What's the saddest music (composer, artist, song, etc) that you know of?

For me, there are some pop/rock songs on my computer that I ripped off an erstwhile friend's CD several years ago, but they're not in English so I don't know who the hell the artist is, and WMP doesn't either, but damn they sound pretty sad.

And on another note, I don't often find metal that sad. Even in the case of supposedly depressive metal, it's at worst boring and at best uplifting, in a dark sort of way. Of course all good music that's capable of evoking any emotion in me is uplifting to a certain degree, but for whatever reason there's always more uplifting than sad in metal.

Pink Floyd - Wish you were here or Transatlantic - Bridge across forever are both quite sad songs. But it depends also on the mood one is in that affects the perception of the atmosphere and how it affects someone thus.

Post-rock can also be quite sad; The Winchester Club has in their music some sad moments.

"Requiem" by Mozart

That song has more emotion than I have heard in any other music. And knowing that it was the last song Mozart ever wrote makes that much more emotional.

I like post-rock, wheres a good place to start with The Winchester Club?

Oh I could go on and on, but here's a list of some albums and songs which are up there:

Albums:
Nick Drake - Pink Moon (folk)
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks (folk-rock)
Lou Reed - Berlin (bleak glam rock)
Neil Young - Harvest (folk-rock)
Jeff Buckley - Grace (new wave folk)
Leonard Cohen - Songs of Love and Hate (folk)

Songs:
Bob Dylan - Boots of Spanish leather (folk)
Tim Buckley - I never Asked to be Your Mountain (experimental folk)
Skip James - Devil Got My Woman (blues)
Louden Wainwright II - Motel Blues (folk)
Bonnie Prince Billy - Death in the Sea (new wave folk)
The Velvet Underground - Heroin (avant guard rock n' roll)
The Beatles - Blackbird (rock n' roll)
The Knife - Heartbeats (electro)
Gordon Lightfoot - The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (folk-rock)
Elliot Smith - Miss Misery (new wave folk)


Sorry went a bit overboard

I guess none of these songs are really any more depressing than any other song for arguments sake, but I find that these all have concepts / feelings / ideas which ring very true and seem relevant to me and I think this is what gives them that particular quality

While this isn't quite the saddest music I've listened to, "When I Am Laid In Earth" (from Dido and Aeneas) by Henry Purcell is surely one of the most beautifully sad pieces of music I have ever heard, and it never fails to dampen my spirit when I listen to it.

The only song I've heard in that long list is the Velvet undeground song Heroin... is it wrong that I thought it was funny. It might have just been made worse because the version I heard was live, and the violin was painfully out of tune.

Mustan Kuun Lapset - Morfiinisiivet takes the cake here, but it won't work for you unless you know Finnish, since the lyrics are the perfect match for the melody, and it just works. I rarely get emotional over music, but that one gives me poetic shivers.

*snif*

The violin is intentionally out of tune from what I understand, the violist (John Cale) is actually a classically trained musician who has a very large body of work as a performer and has produced some of the most important album's of the last 50 years. From what I've heard the VU come off as a lot rougher and experimental in their live performances than they appear on their albums.

Ah yes ... I saw that in opera a couple of months ago and it was probably the saddest part of the whole evening.

How To Save A Life.

Some Albums that moved me to tears:

Coil - Live one/two/three/four (they're all damn intense), musick to play in the dark 1 & 2/The ape of naples/..and the ambulance died in his arms

Current 93 - Soft black stars, of ruine and some blazing starre, hypnagogue, how I devoured apocalypse balloon, thunder perfect mind... when it comes to Current I could go on forever

Johann Johannsson - IBM 1401 and englabörn

Sigur Ros - (), Agaetis byrjun, takk..

Ulver - Shadows of the sun, Kveldssanger and some songs from perdition city

Elend - Almost every album

And the whole post rock - train; Múm, GYBE!, Mogwai, 65daysofstatic, A silver mt. zion and so on...

Katatonia's Gateways of Bereavement

Forest Stream's Tears of Mortal Solitude album. It's definitely not an album you should listen to on a rainy day, to say the least.

Also, 'Chava's Song' by Michael Hedges leaves me feeling hollow every time I hear it.

Sarah McLachlan - Hold on

There's nothing better than listening to a song built around terminal cancer.

Nutshell by Alice in Chains is one of the saddest sounding songs I've ever heard, along with Inner Silence by Anathema.

A few others that come to mind:

Love You to Death- Type O Negative
Changes- Black Sabbath
In This River- Black Label Society
Amber Lake- Ildjarn
Tired of Me- Jesu
Trail of tears- Testament
Hope Leaves- Opeth

Bethlehem - Second Coming (beginning), Funeral Owlblood, Apocalyptic Dance (end)

watching from a distance-warning

I'm not a big fan of sad entertainment, because I feel it detracts from the entertainment. I try not to read sad books, watch sad movies, or listen to sad music unless it is very good.

Radiohead - Creep

Maybe it's the stereotypical reply, but this is the most goddamned depressing piece of music I have ever heard.

It's a song from a very very old Faroese band called "Tey á Kamarinum" (Them in the chamber - ?). It's about a 5 year old girl who has got a very bad case of cancer and her brother takes care of her because her dad is out drinking. Then one night the dad comes home from the bar and finds the brother holding the girl in her arms, dead. Very sad. It's even detailed about how the girl looks, pale, skinny and very black'ish eyes.

This, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

A lot of neo-folk comes to mind - Particularly Current 93's "the inmost light". The track "still the bloodbells chime" really chokes me up.

Death in June have their moments as well....Particularly "But, what ends when the symbols shatter" and "The wall of Sacrifice" are both intensely downbeat albums.

Aside from a lot of doom stuff, PJ Harvey's latest album White Chalk is full of absolute despair. Check out 'The Mountain'.

Nick Cave has some seriously depressing stuff. Song of Joy, Mercy Seat, pretty much all his stuff is really sad. As for the post above mine, PJ and Nick were a couple, and performed together. One unholy union of abysmal depression.

Whaa?

Metal has some extremely sad songs.

Swallow The Sun, Anathema, Insomnium, Daylight Dies, Agalloch, Ablaze In Hatred, Ikuinen Kaamos, Dimness Through Infinity, Empyrium, The Fall Of Every Season, Hanging Garden, (old) In Flames, Novembre, Alcest, Shape Of Despair, Vinterland, Slumber, Katatonia, Officium Triste, Novembers Doom, The Morningside, Kauan etc etc.

Basically most things by the aforementioned bands and a few sad songs I can think of off the top of my head:

Host by Thyrfing, Scream Of The Butterfly by Acid Bath, Death and The Healing by Wintersun, countless songs by Opeth, Land Of The Dead by Summoning, some Primordial is sad, most of the songs off of Norther's Till Death Unites Us are sad, and quite a few songs by Death off of Symbolic and The Sound Of Perseverence are sad.

Some things that aren't metal and are sad: Tenhi, The Twilight Sad, certain songs by Porcupine Tree, Woven Hand, a few songs by The Moon and The Nightspirit, Sigur Ros, and The Mist and the Morning Dew.

Surprisingly the black metal faggots did not just on this one as much as I thought.

There are far too many to name, but one that sticks out at the moment is Porcupine Tree - Sentimental

Just listen to an audio sample at least, it's very depressing.

Warning's second album, Watching From A Distance, especially the songs Footprints & Echoes, as metalhead3876 mentioned.

The March & The Stream & Sign of a Storm from Skepticism and Blue Bayou from Linda Ronstadt are some of the saddest songs I've ever heard

Yes, this is true, although Nick seems to be the happier these days, based on their respective latest albums. They seemed like a great couple though. Henry Lee is a beautiful song.

Billy Idol's(this is who did it, right?) 'The Piano Man' is an incredibly depressing song. There are some that Rancid do as well, but that is only because they can be very personal for me.

Just a few off the top of my head....

My Dying Bride material in general

I found the latest Ulver album to be one of the most depressing albums I've ever heard as well.

Aakon Keetrehs "Dans Le foret" demo

Church of Misery - Road To Ruin

and many many others

The last two songs on "Hliðskjálf" always get me a bit choked up. Check out the lyrics, it's soul-crushing. On the positive side, though, despite being so sad, the tale is open ended, and the new world is coming with new opportunity for us all.

Um, she fucking kills him in Henry Lee! How is that ok?

Well, it ain't OK, but I certainly get the sense that he somehow enjoys it! And the chemistry between the two is palpable, I feel.

My Dying Bride and Virgin Black get me going more than any other bands. So, in other words, I have nothing original to add to this thread.

The first demo is free for download and the first EP will officially be released on CD soon; it is only available on vinyl and some promos have been spread.
http://www.myspace.com/winchesterclub
I prefer the song, but there is no space, but all the excerpts are great and quite dark and haunting.

Isn't that a George Harrison song? I'm not sure if it's his or he played it with The Beatles

y'all shore got you some pow'ful good taste in music. I'm fixin' to be all impressed-like.

Sorry, just found out I may be moving to the deeeeeeep south, and am practicing talking about goth-industrial music in a Cletus-the-Slackjawed-Yokel accent.

Yea Coil! Yea C93! Yea Ulver!