Music to slit your wrists too

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So what is the most depressing ( as in Good but Sad) song.

― anthony, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Roxy Music, "Just Another High". Like someone trying too hard to put on a brave face, always the saddest sight, and Manzanera's bullying Les Paulverising just seems to be laughing at him.
Usually for some reason though, melancholy laments don't depress. Usually, really bright, happy-sounding things just destroy me if I'm in the wrong mood. ELO's "Mr Blue Sky" once reduced me to a babbling wreck of nostalgic misery.

― tarden, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

already exists...sorry can't remember the thread title.

― Omar, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Alex Chilton: "Holocaust" on Big Star's "Third" album. One of the top 10 most depressing albums of all time. And of cause everything by Nick Drake, especially the album "Pink Moon" and there especially my all-time favourite "Road". Not to forget everything by the Red House Painters and especially the first long EP "Down Colourful Hill". Quite sad as well despite the title Gun Club's last album "Lucky Jim".

― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

There was a thread Death and Music (hope the link works). But it is mainly about what you would like to listen to at your own funeral.:) I think that really depends on the acoustics of the coffin.:))

― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

A bit of a cliched answer, but the entire second side of "Closer" by Joy Division. I did literally once try to commit suicide to it. Still find the songs utterly haunting.

― masonic boom, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The entirety of the AMPLIFIED HEART album by the quasi-lamentable Everything But the Girl. Unrequited love....:::::::sigh::::::::::

― alex in nyc, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

britney spears: oops, I did it again.

Must be a hidden suicide message in there....or somethign to buy cola ....

― doompatrol23@hotmail.com, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

When I'm depressed, I put on Arap Strap's "Week Never Starts Around Here" to spin me further down the spiral.

― alex in montreal, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Bellbottom Blues is really depressing...

― JM, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Ooooh I forgot about Motel Blues. Go with the Big Star version off of Live.

― JM, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Um, all the usual suspects I suppose, stuff like Joy Division and "The Holy Bible" and that sort of thing, but I always found the Manics' "No Surface All Feeling" to be hella depressing, and I'm bringing that up instead of the others because it's kind of inexplicable, it just really gets to me though.

― Ally, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Atmosphere - JD; Ebow the Letter - REM & patti Smith; If u c her, say hello - b.dylan and most of the red House Painters collection.

― Geoff, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I may be the only person who doesn't listen to music when I'm really depressed. I can't concentrate on anything but what I'm feeling, so I just sit in silence.

Good but sad is Nina Simone singing "Lilac Wine" and Johnny Hartman singing "Lush Life." Coltrane's "Alabama" is pretty sad, too.

― Mark, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

...and Berlin.

― JM, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

"Feel So Sad" on Recurring seems like just the ticket.

Strangely "So Lonesome I Could Cry" which mentions suicide and is technically the saddest song in the world, wouldn't work for me. I'd hear the catch in Hank's throat and want to comfort this dead man, forgetting my own troubles...

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Oh, but the Feel So Sad remix by Spiritualized... aaahhhh, the orchestral sighs and gushes. Actually, they've managed to make the song not sad at all, but actually rather triumphant and beautiful. Which sort of defeats the purpose.

― masonic boom, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Almost any instrumental version of the swing classic, "Sing Sing Sing." Honestly, I don't know why--but my whole life it's given me a chill.

― X. Y. Zedd, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Summer Lies if your up to cutting yourself.

― Jeff, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I like the Shangri-Las. Especially "Dressed in Black" - how goth.

― Kerry Keane, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The most crushing, cold album ever made is Low's Songs for a Dead Pilot -- it's breathtakingly icy, and numb. It's the perfect music for an attack of depressive insomnia at 4:30 in the morning.

― Phil, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Good but sad is Nina Simone singing "Lilac Wine...

Nina Simone singing anything chills me - especially 'I think it's going to rain today' - Newman's song get's delivered with such joy and defeat... Search also 'I loves you Porgy' (not the one where she improv's at the end, but plays it straight through).

Chappaquidick Skyline's last cd sounds like a terrible, joyous hangover, along with a few tracks by Bedhead.

There's a few S.Merrit tunes I know where depression reigns supreme, but the prozac just kicked in and I can't think of any right now.

― Jason, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

When I read "Sing" I thought you meant Travis - which actually really makes me want to kill myself. Unfortunately it doesn't go under "Good but Sad".

― Ally, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I wouldnt classify Nina as depressing, more a warm sad like a johnny mercer song. Sunday in Savannah, Do what you gotta do....

― doompatrol23@hotmail.com, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

if drinking don't kill me, her memory will; the grand tour; he stopped loving her today - george jones

how's my ex treating you? - jerry lee lewis

pissing in a river - patti smith

come back to me - x

― fritz, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Nina Simone. Mmm. Makes me think of Billie Holiday. Her voice must be the saddest in the world. Especially in her last years. I have got an album where her voice is totally destroyed from drugs and alcohol, she does not thing anymore, she utters sounds. And the song "Fruit Tree" is really touching. It gives me the chills (is this correct English?).

― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Sorry, crap. The song is called "Strange Fruit", but "Fruit Tree" is nick Drake's three disc works. And that is sas too.

― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

No-one seems to have mentioned Mr. Leonard Cohen. 'Songs of Love and Hate' is about as dark as it gets: in particular 'Dress Rehearsal Rag'. Great album all the same. I must give a special mention to Nick Cave's 'Your Funeral, My Trial'... he certainly sounds pissed off on that record.

― Johnathan, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Y'know - funny, I was about to mention that the 'into your arms'-era Cave was vaguely reminiscient of 'Shivers' by his pre-band Boys Next Door (another maudlin classic about suicide).

― Jason, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Lovelorn melancholy: Carpenters-"Goodbye to Love" or Linda Ronstadt -"Long Long Time".

For eerie, apocalyptic depressing, I'd go with the Kinks "Rainy Day in June" ("the cherished things are perishing...the reckoning is beckoning...")

And the Ramones' "What's Your Name" always chokes me up.

― Arthur, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

"you are my sunshine, my only sunshine..."

― sundar subramanian, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I don't find Nina Simone to be particularly depressing, but I AM going to see her tonight!! AND saw her last week in New York, thank you!

Actually, Bryan Ferry's version of "You Are My Sunshine" is pretty depressing...

― Sean, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

My friend has a tape of her mom singing "God Only Knows" on the radio to win a promotional contest, and evry time I hear it or even think about it I cry like crazy.

― 1 1 2 3 5, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Nina Simone , Low, god you guys are good at this .

― anthony, Wednesday, 11 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

"Today I Started Loving You Again" by Merle Haggard is potentially lethal. Also I think "You Are My Sunshine" (Jimmie Davis...leave it the fuck alone, Bryan) was a serious suggestion...it would've been if I'd suggested it. It actually is a very sad song.

― Duane, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

of course it was serious.

― sundar subramanian, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The question is, Sundar (you slowcore hating hardass you), have you ever heard the Low version?

― Josh, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Beth Orton's cover of Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine is some sad stuff. Jeff Buckley's cover of Hallelujah is heartbreaking. Also Rhubarb, aka track three, disc 1 on Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II just kills me.

― bnw, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

personally i think that troublegum by therapy? is pretty severe stuff, especially the first half. i love the record, but i can't listen to it because of its effect on me. i think over a year, i'm feeling able to play it about three times.

because i am definitely listening to the music _because_ i was miserable, rather than having the music make me miserable.

― richard, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

they had natalie merchant singing daydream believer on the dawson's season finale last night - that's the 2nd time this week I've cried from a tv show

― Geoff, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Thread title: sp: 'to'.

― the pinefox, Friday, 13 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

"Piano in the Dark" destroys me. Who sang that one?

― tarden, Friday, 13 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

josh: yes. i think i've heard most of their recorded output up through secret name, my sister and a friend both being obsessive fans.

i was thinking more along, say, mother-singing-to-a-child lines than of any specific star performance of the song.

― sundar subramanian, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

'Heroin' - This is in answer to "music to slit your wrists to", and not in answer to "So what is the most depressing (as in Good but Sad) song".

― youn, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Duh. surprised nobody's mentioned "The Bed" from Reed's Berlin album. "And this is the bed... where she slit her wrists... and she said oh oh oh oh what a feeeeeeling."

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The most depressing ( as in Good but Sad) song is the version of 'Fly' on Time of No Reply.

― youn, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

one year passes...

the cure - disintegration

― someone, Monday, 20 January 2003 00:52 (twenty-two years ago) link

Whoever said Patti Smith's "Pissing in a River" is spot-on, that song used to make me want to die every time I heard it. Especially when she starts saying "What about it/you're gonna need me." O Christ I don't even want to think about it. Thank God my youth is gone forever.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 20 January 2003 01:40 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'll second "Bellbottom Blues".. funny how such an overplayed AOR song can still retain so much power.

And my post above about Nina Simone seems like a thousand years ago. It was followed by a fight, by tears, and by over a year and a half of being haunted by memories.

― Sean (Sean), Monday, 20 January 2003 01:43 (twenty-two years ago) link

"Pissing in a River" is deeply moving, but I don't find it at all depressing. I want my youth back, but not as badly as I want

― Sean (Sean), Monday, 20 January 2003 01:45 (twenty-two years ago) link

Xiu Xiu.

― Simon H., Monday, 20 January 2003 01:52 (twenty-two years ago) link

one year passes...

All of Tom Waits' first two albums, Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night.

― Lairor, Friday, 22 October 2004 09:02 (twenty years ago) link

Last night I dreamt
that somebody loved me
no hope, no harm
just another false alarm...

― daavid (daavid), Friday, 22 October 2004 18:20 (twenty years ago) link

did anybody notice the way sean's most recent post here was cut off prematurely? i hope he's ok.

― peter smith (plsmith), Friday, 22 October 2004 19:17 (twenty years ago) link

I can't liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive if living is without you
I can't giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive
I can't giiiive annnnyyymoooooooorre

― Adam Bruneau (oliver8bit), Friday, 22 October 2004 19:29 (twenty years ago) link

Summer Lies if your up to cutting yourself.

for awhile, i thought she was singing "petting myself" which seems like a lot more fun.

i nominate His Name is Alive "Stars on ESP"

― phil-two (phil-two), Friday, 22 October 2004 21:30 (twenty years ago) link

Jandek - I Need Your Life

― Loose Translation: Sexy Dancer (sexyDancer), Friday, 22 October 2004 21:39 (twenty years ago) link

Common anwer, but Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is really, really depressing.

― cdwill, Friday, 22 October 2004 22:40 (twenty years ago) link

On a Roxy level, "Song for Europe" has good self-destructo appeal.

The last song on Low's "Trust" sounds like I'm aleady dead (tm Denis Johnson.)

E. Costello's "I Want You" is horrifying.

Billie Holiday oftens sounds like we're all dying.

Oddly, anything remotely goth seems perky.

Oh--and Johnny Cash's "Delia" sounds like you're singing one last song, the razor blade freshly unwrapped on the nearest end table.

― ian g, Saturday, 23 October 2004 20:56 (twenty years ago) link

Common anwer, but Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is really, really depressing.
-- cdwill (cwilliam...), October 22nd, 2004.

i really have to disagree with this perspective. i think the two NMT albums are achingly human, particularly in how they slide from pervasive warmth to utter depravity in such an effortlessly fluent manner. it really makes you wonder what jeff mangum has seen in his life, or maybe just what kind of drugs he's on. but, depressing? no, no that doesn't hit it for me.

i suggest the song 'crowd of one' by papa m off his 'live from a shark tank' release. that song is DISMAL.

― j.m. lockery (j.m. lockery), Saturday, 23 October 2004 22:28 (twenty years ago) link

OTM for the Cure's Disintegration, assuming that we're referring to the song rather than the album.

My initial response was Taking Back Sunday's "Cute Without The E," but that unfortunately doesn't seem to be what you're looking for.

Klaus Nomi - The Cold Song

― Atnevon (Atnevon), Sunday, 24 October 2004 02:47 (twenty years ago) link

I actually don't find it all that depressing myself, but when Nico's "The End" came out there was an ad for it that said, "Why waste your time killing yourself when you could be listening to this album."

― Dr Benway (dr benway), Sunday, 24 October 2004 05:49 (twenty years ago) link

Macarthur Park always makes me weep.

― Philo Morterer, Sunday, 24 October 2004 11:40 (twenty years ago) link

music to slit your wrists, too.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 24 October 2004 12:14 (twenty years ago) link

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