(Sad Songs & Waltzes is a recurring feature on Muzzle of Bees, where artists share their favorite sad songs. Previous contributors include Megafaun, Delta Spirit, Damien Jurado, Conrad Plymouth, Frontier Ruckus, Strand of Oaks, and Roadside Graves.)
By Linford Detweiler | Over the Rhine
As a young, struggling painter, Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, “I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken.”
Those words haunted me as a young, struggling songwriter, and I’d like to think that somewhere in the world there are music lovers who might slip a song or two of mine on their list of “Saddest Songs Ever…”
But I also wrote these lines in a song once:
“The saddest songs are the happiest
The hardest truths are the easiest
Put yourself to the test
And tell me if you still need me
And I will swallow these words
And see if I can still believe…”
What is that mysterious alchemy that allows the most heart-rending music to make us feel so good? Is it a catharsis of some kind? Or is it because we humans process joy and sorrow in the same physical place in the brain, hence, tears of joy and tears of sadness? Does a sad song reassure us that we’re not alone? Or does it all just come down to love?
Jane Siberry wrote in her song, Love is Everything:
“Love makes sweet and sad the same…”
Regardless, I need heartbroken music. Yes. It makes me feel better.
Here are just a few of my faves. There are many others, but these come to mind at the time of this writing.
Enjoy, but they’re not for the faint of heart.
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Randy Newman – “In Germany Before The War” (Listen)
This song is a black and white foreign film that lasts less than 4 minutes. This song is an orchestral symphony played on a sinking ship that will soon vanish into the deeps forever. This song is a midnight play in Berlin in a back alley theater full of international spies, circus performers and tipsy cabaret singers.
This song feels bigger than a song, but I guess at the end of the day, it’s just a song.
But there’s something about how the chords change back and forth between major and minor – walk a razor blade edge between major and minor – that makes my heart drunk. It’s one of those head on collision songs – between joy and sadness. Love and madness…
Maybe my favorite line ever written in a song:
“I’m looking at the river, but I’m thinking of the sea…”
Does anybody know of a back-story here? For some reason, I’ve never encountered any explanation. But then again, the song is such an all-encompassing experience: I haven’t really worried about it.
Loudon Wainwright and Joe Henry – “You Can’t Fail Me Now” (Listen)
It’s hard to tell whether this song is an ultimatum, a prayer, a wrestling match between a writer and his muse, or a testimony to enduring love—and maybe it’s a little bit of all the above—but the minor key melody will take your heart along for a topsy-turvy ride it will not soon forget. And all of you will be left reeling and a little dizzy when the song finally sets your heart back down beating in its (rib) cage.
Joe Henry erects the soulful scaffolding and nails some of his signature enigmatic lines – I have the (unconfirmed) sense that Loudon served primarily as subtle editor and master interpreter – but in the case of this song it seems like the words throw down an increasingly steep emotional gauntlet: just when you realize what you’re hearing, shake your head and survive, you’re dared in the very next stanza (and the next, and the next) to risk it all all over again.
Let these verses serve as a trailer for the movie that is the actual song:
“I know that fan is moving air
I can see it in your hair
But I can’t bear to breathe it in somehow
I’ll rise and fall with you
‘Cause you can’t fail me now…”
“Salt is sweet upon my mouth
And dark throws sparks against my house
The stain of love’s a smudge upon my brow
But you see through me
And you can’t fail me now…”
“I bit off more than I can chew
It’s something that I tend to do
When fewer words are what we need and how
You bite my tongue
And you can’t fail me now…”
There’s a musical ray of light that comes into the bridge (the song flirts tantalizingly and fleetingly with its relative major key) but the words continue to pack increasing punch:
“I lost the thread among the vines
And hung myself in story lines
That tell the tales I never would allow
God knows the name of every bird
That fills my mind like angry words
But you know all my secret heart avows”
And then the part of the song that I will never comprehend (with my mind) although my heart gets it intuitively and completely:
“We’re taught to love the worst of us
And mercy more than life, but trust me:
Mercy’s just a warning shot across the bow
I live for yours
And you can’t fail me now
I live for your mercy
And you can’t fail me now”
This is a song that wears well on repeat, and it’s a song that I have a feeling will reward a listener who returns to it from time to time over the span of an entire lifetime.
Maria McKee – “Dixie Storm” (Listen)
This beautiful upright piano ballad brought the second Lone Justice record to a close. I was a kid living alone for the first time in a basement apartment in Canton, Ohio, when I first heard this song.
Maria McKee’s untamed voice, and the words and melody seemed at the time to be channeled from a different era. (Was it the dustbowl past, or some future moment of yet-undiscovered stillness and clarity?) She sounded numinous to me – like a vision I might stumble upon in a church basement somewhere in the Deep South. A basement dug in red clay dirt…
But I remember the song itself hitting me dead center at the time, and I played it over and over:
“I received a letter
Like so many others
Mama said, How’s life in the city?
My your sister’s grown
And you just missed those awful Dixie storms
Thank God they’ve passed
Those awful Dixie storms”
I too had left home to pursue something I couldn’t quite name, something that involved music and writing and making music with my friends. I knew what it felt like to get on a Greyhound bus and wave goodbye to my little brother and sister who would finish growing up mostly without me. Leaving home (and also being the one left behind when my older siblings left home one by one) is among the most bittersweet, heartbreaking feelings I have ever experienced.
And Maria put into words the only rationale my heart could come up with at the time:
“When a big city beckons, you have no choice but to go…”
(And yeah, I was making mental notes that I needed to eventually get the hell out of Canton, Ohio. Although now, of course, I always look forward to returning when I have a chance to visit. So many ghosts.)
And I remember writing a note to myself early in my career as a songwriter: “I’ve had to kill so many lives to be alive in this one.”
By saying yes to one life, we say no to countless others.
To me, Dixie Storms is connected in my heart to a poem by Mary Oliver called, The Journey. Sooner or later we are all called upon to begin the work of saving our own lives, and we try to accept the fact that we cannot mend everyone else.
“When I was younger
How I would wonder
What made the sweet Georgia rain
Make me feel so warm
And how God made a Dixie storm
And how I loved those Dixie storms”
I didn’t grow up in the south, but I did grow up in a family that would run out on the porch to watch a thunderstorm roll through and pound down. We wanted to be close to it.
Leonard Cohen – “Bird On A Wire” (Listen)
I think Kris Kristoffersen said something at one time about wanting excerpts of the lyrics from this song on his tombstone. Many of us know it well, but really, this is one of the most perfect, profound lyrics ever written.
“Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free…”
“Like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me…”
I love songwriters that don’t necessarily make themselves look good in a song. Gives me permission to just tell the truth too.
And few songs so articulately and precisely capture the ongoing, lifelong tension between contentment and the hard-to-name hungers that persist:
“I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, “You must not ask for so much.”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”
I often see the above lines in relation to my work as a songwriter. I’m thankful for the ground I’ve covered, and yet there’s a restlessness to dig deeper that never quite goes away. I’m haunted by the idea that I want to do better.
You can experience the song via Leonard’s youthful baritone, or Johnny Cash’s weathered late-in-life delivery. (Or you can hear Mr. Cohen perform the song on his most recent tour. And his voice has never sounded better.) k.d. lang also does an exquisite version on her CD, Hymns of the 49th Parallel. There’s a million versions I’m sure – singers drawn to this song like planets to a sun.
Tom Waits – “Georgia Lee” (Listen)
This is it, you’ve found it: the saddest music in the world. The sound of the piano, his voice…
A 12-year-old black girl named Georgia Lee was raped and murdered around the time that Polly Klaas was raped and murdered. Polly Klaas’s tragic disappearance received massive news and media coverage, while Georgia Lee’s went unnoticed. She had run away from home.
Tom mourns her loss and at the same time, with dignity and gravitas that very few can muster, refuses to accept the loss of Georgia Lee’s particular story and life.
The inevitable tragedy and heartbreak of this messy world and the platitudes that some insist on are confronted forever in these simple lines:
“Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there for
Georgia Lee?”
Tom said in an interview that he felt that kids often run away from home because they want to know they’re worth enough to be looked for and found.
The bridge of this song will break your heart:
“Close your eyes and count to ten
I will go and hide but then
Be sure to find me
I want you to find me
And we’ll play all over
We will play all over again”
Tom had considered leaving the song off of Mule Variations
, but apparently his daughter lobbied successfully for its inclusion. She saw the possibility of not recording and releasing the song as yet another injustice. I’m glad Tom’s daughter prevailed.
Vinyl Giveaway: We have two (2) copies of Over The Rhine’s new album, Long Surrender (on vinyl) to giveaway. To be considered, leave a comment with your favorite sad song(s). We’ll select our winners and notify them by e-mail next week.
OVER THE RHINE TOUR DATES
March 25 – Boston, MA @ The Red Room @ Café 939 (Berklee)
March 26 – New York, NY @ Highline Ballroom
March 27 – Alexandria, VA @ Birchmere Club
March 29 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Café Live
April 1 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Small’s
April 2 – Akron, OH @ Musica
April 5 – Ann Arbor, MI @ The Ark
April 7 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
April 8 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
April 9 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theater
April 10 – Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
May 15 – Nelsonville, OH @ Nelsonville Music Festival
May 24 – St. Louis, MO @ Old Rock House
July 7 – Akron, OH @ An Evening with Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens
Buy: Over The Rhine – Long Surrender
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MP3: Over The Rhine – “The King Knows How”
. I never tire of it. We’re very excited for the