Songs For a Rainy Day

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• May 24, 2016

Depression, loneliness, heartbreak… all terrible feelings, and yet, so many amazing songs come from those places of hurt.  This list could be in the hundreds (I listen to a lot depressing music), but these are some of my favorites.

15. Back To Black – Amy Winehouse

“We only said goodbye with words
I died a hundred times”

This song is made even more depressing by the tragic early death of Winehouse.  I’ve yet to watch the documentary, only because I know it’s going to be so goddamn depressing.  All of her songs a cry for help… a brilliant cry for help.

14. Blue Moon – Beck

“I’m so tired of being alone
These penitent walls are all I’ve known”

This song is so beautifully sad.  I think it perfectly encapsulates loneliness, and the feeling of being abandoned.  I was torn between this one, and Beck’s “Lost Cause,” which is another beautiful blue song from Beck.

13. Casimir Pulaski Day – Sufjan Stevens

“Goldenrod and the 4H stone
The things I brought you
When I found out you had cancer of the bone”

Those are the opening lyrics of this song.  Yeah, holy shit.  Followed by, ” we lift our hands and pray over your body but nothing ever happens.”  This song tells a story finding out someone is going to die, and then they die.  It’s not a happy ending.  Sufjan Stevens is amazing though.

12. Long Ride Home – Patty Griffin

“Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed
Forty years of things you wish you’d never said
How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead”

While I’ve never been married, or even been in a long term relationship, this song gets me every time.  This song is so regretful.  Death is sad enough without the feeling of regret, and I think that’s why this song stings so much.  It makes me terrified to be a committed relationship.

11. All I Want – Kodaline

“But if you loved me
Why’d you leave me?
Take my body
Take my body”

A break-up song, but this one screams heartbreak like no other.  My god, this song is fucking sad.  It’s so sad, it’s almost pathetic, and yet bewitching.  I’ve been heartbroken, but not this bad.  Jesus, I don’t wish this kind of heartbreak on anyone.

10. Samson – Regina Spektor

“You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first”

Regina Spektor isn’t just an amazing musician, and vocalist, but she’s a killer story teller.  She’s said a lot of her songs are just based on stories, and this is based on the biblical story of Samson.  I grew up Catholic, so this songs lyrics and melody stuck with me the first time I heard it.  Told from the perspective of Delilah who betrayed Samson… so goddamn pretty this song is.  Also, the music video great.

9. Brick – Ben Folds

“She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly”

For a long time, I thought this song was about being in a relationship with someone who has crippling depression, but it’s actually worse… It’s based on an abortion Ben Fold’s ex-girlfriend had that was tremendously painful for both of them.  Honestly, I’m very much pro-choice, but if I did ever get pregnant, this song would be the one thing that would make me second guess having an abortion.   Fuck.  It’s a rough one.

8. Want and Able – Jack White

“Now, Want and Able are two different things
One is desire, and the other is the means
Like I wanna hold you, and see you, and feel you in my dreams
But that’s not possible, something simply will not let me”

Upon first listen, this isn’t really a sad song.  But the more I listened to it, the more I was convinced this is one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard.  That last lyric (above) has a lot to do with it.  The idea of Want vs Able, your dreams may never be fulfilled, or who you love might not love you back… it’s just one of those sad truths of life, Want and Able are two different things.

7. Rocket Ship – Guster

“I am not to be martyred
I am not to be worshipped
Did it not be strong, strong, strong
I implicate no others in this crime”

This song is about suicide.  While none of the members of my favorite band have killed themselves (thank goodness), this a suicide note, and it’s stunning.

6. No One’s Gonna Love You More Than I Do – Band of Horses

“Anything to make you smile
It is a better side of you to admire”

Band of Horses has become one of my favorite bands in recent years, and almost all their songs have a haunting element to it.  This is another break up song.  The break up seems inevitable, for whatever reason, so it makes for a terrible love song for a love that cannot go on.

5. Above The Clouds of Pompeii – Bear’s Den

“Don’t cry
Hold your head up high
She would want you to”

This song is about losing someone.  This is one of the most heart wrenching music videos I’ve ever seen, and yet it’s so simple.  So elegant.  Just like the song.

4. No Surprises – Radiohead

“This is my final fit
My final bellyache”

No band makes music with raw emotion quite like Radiohead.  This one is about suicide.  No Surprises is about someone slowly dying on the inside.  I love this song.

3. World Spins Madly On – The Weepies

“Woke up and wished I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you’d gone
and let the world spin madly on”

Not sure if this is about a break up or someone dying, either way, it’s about lost love, and how the world doesn’t give a shit.  The world indeed does spin madly on, no matter who has died or left you, or how you feel about it.  Which is maddeningly poetic.

2. Anywhere I Lay My Head – Tom Waits

“I don’t need anybody
Because I learned to be alone”

To be honest, this entire list could be all Waits songs.  When I’m in downswings, it’s just Waits all the time in my apartment.  I think this might be a less obvious choice for a Waits sad song, but this one is so sad.  It’s about being lonely, and drinking to cope with that, and not really belonging anywhere.  It’s brilliant.

1. Never is a Promise – Fiona Apple

“You’ll say
Don’t fear your dreams
It’s easier than it seems
You’ll say you’d never
Let me fall from hopes so high
But never is promise
And you can’t afford to lie”

This song has made me cry more than any other song, and it’s meant different things to me at different points in my life.  Fiona Apple was in her teens when she wrote this, and it’s hard to fathom anyone that young writing something so fucking dismal yet lovely.  I think this song is about parents and/or people who care deeply about you, yet don’t understand you.  It’s gorgeous.