I like sad songs

Subject: I like sad songs
From: Spider Tom
Date: 10 May 00 - 09:02 AM

I like sad songs, yet wonder why I could be happy, singing the SAD.
There was a time when this gave me a feeling of guilt.

Then the thought occured to me.
"If a song has a sadness about it, does it not have a right to be sung."
Who am I, (or indeed who would you be) to question the songs right to a peaceful, fullfilling, though melencholy existance.
If a sad song is unsung, it will grow more and more depressed untill it turns BITTER.

Then, it would never get sung, being of BAD TASTE.

So, sing SAD SONGS, if only to keep THEM happy.

What do you lot think of sad songs?
Spider Tom

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: jeffp
Date: 10 May 00 - 09:15 AM

I love 'em myself. Maybe it's the depth of emotion they express. Maybe it's the contrast to my usually happy nature. I don't know why, I just enjoy singing sad songs.

jeffp

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Dulci46
Date: 10 May 00 - 09:20 AM

I think sad songs usually have a message of some kind. If they are not sung no one would hear the message!

Usually they leave me with something to think about. Whether it be a war the state of the world or an orphaned child. Maybe there are sad songs to help people realize what they need to do to make the world a better place.

They never make me sad just make me think.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Gary T
Date: 10 May 00 - 09:28 AM

All of us feel sadness occasionally, and sometimes a fitting song provides an emotional connection that is quite therapeutic, along the lines of "misery loves company" and/or "someone understands how I feel". Happy songs, fun songs, interesting songs, etc. are great, but none seem to reach inside the soul as deeply as sad songs.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: GUEST
Date: 10 May 00 - 09:57 AM

Misery loves company, as they say. It's comforting, in a perverse sort of way, when a talented someone takes an unpleasant emotion or experience of yours and expresses it in an artistically pleasing manner. It validates your feelings and dissipates any guilt that you just may be feeling sorry for yourself, and lets you know that at least one other person understands your condition.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Allan C.
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:04 AM

I love sad songs! I only have a very few happy songs that I do. It has nothing to do with my general frame of mind. Most folks who know me know that I am a fairly "up" person - albeit possibly a bit too serious at times.

I think it takes more skill to sing a sad song (or at least to do it well enough to convey the sadness). Happy songs generally have a pleasant, bouncy rhythm to them which carry the emotion. The lyrics in many cases are almost superfluous. The music helps to move them along and to keep things light. I truly believe that you could sing "He Never Said A Mumbling Word" to a lively beat and, perhaps a major key and many people would fail to note that it is one of the saddest songs there ever was.

Most of the time the thing which makes a song to be thought of as being "sad" is the lyrics. There is usually a story contained within the lyrics - or possibly a story is only implied. Either way, the delivery of that story by way of the music is (for me) the main thing. The lyrics and their delivery, together with their accompanying music are what can make for a "sad" song.

And now I will duck for cover from the slings and arrows which will undoubtedly come my way from those who have a greater appreciation of the "happy" songs...

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:10 AM

Maybe they just help us express universal fears and emotions that we TEND TO KEEP HIDDEN AWAY MUCH THE WAY MYTHS HELP US DEAL WITH THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT AND WICKED STEPMOTHERS.

OOOPS got so philosophical, I hit the Capslock and rambled on.

I love sad songs.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Magpie
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:15 AM

Don't cover yet,Allan C, I'm with you .

It's the sad songs that are nice, the happy ones- who needs them? If you're happy, you won't mind listening to a sad song, it won't get you down.
But if you're sad, it won't help one bit to listen to a happy song, I for one will just feel even sadder, thinking that I'm the only person in the world as sad as this. A really sad song, on the other hand, will make me feel a bit better. I'll know that I'm not alone in my misery, and that there is at least ONE person out there who knows, or has known, how it feels to be sad.

Magpie

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From:
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:25 AM

Sad songs make me time travel in my mind.They make me remember that after pain, there surely will come a rainbow..I hope.

Best sad songs ever written have to be by Garnet Rogers www.garnetrogers.com

Row of Small Trees has the immortal and heart wrenching lyrics

Her ring still held it's warmth as it fell to my hands or 'And I pray for forgiveness for the sins I committed Ta da da da da and I faltered and fell. This pain in my heart is a foretaste of hell.'From At a High Window

or from Phone booth as an alcholic husband begs to be allowed to come back home

Does it not matter that I love you? Dont you love me anymore She just listened to the static and said I used to That was long ago Don't call here anymore'

Gulp

I want my emotions to be assaulted when I listen to great music and no one does that like Garnet

www.geocities.com/shereekg

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Mark Clark
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:27 AM

Allan,

The only version I know of "He Never Said A Mumblin' Word" is Lead Belly's and, as I recall, he does it like a barrel house boogie... very happy feel. Of course from the perspective of a Christian, it's a happy song, not a sad one.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:28 AM

I love sad songs and wistful ones, songs with a depth of soul that is basically unacceptable to express in our "cool" society. Current favs are
"Icarus" by Anne Lister as sung by Martin Simpson,
"Caledonia" by Dougie MacLean (I keep pressing rewind in my car to hear that one over and over and over and over)
"Ionn da" as sung by Mary McLaughlin.
I'm sure I'll think of more!

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: kendall
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:35 AM

Songs like Old Gilbert, Phil Brown, Old Blue Ox Old Shep Old Rover, these songs were some that my ex wife hated. She referred to them as "emotional rape". I like sad songs, I also like funny songs. We humans were blessed with a wide range of feelings, so, why stick to one end of the spectrum?

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From:
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:45 AM

Then you should LOVE Gaelic songs. I'd say about 80 percent are sad in one respect or another.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Bert
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:49 AM

Well said Kendall! I like sad songs, but I sing a lot of upbeat songs. And funny songs are the greatest. Then there's singers like Jake Thackray who sing 'sad funny' songs.

One thing that gets me about modern songwriters is that so few of them write funny songs. You go to a song share and 'every damned song' is so bloody miserable it make you sick. Happines is also an emotion and it's OK. to write happy songs.

Bert.

Subject: Lyr Add: What Ails This Heart O' Mine?^^
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 10 May 00 - 10:50 AM

I don't think of sadness or melancholy as an unpleasant emotion. I think of it as a way to embrace life and experience it to the fullest. But then, I'm like a coworker once said, sensitive, serious and silly...also a bit introspective.

For a girl growing up in Texas and Kentucky, I've always had an unexplained fondness for bagpipes and Scottish laments. One of my favorite songs, which I assume is Scottish because of the words but have never really found out anything about, is (from The Book of a Thousand Songs):

What Ails This Heart O' Mine?

What ails this heart o' mine?
What means this wat'ry e'e
What gars me aye turn cauld as death
When I take leave o' thee?
When thou art far a wa,
Thou'lt dearer grow to me;
But change o'place and change o'folk
May gar thy fancy jee.

When I gae out at e'en
Or walk at morning air,
Ilk rustling bush will seem to say,
I us'd to meet thee there.
Then I'll sit down and cry,
An live a neath the tree,
An' when a leaf fa's in my lap,
I'll ca't a word frae thee.

I heard Judy Collins once allude to the fact that people involved in the arts and singing just seemed to understand things on a deeper level, and explanation was not always necessary.

Mary

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 May 00 - 01:22 PM

Let's face it folks, life is pretty sad. That does not mean it's depressing. It does mean that by going through the tough stuff one can learn great and wonderful and insightful spiritual truths. (And I'm not talking about God here. I mean philosohical truths that might, for some, include God.) In order to get a handle on the sadness that comes to every life, folks sat down and looked closely at the passage of time and turned it into art. The sad songs are just one part of that. It helps people make it through when the bombs of life go off in your face---as they will always go off---usually when you least expect it.

All that said, the sadness, to me, is basic to life. Those songs present the real insights. The lighter stuff is just fun--and we all need it. Over the years it's been called comic relief. If it is relief, then it is relief from something. And that something is the basic tragedy of life.

And that's cool---it's O.K.---and it's all a gas and a real gift to be in this life and here right now turning it into art. Whatever ! As Kurt Vonnegut said in Between Time And Timbuktu, "Whenever I start to feel the least bit self-important, I think about all the dirt that never did get a chance to sit up and look around."

That's a lesson Donald Trump, and others like him, might be wise to learn---sooner rather than later. I've always loved the sad big ballads that tug at the heart and mind and teach us so very much. But I USED HUMOR AND PUNS AND TALL TALES to set the songs up---to get an audience who was paying hard-earned cash to hear me to be in the right place to receive those seriously sad songs I loved so much.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Amergin
Date: 10 May 00 - 02:11 PM

I like happy and funny songs, but I love the sad ones too. I don't really know why, perhaps because I can identify with the emotions more. Or myabe not....

Amergin

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Mbo
Date: 10 May 00 - 02:18 PM

I used to sing pretty much sad songs all the time. Now that a change has come into my life, I prefer love songs...they're the ones with meaning now. The sad ones, yeah, I remember feeling like that, but I'd rather focus on what I have now instead of what I lost in the past.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: MMario
Date: 10 May 00 - 02:21 PM

I LIKE either happy or sad songs...but I like to SING the sad ones.....mainly because most of the happy ones are too fast for me....

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Tiger
Date: 10 May 00 - 02:21 PM

Well, I love the sad songs, too, and don't think there's anything perverse about it.

If you look at my lyrics page at:

http://users.neca.com/rsbassoc/songbook.htm

you'll see that every other one is a saddie.

Being something of a curmudgeon, I'm grateful for the way that music can get inside my shields and expose my emotions. Sure, they were there, anyway, but it certainly helps to 'let it go.'!

I still sometimes have a problem of losing control when 'performing'. Must work on that.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: jeffp
Date: 10 May 00 - 02:28 PM

Tiger, I have that problem too. I like to get fully involved in the songs I sing and sometimes skate a little too close to the the edge. It's hard to walk a fine line between too controlled and out of control. Oh well, that's what keeps it fun and interesting.

jeffp

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: GUEST
Date: 10 May 00 - 02:29 PM

I love singing sad songs....I like minor-musicky, slow and twisty tunes that I can milk. Happy songs are best sung with a big group of happy people.

And for listening? semi-sweet nostalgic songs rock...as do funny songs, and silly songs, and happy songs, and.....

Pax,
Ceit

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: GUEST,kat
Date: 10 May 00 - 02:42 PM

I really love the happy, upbeat melodies that pull you in to listening to the song and then you realize that it is really, really sad , ripping your heart out:) Mary, the tune that you were referring to "What Ails this Heart O' Mine", is also one of my favorite tunes for that reason. A beautiful, lyrical melody that is so very sweet, but those words........ I think it may be a Burns piece...he wrote a few heart wrenching words now, didn't he?

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 May 00 - 02:52 PM

I like sad songs when they shift the attention from "Ow!" to "Wow!" without dishonoring the "Ow" legitimately expressed.

On the other hand, songs that wallow in "Ow!" are great done as campy comedy, to loosen up the tears without getting sunk in a pit at the same time.

It's about how we use them....

~S~

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Kim C
Date: 10 May 00 - 05:20 PM

I LOOOOVVVE sad songs. And often it's not necessarily that songs are SAD, but maybe the lyrics or the music evoke some type of deep emotion that's easiest to describe as sad. I recently performed an original song (that I don't think is sad, really) for a friend, and he said, you can't see (we were outdoors and it was dark), but I've got tears streaming down my face. It meant something to me when I wrote it, and it meant something to him to hear it.

Sometimes just the music itself is evocative. Like the melody to Danny Boy. Even as an instrumental it brings tears to people's eyes. I know this one's pretty non-PC, but slow Dixie down to a ballad, and people will just bawl even if you're not singing.

Mister and are living history musicians and do pre-1865 music almost exclusively (except when I can sneak the originals in there). A lot of songs from the Victorian era are sad and/or dramatic even if they have nothing to do with the Civil War itself... lots of murder ballads, dead sweetheart songs, etc. Boy, it's a good thing I learned to play the fiddle to liven things up a bit!

I was troubled once, only once, and only for a moment, that I wrote so many sad songs. But I realized a couple of things: 1) they meant something to me, and 2) Townes van Zant made a whole career of writing sad, dreary songs. So I was troubled no more!

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: rangeroger
Date: 11 May 00 - 12:37 AM

I too, have always loved sad songs. So much so that many of my friends referred to them as" Roger's suicidal-depressing music". I like Tom Rush's comment best,however,when he called his songs "music to open a vein by".
rr

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 11 May 00 - 01:10 AM

sad songs are cathartic

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Spider Tom
Date: 11 May 00 - 07:45 AM

Thanks to you all for your thoughts and feedback,
this suggests to me that I am not alone, SAD but not alone.
No, it appears I am in good company what a lot of thoughtful insightful people you are.
The next time I am told I am miserable I will have a whole lot of new fuel to fire the arguement. I think the point of emoting, within a song is true, you can really let your head go doing the sad wallowing song.
But if you sing a happy song grinning, giggling and generally laughing, people will think either;He's on something, He's flipped his lid or He's laughing at ME and I will HIT HIM.
Sad songs make people soft and gentle, and even sentimental, thats not bad thats fine.
And to Bert and Mbo, come on you guys, get DOWN!

lov yuz!
Spider Tom.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: JamesJim
Date: 11 May 00 - 10:09 AM

The sadest and shortest song I know: "You stole my wife - you horse thief!"

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: GUEST,Peter T.
Date: 11 May 00 - 11:07 AM

I wonder if truly happy songs don't go just as deep as sad ones. Martha and the Muffins' "Walking on Sunshine" is just a blissful song to listen to on a good day, as is the Beatles, "Here Comes the Sun". I can wallow in sad songs with the best of them, but happiness can go pretty deep too! Is there anything more blissful than watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers tap dance? Ella Fitzgerald just going to town?
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Ely
Date: 11 May 00 - 07:31 PM

Bring on the sad songs!

Personally, I get irritated after too many rounds of "Magic Penny" and "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream". It would only make sense never to sing sad songs if there wasn't anything sad going on in the world--it's not balanced if your music only resonates with all your good times and not your bad ones.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Mbo
Date: 11 May 00 - 07:37 PM

Tom, I NEVER want to get down.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Spider Tom
Date: 11 May 00 - 08:19 PM

Good on you Mbo,
Stay UP as long as you can.
I too love a love song but WHY are love songs SO sad?
Don't know why but so many ache with a hidden sadness.
I an off to St Albans now so see you when I get back.
I WILL be singing my HAPPY JOLLY SONG. SO There you go

May the sweet bird of happiness tickle you.

Spider Tom

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: sophocleese
Date: 11 May 00 - 11:05 PM

What makes a song a sad song? The words or the melody or the combination? I like songs in a minor or a dorian mode rather than songs in a major mode. The words can be sad or hopeful. There is a persistent, but not absolute, linking of major with upbeat and minor with sad. So I wonder if people are drawn to the sad songs because of tune or words.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Robo
Date: 11 May 00 - 11:23 PM

It's both, I think, but I find the mood of the tune often strikes me first, draws me in to a contemplative place where I'm more receptive to the story. Of course, ya gotta have the lyrics, but I love those Em's and Am's.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Peg
Date: 12 May 00 - 12:02 PM

I think melody, lyrics and tone combine to make a sad song. And if you agree with George (and I do) that Galeic songs ae almost always sad ones, you have the extra challenge of many listeners perhaps not understanding the meaningof the words; yet Gaelic is very evocative just the same, its rhythms, its mellifluousness, its harsh edges...

For me as a singer, I find it easier to invoke mood and inspire awe (and a tendency to listen more closely)when a song is sad. I often close my eyes when singing such songs, especially Gaelic ones; it is quite unconscious, it helps transport me to that sad place and moment where the song occurs...

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 May 00 - 12:11 PM

most great love songs are about unrequited love and are therefore sad. When things are going great in matters of amour, nobody has the time or the inclination to write songs.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: thosp
Date: 13 May 00 - 01:42 AM

:) ):

peace (Y) thosp

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 May 00 - 02:56 AM

Thread Aside to PeterT: re' what could be finer than watching Fred and Ginger tap dancing?

Savion Glover, even Gregory Hines says he is way beyond him and going where noone has ever taken tap before. The kid used to watch and study Fred for hours. He is incredible. We saw a wonderful interview of him on PBS. If you ever get a chance to see him perform you will be in for a treat. And, the really neat thing is that he believes in passing it on and already has a young protege, and he isn't even thirty yet himself! At the risk of sounding trite, this kid is poetry in motion and beyond.

kat

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Sourdough
Date: 13 May 00 - 11:19 PM

This afternoon, I looked up Daisy a Day in the DT Database and began picking it out. When I was feeling confident enough to try singing the words, did. I was surprised to find that as I sang them, I started getting really caught up in this very simple 3-chord song. I haven't got a clue why the tears were dripping onto the Autoharp when I got the the part of the old man going to the cemetery to visit his wife and bring her a daisy.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: GUEST,Rosebrook
Date: 14 May 00 - 01:41 AM

I'm sure my affection for Andy Stewart's music is based in my love for melancholy music - sad songs. When I first heard him sing "Banks of the Lee", I cried. Every time I listen to him sing that song, I cry. I love to be moved by the wistful, heart-tugging longing in so many Silly Wizard songs.

I love the minor and modal stuff, and that is my preference for choosing music. I remember back in high school practicing my flute every day, and my mother's exasperated request, "Can't you play a happy song?!"

Moonsong

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Spider Tom
Date: 15 May 00 - 12:38 AM

I sang hard times once and was promptly told," You sang it too slow". I enquired if the person had READ the lyrics, he had ,BUT, he hadn't.

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Chocolate Pi
Date: 15 May 00 - 12:50 AM

random mostly off-topic note: in filk music, sad songs are described as "ose" since truly depressing ones are "more-ose."

Chocolate Pi (blathering pointlessly)

Subject: RE: I like sad songs
From: Art Thieme
Date: 15 May 00 - 11:19 PM

What could be finer than watching Fred and Ginger tap dance ???

Answer: Watching Data and Beverly Crusher tap dance !!!!!

Art Thieme