Middle Aged Angst: A Playlist

We've got lots of teen angst songs, but what about for us middle aged dudes? Economic anxiety, romantic strife, creeping mortality...what are some songs that best capture it?

1. The Righteous Path - Drive-By Truckers

2. Carly Simon - Coming Around Again

3 Bruce Springsteen - The River

4. Buddy Guy - Done Got Old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itN1Sh1TvAk

5. Tom Russell - The Pugilist at 59

6+. Bob Seger - Pretty Much Every Song From "Night Moves" On

already lost count, sry

de la soul ― "trying people" (2001)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzxHsSfKvUY

8. Lee Hazlewood - "My Autumn's Done Come"

9. Jack - "Sleeping Makes Me Thirsty"

10. Warren Zevon - "My Shit's Fucked Up"

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

Frank Sinatra (among others), "Autumn Leaves"

Jenny Lewis - “Just One Of The Guys”

12. Chuck Prophet - You and Me Baby (Holding On)

13. Fleetwood Mac - "Landslide"

14. Renée - High time he went
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbAx2KZnZbA

15. Neil Young, "Old Man" (which he wrote at age like 22 or whatever)

Leonard Cohen - Tower of Song

Bob Dylan - Not Dark Yet

6+. Bob Seger - Pretty Much Every Song From "Night Moves" On

If songs about being a middle-aged woman are allowed, I'm nominating "Rock and Roll Never Forgets" and also "The Fire Inside."

Paul Simon's "The Obvious Child" is the most thoroughly middle-aged song I can think of.

"You Can Call Me Al" is a close second.

I can’t hear Silver Moons by Sunset Rubdown without bawling, that’s probably the best one

James McMurtry - Canola Fields

Vampire Weekend, "Capricorn"

Woody Guthrie / Wilco - "One by One" (Mermaid Avenue)

Prefab Sprout - I Remember That

Billy Joel, "Famous Last Words"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5iD_979S4M

gerry rafferty -- "baker street"
pink floyd -- "dogs"
bob dylan -- "tangled up in blue"
jackson browne -- "the pretender"
the police -- "synchronicity ii"

Soft Cell - "Frustration"

Sheena Easton - Morning Train (9 to 5)
Inspiral Carpets - This Is How It Feels

Hashtag - Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

Lyle Lovett - Pontiac

Lightnin' Hopkins- My Grandpa is Too Old

Nick of Time - Bonnie Raitt

The Mountain Goats- Riches and Wonders

Does "angst," in this context, include a bittersweet nostalgia / sadness? If so, there's a ton of good choices

• Iron & Wine – Each Coming Night
• Wilco – Please Be Patient With Me
• Richard Hawley – Darlin’ Wait for Me
• Kenny Rodgers & Sheena Easton – We’ve Got Tonight
• The Clientele – Dreams of Leaving
• The Clientele – Losing Haringey
• The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (entire album)
• Alejandra and Aeron -- Bousha Blue Blazes (entire album)
• William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops
• Nick Cave – Waiting for You
• R.E.M. – I Will Try Not To Breathe
• The Pretenders – Back on the Chain Gang
• Leonard Cohen – Treaty
• Tom Waits – I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You

Okay, that’s enough, lol. I mean, obviously, much of this is subjective and/or based on personal experience. You might say some of the above are just songs about loneliness and isolation and sadness. To me, they’re also about aging and nostalgia and so on.

Currently obsessed with this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn36sWplMUY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RUIeX6UCT8

Reggie mentioned it up the page, but Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street", with "another year and then we'll be happy / just one more year and then we'll be happy" was the first thing that came to mind. Mainly for its use in Eccojams, which really hammers the words in. As you approach your late twenties you start to realise that you are not going to be Tin Tin. You are instead going to be Captain Haddock. So you have a choice between buckling down and achieving your goals, or dulling the pain with alcohol and learning to hang on with... I dunno, something like quiet desperation.

That sounds like the germ of a good song. I would write it myself, but all I have is half a page of scribbled lines. And several hundred sheets of paper that contain an orchestrated rock adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Not sure where that came from.