Though a lot of art traffics in carefully calculated downers, it's still remarkably difficult to convey genuine sadness and longing in music without sounding cheap or maudlin. It takes the right combination of music and lyrics to make a song that can bring a tear to a listener's eye while retaining an air of artistic respectability. Here are five songs that manage to achieve just that.
Nina Simone- Black is the Color (of my true love's hair)
The oldest song on this list by a long shot, "Black is the Color (of my true love's hair)" has more than a century of history to it, dating back as far as 19th century Scotland. According to Steven Roud's renowned index of English-language folk songs, this pining lyric poem became a favorite of Americans in the Appalachian Mountains around 1915 but it wasn't recorded until 1941 when John Jacob Niles put together a folk music record. Of the dozens of other versions, the most memorable is easily Nina Simone's spare jazz arrangement from 1965. Simone lends her amazingly expressive pipes to this simple but deep song of longing for a distant lover.
Death Cab For Cutie- Transatlanticism
Speaking of songs about distant lovers, the eight-minute epic title track from Death Cab For Cutie's fourth album is the quintessential song for those who can't help but be far, far away from that special someone. Ben Gibbard's twee, occasionally anachronistic lyrics feel fitting and the climactic chorus somehow makes the words "so come on" sound desperate and profound, perhaps because Gibbard precedes them with the simple but apt statement, "I need you so much closer". At once grand and relatable, "Transatlanticism" is a modern classic.
The Smiths- Please Please Please (let me get what I want)
Perhaps the most popular Smiths B-side, "Please Please Please" first appeared on the rarities compilation Hatful of Hollow. The lyrics are a theatrical wallow, delivered with just the right amount of deadpan and irony as only Morrissey can muster. It's the theme song for every moment of emotional exhaustion and exasperation, but it's the warbling mandolin solo at the end that really sends the track home. Those last notes, distant and sorrowful, say so much more than any words could hope.
Mark Oliver Everett, better known simply as E, has made an entire career of writing sad songs. In fact, listening to one Eels record start to finish can actually be pretty numbing. There is a moment on 2000's Daisies of the Galaxy that stands out among the rest of the band's catalog. Five songs deep the title track buzzes to life with a few plucks of an electric guitar and E starts singing a beautiful, weary song about friends helping each other hold themselves together at what seems like the end of the world. It lends great, even holy importance to little things like escaping into a movie and picking flowers, then ends with a haunting falsetto outro.
Antony and the Johnsons- If It Be Your Will
When some of today's singer-songwriter luminaries got together to toast Leonard Cohen for his decades of musical genius, English renaissance man Antony Hegarty stepped up to take on "If It Be Your Will" from 1995's Various Positions. By the 90's Cohen's voice had grown deep and gravelly, so he often employed female backup singers to balance out the melodies of his songs. Antony's incredible range allowed him to do the vocal work of an entire studio, and to stunning effect. His rendition of "If It Be Your Will" blossoms and breaks hearts as if Cohen intended it that way from the beginning.
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