The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #50060   Message #758173
Posted By: alanabit
01-Aug-02 - 11:53 AM
Thread Name: What is the saddest song?
Subject: RE: What is the saddest song?
Not yet Greg, but somebody should pass on the idea! The image of Cohen and Dylan as miserable buggers is much overstated. There is a fair bit of wry humour in both of them. Listening to Dylan's "Mississippi" or "Most of the Time" is really down to the way you take it. If you take them at face value, they are both heartbreakers, but I like to think that he is poking fun at himself too. For me the saddest Dylan song is "If You See Her, Say Hello", because he is trying to deal with an unbearable separation and show respect for the woman at the same time. It's a tricky one, isn't it? What makes a song "sad"? A song about an unhappy love affair may be dealing with a theme which is of less importance and for fewer people than a song like "No Man's Land" or "The Flowers of the Forest". If we go along that path, we are on the way to evaluating the sadness of a song by its body count... On the happy front, Steve Knightley/Paul Downes' song "Friends" and Johnny Coppin's lovely "Never Lost for Love" always cheer me up.