Melancholy Music

[Dr_Strabismus]

The notorious 1930's song Gloomy Sunday is known as the "Suicide Song", so depressing is its mood and lyrics.

Leonard Cohen's songs have a deserved reputation for mawkishness.

For me, most of Joni Mitchell's "Blue" album is almost too sad for me to play.

And, even though its lyrics are maddenly obtuse, The Beach Boys "Surf's Up", (written by Bryan Wilson during his descent into psychosis) has an uncanny and overwhelming melancholy. The music itself, the cadences and harmonies alone, seem to do it. Surf's Up on YouTube.

So, what songs bring out the melancholia for you?

 

[Guest]

Barber's Adagio for Strings.

That, or anything by the twangy country artists my sister favors. That can easily bring on a quick bout of depression.

 

[Krinein]

"Walking in a Winter Wonderland." It's so saccharinely ... PERKY, don't you think?

Otherwise, the mere cadence of Marianne Faithful's voice is fiendishly morose at times.

 

[ungenderless]

"I should throw myself under a train", by Soul Whirling Somewhere

You didn't say it had to be subtle.

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

"I should throw myself under a train", by Soul Whirling Somewhere

You didn't say it had to be subtle.

Hey, whatever sinks your boat.

But a song with a title like that would inevitably make me laugh, no matter how dirgy and morose they made it.

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

"Walking in a Winter Wonderland." It's so saccharinely ... PERKY, don't you think?

Otherwise, the mere cadence of Marianne Faithful's voice is fiendishly morose at times.

PERKY music is depressing sure, if you're not in a mood for shopping malls and shiny Xmas cheer, and you have a streak of anti-consumerism. But "melancholy"? Not to me. It might send me into a homicidal rampage in my local shopping mall though.

Marianne Faithfull -- I know what you mean.

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

Barber's Adagio for Strings.

That, or anything by the twangy country artists my sister favors. That can easily bring on a quick bout of depression.

I don't know that. I will listen. Strings can certainly have that effect, particulary quartets -- Beethoven's late quartets, with a lot of close-harmony -- two or more instruments playing a melody a tone or a major or minor third apart. The Beach Boys did that a lot too with their vocals.


But when you talk about C&W, I think the cliche is that they're more about self-pity, and not really melancholy.

 

[kendo1]

There was a song by the Beach Boys on Surfs Up about trees.

Depressing, but evocative.

 

[Guest]

The Priest, Joni Mitchell....erm...The Circle Game...Joni Mitchell


hrm.
i think theres a common link here.

The Way You Look Tonight.
Sinatra
(sang that to dad when he was dying. ironical, huh?)

ANYTHING Wagner

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

"A Better place to be" by Harry Chapin

that tag line at the end "right now I'm going nowhere, and anywhere's... a better place... to be" just has a carthartic melancholy ring to it.

That and "Too silent to be real" by Gordon Lightfoot.

 

[ungenderless]

Many, many songs by The Cure.

 

[Aurora Black]

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Mozart's Requiem, particularly the "Lacrymosa" movement.

 

[vampiredust]

Anything by Take That, N'Sync, Backstreet Boys etc etc

 

[Misty_Morning]

......

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Just about anything by Bonnie Raitt. Even her upbeat and really driving songs tend to bring out a little sorrow or the feeling of loss. I think it's just her voice, so incredibly sexy, so incredibly soulful, and so incredilby sad.


I guess the one song that comes to mind is a cover of a John Prine song that she does......Angel From Montgomery.......it's wonderful......

"I can't make you love me..." Bonnie Raitt

Every time...

 

[Aurora Black]

"I can't make you love me..." Bonnie Raitt

Every time...

Prince's cover of the same song.

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

"I can't make you love me..." Bonnie Raitt

Every time...

I had to stop watching, I would have caught a cold. God she's amazing

 

[Misty_Morning]

.....

 

[sereneone4u]

Jeff Buckley....so haunting

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I had to stop watching, I would have caught a cold. God she's amazing

Uh huh.

I'd sell my soul to be able to sing like that...

*sigh*

 

[Skip1934a]

1812 Overture

 

[rgraham666]

The Pogues 'And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' gets me every time.

 

[Minervous]

.....

 

[rgraham666]

Instrumentally, the String Quartet No. 15 in E flat minor, Op. 144 by Dmitri Shostakovich, written shortly before his death, is unremittingly slow and melancholy to the point of gloominess. It is also very beautiful music.

I remember that one. It was used in the original version of Rollerball. Lovely piece of music.

They used a lot of Shostakovich's work in that movie. It's one of only two soundtracks I've ever bought, with Manhattan being the other.

 

[inlovewithyourghost]

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Mozart's Requiem, particularly the "Lacrymosa" movement.

I had a friend that would play this all the time. I used to lay under the piano while she practiced... it was amazing... to feel the vibration of the music penetrating me to the core... *smiles* simply beautiful.