--- Michael Hoover <hooverm at scc-fl.edu> wrote:
> Sad songs say so much
>
> What do Pink Floyd, Bette Midler and Metallica have
> in common? They've all written horribly depressing
> tunes, according to Tom Reynolds, author of I Hate
> Myself and Want to Die. He offers his top 25
> miserable tracks
> Carter / s. lewis / r. seress
No, the absolute 100% over the top depressing song is Gloomy Sunday, a favorite of Billie Holiday's in her ltaer years, and done by a number of people including one great soaked-in-self-pity version by Mel Tome that I have on a CD compilation called, i thing, when Love Goes Wrong, itself a pretty good collection of gloomy songs. But Gloomy Sunday takes the take for silly depressingness. I see it has also been done by Sinead O'Connor, for people who insist on a rock beat for everyrthing.
The lyrics in Billie's version:
Sunday is gloomy, My hours are slumberless Dearest the shadows I live with are numberless Little white flowers Will never awaken you Not where the black coaches Sorrow has taken you Angels have no thoughts Of ever returning you Wouldn’t they be angry If I thought of joining you?
Gloomy sunday
Gloomy is sunday, With shadows I spend it all My heart and i Have decided to end it all Soon there’ll be candles And prayers that are said I know But let them not weep Let them know that I’m glad to go Death is no dream For in death I’m caressin’ you With the last breath of my soul I’ll be blessin’ you
Gloomy sunday
Dreaming, I was only dreaming I wake and I find you asleep In the deep of my heart here Darling I hope That my dream never haunted you My heart is tellin’ you How much I wanted you Gloomy sunday
Billie also has the actually great very depressing, still-horrifying anti-lynching song she coauthored, Strange Fruit.
Maybe ten years ago I got a plastic driving cup I needed at a store for filling out a credit application, it had inscrobed on it a name I didn't recognize and don't remember, I asked the girl at the table who's that. "A famous singer," she said. I said, "My idea of a famous singer is Billie Holiday." The girl said, "Who's he?"
Most of Cole Porter's lyrics are incredibly depressing too, even if they don't look that way at first. Listen to You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To or the upbeat sounding, I Get A Kick Out Of You.
Or you could try Brecht and Weill: This is not the complete version of What Keeps Mankind Alive from the Threpennt Opera, just the version Tom Waits does:
You gentlemen who think you have a mission To purge us of the seven deadly sins Should first sort out the basic food position Then start your preaching, that’s where it begins
You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well Should learn, for once, the way the world is run However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell Food is the first thing, morals follow on
So first make sure that those who are now starving Get proper helpings when we all start carving What keeps mankind alive?
What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions are daily tortured Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance In keeping its humanity repressed And for once you must try not to shriek [should be shirk] the facts Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts
It's even darker in German.
jks
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