Songs that make you sad...

[dave from knoxville]

and make you want to sit quietly in a dark corner, holding yourself and rocking with muted agitation while you struggle with your place in the world?

Todd Rundgren - Dust in the Wind

[erika]

Among many, many others, Passing Afternoon by Iron and Wine

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcEYGG-LLKE[/youtube]
I don't know what video this is but it's the original song, so...

[yesno]

"Why I Cry" by the Magnetic Fields.

"Storms" by Fleetwood Mac.

[Chris L]

Elliott Smith - Between the Bars
Richard Thompson - The End of the Rainbow
Langley Fuckin' Schools Music Project - Desperado

[Wes]

Wings - Little Lamb Dragonfly

This may or may not be true. But if it is, don't you dare judge me.

[Beth]

Metal Heart-Cat Power

Halfway to a Three-Way-Jim O'Rourke

Fox in the Snow-Belle and Sebastian

Song to the Siren-This Mortal Coil

[senorcorazon]

Passing Afternoon by Iron and Wine
Elliott Smith
Cat Power

I went to a wedding where the bride walked down the aisle to Iron and Wine. It seemed a little sad. And no, it wasn't a shotgun wedding.

ANYTHING by Elliott Smith, especially now. And especially the live ones where he breaks down and gives up halfway through. Near the end it was awful to see him live.

I recently heard this band Lewis & Clarke, who sounded pretty good but overall made me want to sigh. I have to switch away from Sad Bastard type music during the winter in New York. Cold + Dark + Sad Music = A LOT of cold water needed to splash on one's face.

[Laurie]

[youtube]2uyhBWHBI4w[/youtube]

The cover art makes me sad, the song makes me cry.

[Chris L]

Granddaddy: lolcat pioneers?

[John Junk]

Metal Heart-Cat Power

Holy Shit!  Me too!  This is one of those songs that just fuck me up.  I was listening to this on my headphones the other day and all the sudden  a normal day turned into the saddest most forlorn pool of  tattered-and-frayed emotions.

Bridge Over Troubled Water and For Emily When I Find Her - Simon & Garfunkle (seriously).
Drinker's Peace - GBV.
None of Your Goddamn Business - Sentridoh

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

This really happened: I was listening to Democracy Now the other day and they had the Story corps guy on there and were interviewing people about their lives, some of it trivial stuff, like a bus driver who told a story about being nice to an old lady, some of it more profound, like a woman whose brother died of AIDS in the early 80s when everyone was really mean about it.  I cried right there on the New Jersey Transit train.

Songs, you ask?  Fleetwood Mac's The Chain, and for whatever reason any Boston song you'd be familiar with.  I can't think of anything more recent offhand. 

I'm listening to Metal Heart right now.  It doesn't make me feel particularly sad, but i get it - there's something about those guitars.

[masterofsparks]

Little Wing - Jimi Hendrix Experience
Parasite - Nick Drake
Hospital - Modern Lovers

[John Junk]

I was a wee lad of 20 or 21 when Moon Pix came out and living in Baltimore.  Something about that album reminds me of the weird Miranda-July-meets-The-Wire kind of experience that was the art school scene in that city at that time. It reminds me of this apartment I lived in where I was watching The Children of the Corn only to be interrupted by someone getting jacked for his bicycle outside my window right in the middle of the poisoned-coffee scene. 

It's totally the guitars, Jason, You're right.  That guy from The Dirty Three --his guitar is just so beautiful on that whole Moon Pix album.  Still, If I heard this fresh now, I'd probably just be like "meh".  Which is my response to nearly everything new that I ever hear.

[yesno]

Some others.

"Pancake Lizard" by Aphex Twin.  (This song is so good that a friend of mine was listening to it in his dorm room 10 years ago, and someone knocked on the door needing to know who the artist was.  It is sad and beautiful.)

"Discreet Music" by Brian Eno.  (Wrist-slittingly good.)

"The Sinking of the Titanic" by Gavin Bryars.  (But now I've moved away from "songs.")

"Storms" by Fleetwood Mac.

Oh yes.  Also "Storms" from the Camper van Beethoven cover of the "Tusk" album.

I also get choked up when I read the Bukowski poem that was printed on his funeral card.  He was an uneven writer, but capable of good things.

from "if we take"

but they've left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by rimbuaud,
a horse running as if the devil
were twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming,
and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time,
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter
and summer and summer
and winter again

[Phantom Hugger]

Lee Hazelwood's death made me cry because his songs make me happy.