A thread about sad songs and not a single mention of June Tabor; do you guys have no taste in melancholy and depression? At least Tim Jaques mentions Kate Rusby, who shows signs of following the same path. (Don't worry, Tim, they're both great fun in real life . . )

Also it strikes me that one or two nominations are "sad by association" . . .

Anyway; saddest song - June's (never recorded) rendition of the McGarrigles' "Heart like a wheel" - perhaps because that's a sadness most of us know. [Hearing the McGarrigles sing it was a distinct anti-climax.] Followed by the Australian song which starts "There's a man in my bed / I used to love him" but whose title I can't remember.

Saddest performance - again from June - is from the hard-to-find recording of the first of the Paschendaele Peace Concerts (a recording of which is still used at the Paschendaele museum); the narative of "Nurse Dorothy Nicol" intercut with "It's a long way to Tipparary" (the first is taken from one of Lynn Gregory (?)'s wonderful "oral history" books of the first world war, "The Roses of No Man's Land"). Indeed, if you want a recording of deeply powerful sad songs which is still uplifting and optimistic then I'd heartily recommend that whole CD. ("We died in hell . . they called it Paschendaele"). It - CD and concert - is about war and armed conflict generally, rather than just the first world war, and its performers and content are international.

George