Why, It's the Worst Day of the Year!
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Welcome to the worst day of the year! Ready, set, be miserable! In honor of this glorious day, I would like to open up the forum to you guys. What is the most depressing song ever? "Eve of Destruction" and "Alone Again, Naturally" are up there, but my nomination is above. That being said, I kind of like how peppy the song is at the same time it is so depressing.
Dust in the Wind
"The Living Years" by Mike and the Mechanics
Barbie Girl
While it is a great song, "Downbound Train" by Springsteen is the most depressing for its inspiring lyric:
"I had a job, I had a girl
I had something going Mister in this world,
I got laid off down at the lumber yard,
our love went bad, life got hard,
Now I work down at the car wash,
where all it ever does is rain
Don't you feel like you're a rider
on a Downbound Train?"
This is not even a competition. It has already been well established that the most depresssing song in the history of the world is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot.
Richard Jeni actually used to do a stand-up routine about how everytime a party in his house had been going on too long he would play this song and the place would be empty by the third verse. I think the record would show that Richard Jeni knew from depressing...
I mean the song is a ballad about a shipwreck where eveyone dies. Makes Springsteen's existential moaning sound like Mmmm...Bop.
Was the use of Richard Jeni as supporting your claim to "most depressing" intentional or accidental irony?
And here I thought I felt bad because I was hung over.
Most depressing song...Well, you have all those dead teenage songs from the 50s and 60s ("Leader Of The Pack", "Ode To Billy Joe" etc.). "Tell Laura I Love Her" was #1 in a poll for saddest songs ever. My choice - two songs same title. "Patches" In one Patches dies and her boyfriend (who's singing the song) kills himself to be with her. In the other Patches, a 13 year old, has to drop out of school to support his family after his father dies.
Political - "Abraham, Martin And John" I always get depressed hearing that.
I'd leave the party if someone played "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" too. Not because it's sad. Because it sucks.
It's just not possible to argue about sad songs with a guy who could listen to Johnny Cash's "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer" and root for the machine.
Allow me to second Ern's vote for Patches (the Clarence Carter version). There's so much pain in that man's voice...
Anything by Elliot Smith. Anybody who commits suicide by stabbing himself in the heart--twice--can't be too upbeat about his tunes.
Blech.
The song "Yesterday" as sung by a choir of dimentia-ridden seniors with mechanical voice boxes, in a dingy nursing home lobby on Christmas Eve gets me teary-eyed every time.
At Seventeen (aka music to slash your wrists by) Janis Ian. Depressess me just to think about her and that song. I'm shuddering.
"One" by Three Dog Night. I mean, they even take a shot at "two" in that song, an innocent bystander which, apparently, can be as bad as one. Bastards.