Thursday, January 08, 2009

By Pat Clark
pclark@modbee.com

last updated: November 20, 2008 11:43:00 AM

Sometimes we all need a good cry.

At least that's what a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times apparently had in mind when he asked readers to send him their saddest songs of all time. You know, songs that render you a pile of quivering mush when you make the mistake of listening to them all the way through.

The list from St. Petersburg — along with the reactions from a handful of co-workers I queried — proved just how subjective sad song preferences can be.

Some of the songs that the Florida readers found sad were kind of odd selections. Like Player's "Baby Come Back." While geared toward a lover that's fled, it's not exactly a tear-jerker. Fled-lover songs are a dime a dozen and that one's a bit of stretch in the sob Olympics, isn't it?

Clearly, this was a personal pick from a reader who played that puppy over and over and over on the old turntable after a bad breakup back in 1979. I'm not mocking the sentimental moment. It just didn't seem like a widely regarded "sad song" selection.

Then there was "Under Pressure" (Queen and David Bowie). A tear-jerker? Really? Sure, it's no peppy little ditty, with its grim state-of-the-world message and all. But, it didn't seem to fit the criteria.

That's, of course, because everyone's criteria is different. What makes you cry might just make the next guy shrug.

Honestly, the only song on the Florida list that I found particularly touching was "I Can't Make You Love Me" (Bonnie Raitt). That's a sad lovers song, to be sure.

Still, as sad songs go, it's no "Time in a Bottle" — the pick by the St. Petersburg reporter himself.

Jim Croce. Now there was a guy who could make you weep. Add "Operator" to "Time in a Bottle" and just try to keep the water works from flowing.

A co-worker offered up another surefire gut wrencher: Warren Zevon's "Keep Me in Your Heart." Sure, the list of goodbye-I'm-dying songs is long, but this Zevon selection carries heavy cache, given that the man actually was dying of cancer when he recorded it.

Clearly trying to make me cry like a baby, said co-worker forwarded the lyrics that send him to the tissue box:

"Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams./Touch me as I fall into view/When the winter comes, keep the fires lit/And I will be right next to you."

Beat that, "Seasons in the Sun."

Other co-workers I queried offered up an interesting (read odd) collection: "Ode to Billy Joe" (Bobbie Gentry), "Everybody Hurts" (R.E.M.), "The Show Must Go On" (Queen — that one gets the Zevon seal of sad, given the similar situation for late singer Freddy Mercury) and "Candle in the Wind" (Elton John).

The one that seemed to get the most reaction around here, though, was "Tears in Heaven." It's hard to argue the tenderness of this song since Eric Clapton wrote it after his little boy died.

My own selections? At the risk of revealing too much about my inner psyche, the songs that do me in most are those about youth lost and children growing up. Even before I had a child, those songs made my heart twist into double knots.

"Cat's in the Cradle" (Harry Chapin) and "It Was a Very Good Year" (Frank Sinatra) knock me flat on the ground, but "Turn Around" will send me under the covers for days. You might not recognize the song from the title (Harry Belafonte was a co-writer), but these lyrics might do the trick:

"Where are you going/My little one, little one./Where are you going/My baby, my own./Turn around and you're 2/Turn around and you're 4/Turn around and you're a young girl/Going out of the door."

That's it. I need to be medicated.

And you? Depressed yet?

Sorry about that. Look, at least I didn't repeat that old column about the worst songs to get stuck in your head. I didn't, oh say, toss out a few lines from something as horrendous as "Hey, Mickey," or anything.

OK, my work here is done.

• Comments
• Add Comment
• Disclaimer