What's the saddest song you have ever heard?

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'A song for you,' Performed by Ray Charles, Willie Nelson and Leon Russell

Tragic and beautiful

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UW4ELmVD9M[/youtube]

This is so sad and so beautiful.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvcjIEb52HE[/youtube]

There are a lot.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG_VIcoiCFA[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_P-v1BVQn8[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt5OZJ1LrbQ[/youtube]

This song is about child abuse
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KkTnreoAUc[/youtube]

Two Kate Bush songs. The second song “Army Dreamers” is more obviously sad. Babooshka requires you took look beyond Kate’s body
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xckBwPdo1c[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOZDKlpybZE[/youtube]

Song was originally about nuclear war but after 9/11 when everybody was playing those cheesy patriotic songs I was playing this. It reminds me of 9/11 everytime I hear it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hMagNuhLkk[/youtube]

I dedicate this song to every aspie who wants to be or has acted "NT"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwDwPQDZlBc[/youtube]

"Tainted Love" in the version of Coil. Instead of danceable and poppy like most versions, this one sounds like a highly depressing funeral march. A video showing the last moments of a terminally ill patient and filled with occult symbolism adds to the darkness of this track. It's not so much the lyrics that are sad (they are not) but the incredibly slow pace and funeral-like atmosphere of the synths. The video is saddening (nobody likes hospitals...) and the occult signs have a shade of blackness over the song.

I would NOT encourage sensitive souls to listen to it though, I don't wanna push someone into a depression (but guess this topic is about sadness in music, so...)

Saddest Songs. My vote: Long Long Time (Ronstadt, #1 IMHO). Over the Rainbow (from Live at Carnegie Hall). Folsom Prison Blues. Black Coffee (Peggy Lee). House of the Rising Sun (maybe Odetta's?). 60 Years On (live, from 11-17-70). Quartet for the End of Time (saddest classical--written in a concentration camp). Paris is a Lonely Town (from the animated movie Gay Purr-ee). Elegie; & Pissin' in a River (Patti Smith--but she has several other good candidates). I am Stretched on your Grave (sadder than the Sinead song mentioned). Running Dry (Neil Young--saddest by a male vocalist). At Seventeen. By the Time I get to Phoenix. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (from Meet Me in St Louis). Paint It Black. Queen Victoria (perhaps Cohen's most desolate). Nothing Else Matters. Que Sera (only as the cover by Pink Champagne). Yesterday. Leaving on a Jet Plane (Peter Paul & Mary). River (Joni Mitchell). Because of You (Kelly Clarkson). Ulysses' Gaze (saddest soundtrack). So in Love (from Kiss Me Kate, especially as sung by Brian Stokes-Mitchell). Family of Bones (from the newest Roches album). In the End (Linkin Park). Not counted here: Piaf; fado; blues...

"Day of the lords" by Joy Division is also, due to its slow minimalist sound, extremely dark. Ian Curtis' tormented voice singing "where will it end?" adds to the bleakness of this song.

Interesting one is "Like the weather" by 10000 Maniacs. The song is uptempo, danceable, almost like a nice dancefloor filler ... until you focus on the lyrics that are, to use a phrase from the song, coal grey. This song describes so wonderfully well how true depression really feels, it is interesting they put these lyrics on an uptempo sound. The song doesn't sound depressing but if you focus on the lyrics it's dark ; the contrast between the sound and the words is remarkable to say the least.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbiq6xaEYn4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1GmxMTwUgs[/youtube]

The Drugs Don't Work by The Verve. So sad, but such a beautiful song.

It's impossible to tell which song is the saddest...
but this one is pretty damn sad. It's by favourite artist in the whole wide world (does using this phrase make me sound like a 5-year old?),
Moddi, from Norway.

Song's called A sense of Grey, and it sounds that, too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZoOUVKoA7c[/youtube]

Time, by Pink Floyd.

Much more now for me than it was in my teens or twenties....or even thirties.

Honestly it's not a young mans song at all...I was 15 in 1985, and I listened to it all the time. Now I'm 43 and I barely want to listen to it now.

"...And I Finally Reach My End" by Thy Light. They are a Brazillian two-man band (one guy does all the instruments, the other one just writes the lyrics) who play a type of music called depressive suicidal black metal, more commonly known by its acronym DSBM. This particular song is a 13-minute long instrumental with no lyrics, just screams of pain and hate. I can't post links YET, but there definitely are mirrors of it on YouTube.

"Youth" (sometimes called "Wild Youth") by Daughter. Extremely melancholic sounds, and very sad heartbroken lyrics. But a beautiful song nevertheless.