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Top Five Tuesday: Melancholia

Fall always makes me a little melancholy, but it is a sweet kind of sadness and I sort of enjoy it. There are certain songs that bring about the same feeling every time I hear them, my own bittersweet symphonies, if you will. Here they are, my top five melancholy songs:

  1. “Fire and Rain,” by James Taylor
  2. “The Load Out/Stay,” by Jackson Browne
  3. “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” by Roberta Flack (Apparently the 70s were a good time for bittersweet music.)
  4. “The Stranger,” by the Cure
  5. They Might be Giants, Flood. It’s such a happy album, but I listened to it constantly when I was younger and had a crush on a boy who only had eyes for someone else.

So what about you? Is there any music that you love, even though it makes you sad?

By [E]SaraB

Glass artisan by day, blogger by night (and sometimes vice versa). SaraB has three kids, three pets, one husband and a bizarre sense of humor. Her glass pendants can be found at www.etsy.com/shop/AngryOwlStudio if you're interested in checking it out.

33 replies on “Top Five Tuesday: Melancholia”

I haven’t listened to sad songs lately (or any songs for that matter), but if I want to cry some Kate Bush usually does the trick; This Woman’s Work, Don’t Give Up (with Peter Gabriel), and Cloudbursting (the video tore me up as a kid). When I think of fall/winter songs, California Dreaming comes to mind. My son tried to tell me that there were no songs for November, but I pointed out November Rain. Ha! I’m still thinking I want to make a Thanksgiving song…

I hate posting on music lists like this because I have horribly mainstream taste in music. But I have decided “lurk no more” is my current motto so here are some songs from my Triste playlist:

Landslide-Fleetwood Mac
Do What You Have to Do-Sarah McLachlan
Something I Can Never Have-Nine Inch Nails
Ocean-Against Me!
My Immortal-Evanescense (Shut up. I went through a really bad breakup right when that hackneyed shit came out.)

And just to clear the air from that I have to tell some people who will understand the irony of this. I just got into it on facebook with a dude about this secession nonsense. He was supporting it and saying he’d sign if Kerry got the Sec of State or Defense nomination. Dude, for reals, lives on 100% disability from the VA. Really. How do these people live?

My Immortal is awesome. Full stop. I will fight for it. Yes, Evanescence is cheesy, that song is the shit. I back you 100%. And now, to make you feel better about your hackneyed shit, I went through a FUCKED up break up and bawled my eyes out to that fucking James Blunt “Goodbye My Lover” shit for days. Horrible song, but it spoke to me. Ugh. That was awful.

“Let it Be”–the version from the Across the Universe movie makes me cry. I’m not sure I have the emotional fortitude to come up with a list of top five melancholy tunes tonight. Not that I’m already a weeping mess, but I think I need to reserve my energy for other endeavors. :)

I have an entire playlist for when I feel like sobbing my guts out. Highlights include:
Dire Straits, “Romeo and Juliet”
U2, “All I Want is You”
James, “Dream Thrum”
Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”
REM, “Nightswimming”
The Sundays, “Wild Horses”

The “Call a Wahmbulance” mix has no shame.

Romeo + Juliet is one of those songs that had me saying to my mother, “You have to listen to this!” It was the version by The Killers and my darling mother said, “Juniper, I remember the original.” Which is how the majority of our music conversations go these days.

See, I’m reminded every day why you all are my people. “For Emily” is one of the greatest songs ever written, and I think the longing in it is more than appropriate for this thread. The Simon & Garfunkel catalog has at least five songs that make me bawl, can I counter “Emily” with “April, Come She Will” or GAWD “Dangling Conversations”?

Mine include:
1. Rahael Yamagata: Elephants
2. The Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber (duh!)
3. St. Matthew Passion, especially all the interludes that sound like hymns.
4. Most things by Feist.
5. The White Stripes – We Are Going to Be Friends — not really melancholy, but it makes me think of fall!

Oh Lord, I can go down a melancholia spiral if I let myself, but here are some of mine:

1. Black Betty and the Moon – The Horrible Crowes
2. Melissa -Allman Brothers Band
3. Winter Winds – Mumford and Sons
4. Fake Empire – The National
5. Suitcase – Over the Rhine

Pretty much all of the music I love is sad. Very little of it actually makes me feel sad or melancholy, though. If songs make me sad, it’s usually all the way sad, like starting to cry sad. For example, I can’t even begin to listen to “Flyover States” by Jason Aldean, because as much as I think I hate Oklahoma and want to leave, I apparently have rather strong ties to it in my unconscious. I want to cry every time.

Sometimes “Someday” by the Cary Brothers will get me kind of melancholy. Or “My Oldest Friend” and “Make it Without You” by Andrew Belle.

Josh Groban singing the Ave Maria. It’s always sung at funerals in my family, and for my grandmother’s wedding, my cousin sang it. Never having heard him sing anything so solemn, it was not only beautiful, it was incredibly moving. He even says he was trying not to break down during it. So now whenever I hear the Ave Maria, the waterworks start. Immediately. So I avoid it at all costs.

In good news, my info interview went well today. I know that because I got a good vibe, and also because the person I talked to e-mailed our mutual contact about me. MC then forwarded the email to my dad, who forwarded it to me. It basically came down to, “This girl has got what I would look for, if I did the hiring. I’m forwarding her resume to everyone I know with some leverage to see what will happen.” It gave me the happies.

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