What is the most depressing song of all time?
Jan 31st
It’s my birthday next week* and I am doing karaoke. I have been mulling over my song choices. I’m currently considering “All I Want For Christmas Is You” (I don’t care it’s out of season). I’m also keen on “Bleeding Love”, but my friends are trying to steer me away, fearing it is ambitious. I’m choosing carefully as in the past I have been known to unintentionally pick songs that kill dead the mood of the private karaoke box. Which brings me nicely onto this week’s blog post.
My iPod has gained a bit of a reputation amongst my friends as being bloody depressing. My ill-fated “house party playlist” showed me that songs I think are uplifting floor fillers are to others more sit-down-and-ponder-existential-suffering. Note: Karma Police by Radiohead does not get the party started.
So, scrolling through my iPod, I decided to create a cheerful blog post about the most depressing songs of all time. There have been many lists before that contain the usual suspects (Gary Jules “Mad World”, The Verve “The Drugs Don’t Work””, REM “Everybody Hurts”) so I’ve gone for an alternative list. I’ve even divided them into nice categories for your convenience. Please do contribute your own suggestions and thoughts in the comments below.
Just plain depressing (but good):
Sia – “Breathe Me”
You probably wont know this song but might recognize the instrumental that starts at 4:27, which is used in any emotional TV musical montage worth watching, along with the instrumental in Desree’s “Kissing You”. It was used as the finale song in the brilliant “Six Feet Under”, which is worthy of a hundred blog posts in itself. If you haven’t seen the final episode then skip on, but this song accompanies perhaps the best six minutes ever shown on TV. In these last minutes we see the future death of each character, who you have got to know over six seasons. Alan Ball is so clever he even manages to make everything six. Brilliant TV and a fitting song. I blubbed for approximately 24 hours after watching. Proper ugly blubbing, like Alexandra Burke when she won X Factor.
Arcade Fire – “Cold Wind”
Another song discovered through the “Six Feet Under” soundtrack: this one’s used to accompany the disappearance of the main character’s wife who vanishes one day. The song itself is about a man disappearing and by the time the funereal organ starts and the background singers start chanting “dead, dead, dead” (some say it’s “hey, hey, hey”, but I’m sure it’s not) it has got bloody depressing. But great.
Songs That Try To Be Depressing But Actually Are Just Funny
Eternal – “Don’t You Love Me”
Who could forget Eternal’s apocalyptic vision of the social chaos the world was descending into in 1997? Eternal went all “let’s put social messaging in our songs” with potent lyrical content like “why does granny have to walk the streets?” and “child goes to the store for a loaf of bread/bullets flying all around his head”. The child choir is the icing on the cake.
Mel C – “If That Were Me”
Mel C’s enlightened song about homelessness. It contains the lyric “I couldn’t live without my phone/But you don’t even have a home”. Possibly. The. Worst. Lyric. Ever.
Songs That No-One Else Finds Depressing But I Do:
The Foundations – “Build Me Up Buttercup”
I fully acknowledge that it is probably only me that finds this song soul achingly depressing. But I maintain that it is (in exclusively bad ways). There’s something about “Build Me Up Buttercup” that sums up every rubbish night out I had at university spent in a club I didn’t really want to be in, dancing to rubbish music with groups of people alternating between inappropriately snogging each other and crying. Those introductory bars are enough to make me shudder. Argh! This gets no video.
Sugababes – “About You Now”
An uplifting pop song (and the Sugababes’ best moment without Siobhan), this song was transformed for me by its inclusion in one of Hollyoaks’ better sequences. Now, before you laugh, Hollyoaks went through a stage a few years ago of breaking free of its trashy storylines about fit girls to produce some brilliant, innovative plots. One of the best, which should not have worked, was Max’s funeral. Steph, his widow, is a wannabe singer, but isn’t actually very good. When she stands up at Max’s funeral to sing “About You Now”, it absolutely *should* be hideous and silly. Instead, her a-cappella off key rendition is pretty touching, especially as the song sums up her regret at umm-ing and err-ing over Max before they got married.
Watch the brilliance here! It was the closest we got to making my housemate who never cries cry.
Songs That Are More Depressing Than They Seem:
David Gray – “The One I Love”
David Gray puts something into his chords that makes all his songs fill you with sad nostalgia. If any of my Internet Following is musically minded please do explain how he does this. “The One I Love”, my favourite of David’s songs, initially sounds like his most cheerful, with a chirpy jangly melody and the nice “tell the stars above/that you’re the one I love” chorus. Oh no no. Listen properly and you realize this song is actually sung by a man bleeding to death, hallucinating about his lover. Amazing.
Kelly Clarkson – “Because of You”
This song is obviously sad and on first listen seems like a typical power ballad sung by rejected ex. Oh no. In fact, it has some of the bleakest pop lyrics I know. Listen carefully and it’s actually about a child who’s been emotionally damaged by a parent (“I watched you die, I heard you cry/every night in your sleep/I was so young, you should have known better than to lean on me”). The song gets darker as the music builds, culminating with Kelly telling us how ashamed she is of her life because it’s so empty. Few pop songs go this bleak.
There are so many more I could have written about (Mika’s “Happy Ending”, especially when the cuddly toys start crying in the video; George Michael’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” – oh dear Lord, Peter Andre is releasing a version of this; Sinead O’Connor “Nothing Compares To You” – that one perfect tear in the video), but that’s enough for today. Glee is now on. To lighten the mood, I want to end with one of my favourite YouTube clips ever: Karen from Outnumbered pretending to be Gordon Ramsay and Nigella Lawson:
* Feel free to send me birthday emails/leave birthday comments/send presents. Or suggest karaoke songs.
X Factor: Week 4 Live Show (Rock)
Oct 31st
Everything is in chaos. Louis is again talking sense, Dermot is being irritating (!) by defending the rubbish acts (shut up Dermot! *gasp*) and Cheryl has snapped her new single in half and pritt-sticked it to the top of her dress.
Most shocking of all: Brian Friedman was on top form this week. Through each song he taught us something insightful about the act:
Joe:
In this song, Brian subtly conveyed that Joe as a performer is as relevant as contemporary ballet is in a rock song. Housemate Without Twitter made me miss the first bit by forcing us to watch Calvin from Hollyoaks dance on Strictly, so who knows what gems Brian threw in at the beginning.
What we’ve established about Joe is that he sings songs very in tune. I ask again: would anyone pay to see him sing very in tune in concert? However, one might pay to see him in Joseph.
P.S. I still need a nickname for him – please suggest.
Sarah From Hollyoaks (Lucie):
Yes, of course: the opening lyrics of Sweet Child Of Mine (“She’s got a smile that it seems to me / Reminds me of childhood memories”) scream out “I’m actually singing this down a telephone”. Of course! This makes perfect sense. Perhaps Brian is also subliminally trying to get us to associate Lucie with the phone and thereby persuade us to vote.
And she’ll need it this week: once she put the phone down, things picked up. Great vocals at the end and the song choice broke her out of ballad mould. A good performance with good comments from the judges. She’s doomed.
Danyl:
Brian didn’t bother giving Danyl any stage directions, which reflected how Danyl’s been abandoned by the British Public (“more hated than Hitler even, apparently!”). Simon Cowell scripted the whole performance: starting in the wrong key was the best thing Danyl could’ve done this week (look at how it helps Lloyd!). By breaking down this week (both musically and mentally), Danyl can build up again in upcoming weeks, as opposed to before, where he gave us the “best first audition in X Factor history, apparently” and had to keep topping it. The sympathy votes will come flooding in (even I felt a bit sorry for him).
He does still need to stop congratulating himself at the end of each big note though. And it also seems like Simon will give a standing ovation even if his act staggered on the stage drunk, sang itsy bitsy spider and then collapsed.
The Empty Space Left When Zac Efron Exits A Room (aka Lloyd):
Brian surrounded Lloyd by women who couldn’t stop kissing him/shaking their hair in his face, to hint that this might be the only reason he is still here.
On a serious note, how irritating that Cheryl had to change the lyrics so he didn’t mention “boyfriend”. An interesting song about sexuality sapped of all meaning because god forbid a 16 year old boy sang a song that implied any kind of sexuality that’s not hetersexual. He should’ve sung it like McFly:
Stacey:
In this choreography, Brian put a number of boxes on stage, because, well even I can’t find a reason for that. Nevertheless, this was Stacey’s best performance: it demonstrates that she’s actually got a great strong voice. She reminds me of Leona in how she looks awkward on stage, like she doesn’t believe she’s quite good enough. And Simon Cowell would tell you this is exactly the personality that will win it for you (take note Danyl).
Sideshow Bob (Jamie):
Brian ran out of inspiration and forgot to give Jamie much choreography. This probably represents that Brian respects Sideshow Bob’s talent too much to mess with it/that he just couldn’t be bothered because the song was all a bit boring. And why does he looked so scared behind the eyes?
Rachel:
OMG she sang in tune! I liked it. (And Brian cleverly visually represented the song “One” by giving her no backing dancers and leaving her on stage by herself).
Twin Peaks (John & Edward):
In this, Brian signalled the death of reality TV talent shows by surrounding
Twin Peaks with the living dead. And was it just me or did they look a little like:
Cheeky Chappy (Olly):
Cheeky Chappy is Brian’s arch nemesis: for a second week running Brian threw his usual hideous choreography at him, but something keeps going horribly wrong and it actually works! Last week the vibrating women; this week the dancers rolling about on the floor. The slightly aggressive, almost creepily seductive style Cheeky Chappy sang the song in worked great and was matched by the dancing. Most interesting of the night.
Bottom Two:
I fear for Lucie and Jamie. But hope it’s Lloyd. However, the women who want to shake their hair in his face will probably keep him in.
Contents