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 6 Results (Queen)
Nov 15th
- Oh how perfect. Dannii was left with all the decision making power; she demonstrated that she’s a more credible judge than Simon; and yet this took it to deadlock, and the public whom Simon trusts implicitly decided his act should go. The viewers were placated and don’t hate the show anymore. There will be minimal public outrage. It’s almost like the Puppet Masters Producers scripted it.
- Oh no no no. The Group Song, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, was highly awkward. However, the Puppet Masters Producers ensured the final three lines were sung by the eventual three finalists, in the order they will finish: 3rd Stacey; 2nd Joe, 1st Olly.
- Was Shakira miming in English or Spanish? I did not understand a word. I know it was out about 10 years ago, but really wouldn’t everyone have preferred her singing “Wherever, Whenever”?
- The GOSH video was genuinely touching.
- In “You Are Not Alone” Jedward were allowed the great honour of singing the second half of the word “alone” (one syllable). Also, if you listen to the song without seeing who is singing, it is virtually impossible to tell which boy is singing, showing how indistinctive each of them will sound on the radio. Lovely Rikki was back though, which pleased me. Why did he go so early?
- Onto the sing-off, Lloyd started out of tune, got back in tune and then didn’t seem to notice that there had been a key change.
- Jamie’s choice “The Show Must Go On” had *layers* of irony. I know all the words to this song as we were made to sing this in school choir when I was 9. It’s only as I sing along as an adult that I realize how inappropriate it was to get 9 year olds to sing a song Freddie wrote about his impending death. We also sang “I dreamed a dream”, which again was wholly inappropriate (“He slept a summer by my side…”)
P.S. I’ve been mulling over the Take That Tribute Band idea and I think it’s got legs. See the beginnings below: I’ll need to bring back lovely Rikki to be Mark. And I still need a Jason: Danyl wasn’t right. But look at the creepy Robbie mixed with Gary I created below: it does look a bit like Olly.
X Factor: Week 6 Live Show (Queen)
Nov 15th
This week we were introduced to a whole new word: apparently the show is no longer about “relevance” but all about “authenticity”. Which is ironic on many levels.
Thankfully Simon cleared up the confusion of last week, explaining that actually Sting was to blame for Lucie leaving. I was then reassured that Simon would never play with anyone’s lives or use tactics in any way and then felt warm because as a member of the public he implicitly trusts my opinions. Finally, I felt proud of the show for creating such credible stars as Susan Boyle (err, isn’t she from your other show, Simon?).
I got all excited when they showed the Queen video for “I Want To Break Free” and hoped that the X Factor would take their pioneering gender swapping songs one step further and cross-dress at least one act. Anyone else think Stacey dressed up like a cockney lad (a la Oliver) could be fascinating?.
Sideshow Bob (Jamie):
Sideshow Bob seemed less Broken Man this week. He clapped his hands a lot and went on the little bridge behind the judges, which did sort of cover up for starting wildly out of tune. Cheryl had insightful comments about his jeans being nice but his hair being not (which was about as insightful as her comments got all evening). I thought it was OK as he didn’t try and emote with his face, which is the thing that really riles me.
The Empty Space Zac Efron Leaves When He Exits A Room (Lloyd):
He doesn’t know who Queen is? GET OUT NOW.
Why does Brian Friedman always dress all the female backing dancers like slutty she-vampires? Does he hate women? Is this why Britney Spears is in the state she’s in? Lloyd zig-zagged through them as though they were traffic cones and he was attempting his first cycling proficiency course.
Not as out of tune as usual though (I’d say 4 out of every 5 notes were in tune), so progress.
Cheeky Chappy (Olly):
Cheeky Chappy was a tad disappointing: could his star quality be in the little finger that he broke? (Full points though for trying to punch Jedward: their twitchy movements would have made them an understandably hard target. If only it had been Danyl doing the punching however, and then the bullying storyline could’ve taken on a whole new level). All the judges apart from Dannii chose to forget that he sang pretty out of tune and that he took a massive gasp before the last big note (pet hate). The robot dancing half won me over, although it was hard to tell as I was watching it on my PC and his body was comprised of approximately 3 pixels.
He’ll stay as he’s much better vocally than this performance (and according to Louis he’s half Gary/half Robbie, which is a compelling mix. Sideshow Bob’s hair is sort of Howard, Lloyd could be pretty Mark and Danyl was a dance teacher and has a shaved head so could be Jason. And there we have Take That. Could they come back next year as a group?).
Gareth Gates (Joe):
The Boyfriend will be pleased to hear I liked him slightly more than usual this week. However, whilst he sang it very in tune again, Brian and Roger summed it up when they said it was “very nice”. “Someone To Love” is an aggressive, desperate song that should be sung with a bit of grit: Gareth did try and do a bit of this with the odd angry fist movement, but whereas the opening line is “Each morning I get up I die a little”, Joe’s face and tone said “Each morning is a bit rubbish sometimes”.
Twin Peaks (John & Edward):
Oh god, I think Jedward tried to do Broken Man this week with a bit of crying in the VT. Does the fact that we didn’t boo them mean we like them now? I thought it was a bit boring. Apparently this performance was “authentic”?
Stacey:
Even though she has a slight vocal wobble at the beginning, I forgive this as she did what Joe didn’t quite manage which was put emotion and aggression behind the song. By far the night’s most interesting performance: she’s finally showed us that she can let loose and go for it. And she got the golden rain behind her, which can only be a good sign.
Danyl:
You have to be some kind of evil genius to sing “We Are The Champions” when you’ve been accused of cockiness and sort of pull it off. The OTT attempts to make the songs lyrics into his X Factor journey diminished the song (“I’ve done my sentence/but committed no crime [..] I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face”) as did his VT dilemma of “just how cocky should I appear on stage this week?”. But, again, it was interesting. He needs to draw us in more: I still feel he’s trying to perform at me and do massive notes, not in response to the emotion of the song but rather to show me how good he is. Change this please Danyl and you’d be great.
Bottom Two:
Oh, it’s tough. Jedward and Jamie. Maybe Lloyd. (If I was an X Factor producer I would be praying that one of the rubbish acts (i.e. Jedward or Lloyd) go this week to maintain a semblance of credibility.
Mathematical Formula shockingly says Olly and Lloyd. That can’t be right. Can it?
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