Top 10 Sad Songs

If you watch television – or work in advertising – you will probably have the noticed the irritatingly chirpy brand of happy, kooky music that features on a great deal of current commercials. iPod adverts contain toe-shuffling, hat-fidgeting silhouettes gyrating wildly to the sort of empty, sunny, world funk that remains on rotation in Giraffe Restaurants, and T Mobile (or is it Orange?) present us with tousled-haired, ethnically diverse 'mates' falling out of each other's jacket sleeves over a song about 'snapping turtles' and 'psychedelic squid' that makes Phoebe Bouffet sound about as quirky as Dido.

Now, as an intensely bitter man, there are a lot of things that annoy me - Facebook, Fearne Cotton, people who use the phrase 'monged out' – but this constant tirade of happy music has struck a particularly sensitive chord with me, as I am a firm believer that, when it comes to music; the sadder, the better. So, with this in mind, Ruffhousing is proud to present, the top 10 sad/depressing songs!


1. Daniel Johnston – Tears Stupid Tears

Now, what list of sad songs would be complete without everyone's favourite weepy Beatles Fan, Danny J? Of all Johnston's sad songs – and there are many – this is, I think, the most poignant; pretty much every line is loaded with more poetic sorrow than the diary of your average fat female teen. Just a smattering of some of the best/saddest lyrics: “time is a matter of fact/and it's gone and it'll never come back/and mine is wasted all the time”; “I got lucky by coincidence”; “tie my brain into a knot/those tears, stupid tears bring me down”. Yes, this is the song to play to get any party (if by 'party' you mean 'mass suicide') started!

2. Cat Stevens – Trouble

You don't get more depressing than this. While Cat may have the Christian name of a domestic pet, he also has the troubled mind of a recently-bereaved schizophrenic Smiths-fan who's just rented 'Schindler's List'. Haunted vocals and fantastically sombre lyrics make up this forlorn ode to the 'trouble' that constantly dogs (semi-pun not intended) Stevens. Each line seems to be building towards a terrible end - from “I've seen your eyes/I can see death's disguise hanging on me” to “I'm beat and torn/shattered and tossed and worn/too shocking to see” - until, at the very end of the song, our battered protagonist claims, “I don't want no fight, and I haven't got a lot of time”. Elliot Smith also covered this, and he was hardly a barrel of laughs, was he?

3. Jonathan Richman – True Love Is Not Nice

Some of the best sad songs are the ones that come out of nowhere. When artists like Daniel Johnston or Elliot Smith come out with a tear-jerker or a wrist-slasher, it may be deeply upsetting, but it's also thoroughly expected. That's why number 3 on our list has such an impact, for Jonathan Richman is not the sort of singer that usually does 'sad'. A huge departure from his normal musings on creepy crawlies, flightless birds and supermarket yetis, 'True Love Is Not Nice' is the perfect Anti-Love Song; very quiet, very tired, and packed with lines like 'Pain, pain pain/ain't that just love's name' which seem designed to warn the listener not to risk the kind of hurt that Richman must have experienced.


4. Nico – These Days

Ah, good old Nico. They don't make them like this any more. Voice of a torture chamber, demeanour of a drunken Nazi; you just don't get that from Lily Allen or Joss Stone. Anyway, ironically enough, this song is taken from the happiest of all Nico's albums, 'Chelsea Girl', but while the peaceful twittering of the musical backing may suggest T Mobile advert material, the lyricism (courtesy of Jackson Browne) is far bleaker. This song is the story of wasted opportunities and bitter – yet accepted – regret; Nico sings, “these days I seem to think a lot/about the things that I forgot to do”. The lyrics capture the exact moment that she gives up on any chance of happiness, claiming “I stopped my dreaming” and “I had a lover/I don't think I risk another, these days”.

5. Bob Dylan – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

This song is a good one to have on this list as it proves that not all sad songs have to be self-indulgent. On '...Hattie Carroll', Dylan relates a story he read in the paper about a young, rich white man (William Zantzinger) who was “doomed and determined to destroy all the gentile” by murdering an old, poor black woman (Hattie Carroll) for “no reason”. The amount of detail we get on each character (and particularly the focus on Hattie Carroll and her young children) is inspired in creating such a real sense of how terrible this act was, and the final line of the chorus - “bury the rag deep in your face, for now is the time for your tears” - is more sad and powerful than Sylvia Plath in an armoured car.


6. Xzibit – Carry The Weight

Now, this is the only hip hop song on the list, and I know what you are thinking: “where the hell is that fish-obsessed crybaby, Ghostface?”. Well, to be honest, though Tony Starks loves a good weep, I don't think he can touch Mr X to the Z for sheer depression on this track. “I was at the funeral when it all began”, claims Xzibit within the first few lines of 'Carry The Weight', and it becomes immediately clear that this won't be one of his club tracks. He goes on to narrate what essentially reads like an NSPCC case study of a bad childhood – at age 13, X notices “me and my sister were getting treated like shit”, “physical contact was in the form of a slap” and that he would “forever be hit with anything in reach”. Not so lachrymose now, are you Ghostface? In fact, you probably don't know what 'lachrymose' means.

7. The Moldy Peaches – Nothing Came Out

I recently discovered that Carl Barat - of Dirty Pretty Things and formerly of The Libertines - likes The Moldy Peaches and this fact alone is reason enough to feel sad while listening to them. However, despite the fact it is made by a band championed by a cunt, 'Nothing Came Out' really is a great sad song in the most uncomplicated way. It has all the ingredients: lo-fi backing, a girl with a tearful voice and unrequited love as subject matter. The standard, the template, the stock sad song.


8. Mr Bungle – Pink Cigarette

This one, like Nico's 'These Days', has all the initial aural hallmarks of a happy song. The musical backing to the verse is all excited whispering and delicate pianos, but when the chorus comes in, the song takes a much darker turn, both lyrically and sonically. Mike Patton's voice takes the shape of a ghost impersonating Elvis Presley, as he relates a beautifully potent tale of love lost: “I found a pink cigarette/on your bed the day that you left/how could I forget that your lips were there/your kiss goes everywhere/touching everything, but me”. Similarly to Cat Stevens' 'Trouble', above, this song ends with a hint (albeit slightly less ambiguous than Stevens') at suicide, as Patton claims, “it's just one hour left until you'll find me dead”. Classic depressing stuff.


9. Skip James – Hard Luck Child

Well, clearly the blues had to be represented here (in fact, if you wanted to be anal about it, the whole list would be made up of blues songs) and Skip James' 'Hard Luck Child' narrowly beats Blind Lemon Jefferson's tale of losing his mother on 'Black Snake Moan' because, although Jefferson is motherless, sightless and named after a citrus fruit, he does not – as Skip does – have the “devil everywhere I go”. Not only does James have to deal with Satan himself popping up whenever he's at a bus stop, a church fete, or even on the loo, but he also manages to cram some unrequited love business (a textbook sad song inclusion) into this track, claiming, “she used to be my girl/look who got her now”.

10. Tom Waits – Trampled Rose

What better way to end this list than with a bit of Waits? His voice (which he obtained through 50 cigarettes a day and a pint of gravel before bed) may sound great over sloppy, broken jazz and sea-shanties, but it is on sad songs that it really achieves full potential. He sounds as if it is actually hurting him to sing this song, and the lines themselves are so brilliantly melancholic; Waits claims, “I know this rose/like I know my name/the one I gave my love/it was the same/now I find it in the street/a trampled rose”. Furthermore, his cracked wail after each chorus – like a drunken distress call – is the depressed cherry on top of this bleak, heart-broken cake.