with Mad World... It helped me out of my saddest points (borderline depression. Some would say I was in Depression) in life by making me even sadder and learning to appreciate my surroundings and my friends. That is the love par of my relationship... The hate part?? I almost killed myself listening to the song and understanding to the lyrics because it drove me down really low... To this day, I still fear this song, yet love it when I hear it.

I like the Tears for Fears version, vs this guy....it's not as depressing....for sad songs
how about, "Cat's in the Cradle", Harry Chapin.

what about "Broken" By: Seether and Amy Lee?
I think you all should make a saddest songs list for a younger audience. not all these old bands that most teens haven't heard of.

This song is a lot sadder then the top saddest songs...
Kind of makes my wonder who voted for the top songs

"love is Blind" by EVE a song about domestic abuse thats leads to death.
"smacked you down cuz he said you were too tall for him/ that wasnt love baby girl you was dreamin'/could've killed you when you said your seed was growing from his semen"












"

"Mad World" was written by Roland Orzibal of Tears for Fears, It appeared on their first album "The Hurting". I think Gary Jules does a very good version of it. His voice goes well with this song.

This is a fairly old site now, but if "mom" is reading, I want to say I hadn't read her note before I had sent my "ode to Lisa's music." But it occurs to me that we aren't just LOVING this music, but appreciating the memories, times, emotions they take us back to. If you have a favorite movie even, the theme song will remind you of it, whether you like the song or not. But in real life, it's more than 2-3D. A song revives the sights, sounds, smells, touches, and experiences of a time that is often dormant in memory till even the first few notes play. You, mom, were blessed to be in a (hard won/hard fought) era of cool. Soon after (in a time of post-war "calming" music, suggested one writer), we were left with the unsurpassably UNcool. Yet still, we were still having all the same FIRSTS of "coming of age," and all the teen emotions...just that we're taken back with the music of the age. You may have LIKED the music of your youth, and it is STILL great, but it was also what was on and in the air. "Light My Fire" was the first radio song I remember, but it only brings up playing at the neighborhood pool. Not first love, first losses, driving my shared car with the radio blasting. There were DEFINITELY songs that were even more UNCOOL than I could handle, but there was little to choose from. Years later, I met two brothers who had a then-huge, then-new-media CD collection, filled with the likes of "Air Supply" and whatever the hairdo'd winged/doves(?) group was, and so many other groups/singers I would have NEVER listened to (just as Bread must look to you). I suppose someone who studies this stuff would say this is how it's supposed to be, that music not only defines a generation, but separates it, is its OWN. People who "courted" during the Big Band era were not welcoming Elvis and that "'awful' rock 'n roll." But whether it's that the next generation's soundtrack is too wild or too anesthetizingly dull, the really ironic part is that criticizing someone's affection for it (vs. the music itself) is little (or NO) different than how older "grown-ups" screamed "turn off that rock 'n roll." It WAS a silly time musically--just look at "Music & Lyrics," the movie--but it's also the only sound that accompanied a big time of our lives (with exception of personal choices at home, and not everyone was into collecting their own albums or 8-tracks!). Be thankful you got to be coming into your own on the tail end of COOL.

This may also gall you--but just last week I attended a school musical in which the kids (not mine!) performed 60s music (which I also know and love). The kids twice said "you old people out there must know this song--sing along!" (I already was!) But how well I "knew" the lyrics was challenged that night (or how "old" I really am maybe!). A song was listed in the program whose title I didn't know, yet when it was played, I recognized the song. Just as SO many people guess lyrics incorrectly (due to the way something is sung, their need to hear their own interpretation, or even being too young to imagine such words/themes--as several have written in this site, and which is a phenomenon covered in its own web site--people's GUESSES at lyrics, like "Blinded By the Light")...I knew it was an anthem of discontent with how things were being run in our country, but had thought the lyrics were "Oh, Daddy, ohhh iii ohhh." But as the kids sang the song--as one would sing an unfamilar song, so clearly enunciating each unfamiliar line--and with the context portrayed on stage, for the FIRST TIME I heard, "four dead in Ohio." (Truly, it IS sung in a staccato style, as a kind of drumbeat--O-HI-O, with no emphasis on the "HI" as we would speak it...and I was young when it was happening, and was airing so often.)

It would be interesting to read/take a class about the psychology and sociology of music. So many others on this site say they were, as children, singing lyrics to music whose controversial themes or real meanings they had NO CLUE about. (We were all chanting "voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir" and even when another "mom" told us the literal translation, were even nearly too young/naive to understand the "sleep with" theme! Not to mention all the music saying "I just want to 'LOVE' you," and other metaphoric suggestions of the (likewise euphemistic) "sleeping with" theme! Eventually, the light went on! But I'd been singing the songs for years (and usually got the lyrics right).

Last night my daughter was singing some songs whose words were in the back of a book--even those that weren't familiar to her. She's also a pretty new reader. "...that saved a rich like me."

And YES for Tears in Heaven. I think it was their apartment not a hotel. If ever we could turn back time and "unhappen" something, that would be high on the list. In the criteria I imagine for this list, that one scores high. It was written by its singer, made famous by the original version, and written from the most immediate and REAL of experiences, involves something almost too sad to bear or even HEAR of (even from afar), and is by someone whose talent we have long known, well before this tragedy (in other words, he's not MAKING his career out of this). I bet Clapton donates proceeds too. What a sad victory though. But better than celebrating contrived emotion, common to so many entries, or some that are exploiting the problems of others, even the others themselves. But bottom line, this "article" is just virtual ink. I'm so sorry Clapton was ever moved to "Tears." God bless you, and thank you for singing "heaven." Forever.

Lisa, I want your MP file (if you have one--I don't!) Had forgotten of some of those...LOVE LOVE LOVE Daisy Jane. Watched/heard it live, watching the America singer (then long-hair blond) and thinking he reminded me of my brother (same hair but not blond!), and then just a couple of years later my dear brother died, so WOW...Crying me back to Memphis...(not sure those are the words but who cares? it's what i hear!). My brother died in Tennessee. I was on a roof deck while on a blind (and double) date about the time he died, so James Taylor's "up on the roof" always touches me, but not so much in pain as in love. I had a great brother, and still do. His heartbeat goes on. Love singing LOUDly to Daisy Jane chorus, and the slow piano entry gets me too. Mmmmm. Also a big fan of Bread. Remember spitting out my gum during one of my very first make-out sessions...very romantic...Colorado and a cowboy.
No WONDER I tend to turn off the oldies! So forget the MP after all. It will be enough getting through this "saddest songs" journey! But still--love your recommendations, and I AM glad to "hear" them again (in my head).

This song is great because it is haunting without actually seeing donnie darko. We don't really understand what the song is about yet there is a deeper sense of whats going on. Coupled with Donnie Darko, this song was a masterpiece.