Top Ten Saddest Songs

Like the previous Top Ten Songs That Rarely Fail to Bring a Smile to My Face, I found this difficult to put together, but for the opposite reason: too many to choose from. And like my little Sis said of her Top Ten Smile songs, it might be different on another day. But, here on this rainy, rainy day, and seeing a green world without really being able to see the green in it, these are the songs that come to mind. I should add that I've been thinking of lines from Nick Hornsby's "High Fidelity" while writing this:

What came first? The music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns and watching violent videos, we’re scared that some sort of culture of violence is taking them over. . .But nobody worries about kids listening to thousands—literally thousands—of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.

(Thank you John Cusack for bringing Hornsby's novel to film--one of the best book-to-movie deals I've seen). Well, my answer is the misery. Or, rather, the melancholy. At least in my case, I don't think painful music added, or adds, to my sadness. It clarifies it.

10. Mad World, Roland Orzabal (Donnie Darko Soundtrack, 2001). I think this song should have come at the beginning rather than the end of the movie, given that Donnie is laughing at the absurdity of it all, but the song still captures the angst that fills anyone who thinks about the (seeming?) capriciousness of the world.

09. Ain't No Sunshine, Bill Withers (Just as I Am, 1971). Withers channeling pure loss and aloneness.

08. If You Could Read My Mind, Gordon Lightfoot (Sit Down Young Stranger, 1970). Okay, I'm bordering on treacly, but it's here because I was singing it one day in the Lutheran Heights lodge when pre-marriage Margo walked in and told me to "Stop playing such damn depressing songs!" This simply has got to be in my top ten list.

07. Fire And Rain, James Taylor (Sweet Baby James, 1970). I was nine or ten, and I remember stopping cold when I heard it. It was the first song that I recognized to be speaking of a transcendent sadness. I should add that of course at that age I didn't know or understand the term "transcendent," and I also should qualify this--I already had been hearing transcendent sadness in the Lutheran liturgy and hymns; I just couldn't put a finger on what I was feeling.

06. Cold Rain, Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN, 1977). CSN at their height of harmonic power, with in-your-face melancholy.

05. People's Parties/Same Situation, Joni Mitchell (Court and Spark, 1974). Here I'm cheating a bit, but on the original LP, these two songs were actually seamless--they were meant to be heard together. Unfortunately, the barbaric CD producers didn't know, or didn't care.

04. We Do What We Can, Sheryl Crow (Tuesday Night Music Club Rock, 1993). Story of my life, though in the context of the academic world.

03. You Get Bigger As You Go, Bruce Cockburn (Humans, 1980). "Bales of memory like boats in tow." The glory and heartache of aging.

02. Llorando, Rebekah Del Rio (Mulholland Drive Soundtrack, 2001). Thanks, David Lynch.

01. All At Once, Bonnie Raitt (Luck of the Draw, 1991). "Looks to me there's lots more broken/Than anyone can really see/And why the angels turn their backs on us/It's a mystery to me.” Can’t get much more wretched than that.

Top Ten Songs That Rarely Fail to Bring a Smile to My Face (a full one, not a wistful one)

You know, I had kind of had a hard time coming up with this list. As my son once said, "His music is all just so sad." But there are some songs that cheer me, either because they're so clever and just plain funny (there's lots of Tom Waits I could put here), and some that just move me to smile by their ability to communicate gravity lightly (Cockburn and Jones).

10. ABC, Jackson 5 (1970 single): yes, I admit it, I recall fondly some of the early 70s bubblegum.



9. Sugar, Leon Redbone (Sugar): I hear this song and I see him as I did when watching him play on SNL sometime in the 70s.

8. East St. Louis Toodle-Oo, Steely Dan (Pretzel Logic): Usually so cynical, Steely Dan could be playful at times.

7. Open, Bruce Cockburn (You've Never Seen Everything): Not all Cockburn is darkly introspective.

6. Satellites, Rickie Lee Jones (Flying Cowboys): I don't understand the lyrics at all--they just work for me.

5. Twisted, Joni Mitchell (Court and Spark): A spry 2:25 minute joke.

4. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me), Tom Waits (Small Change): Hilarious.

3. Hot Fun in the Summertime, Sly and the Family Stone (1969 single): Too exuberant not to smile.

2. Rocky Raccoon, The Beatles (White Album): The Beatles' take on US culture cracks me up (I would have put "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" but I'm trying to hold to a self-imposed rule that an artist or band gets only one place in the top ten).

1. 13 Step Boogie, Martin Sexton (Live Wide Open): Sexton's happiness here is infectious, and for some reason, that sniff he does at one point makes me laugh.

The Nobel Peace (sur)Prize.

Compare these two scenes. The difference between the two I believe says a lot about why the Nobel Peace Prize was given to President Obama. While Bush gets dissed at a G20 conference, Obama has a warm conversation with Brazilian President, Lula da Silva (a pretty rare occurrence in the history of US-Latin American relations).

Whatever my disagreement with the Obama administration over continuing the folly of nation-building while war-making in Afghanistan, and its continuation of reprehensible Bush-era policies like rendition, I'm grateful to have a president who people in other countries see as a person of reason and hope.

Alexander Hamilton to Americans: ease it down a notch or two, would you?

I’m all for anger and argumentation in the public square, but the rhetoric I’ve been hearing in the media, or reading in blogs or Facebook, has been disturbing—all these thoughtless globs of bile being thrown this way and that. I don’t think this is anything new, but that doesn't mean that all the vilification going on out there is any less damaging to the efforts to make important decisions about healthcare, the wars, joblessness, and so on.

When I used to teach "Intro to US Government," I had students read a passage from the first Federalist Paper. Under the pseudonym "Publius," Alexander Hamilton began what would become a long series of arguments in favor of replacing the Articles of Confederation with the proposed Constitution coming out of the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. I think it’s to all our detriment that so many do not frame arguments in the way that Hamilton suggests in this passage (and I know I've been guilty, too, of doing what Hamilton criticizes here).

Here's my paraphrase of the excerpt, followed by the actual passage in it’s full late-18^th century glory.

. . .Obviously, it would be rather dishonest of me to reject the arguments of my opponents based on the claim that they are acting on pure self-interest or secret ambitions. If we’re honest, we all would admit that it’s possible that even those we despise the most might be motivated by good intentions, and there’s no doubt that most of those who have already spoken out against the new Constitution, and those who will in the future, are well-intentioned, even if I think their fears and suspicions are unjustified. Really, no one, not even those we think of as exceptionally wise or good, is immune to the fears and suspicions that warp the perception of a problem and its solution.

In other words, we know we are principled, so we should also be willing to grant that our opponents may also be principled. Likewise, if we think they, our opponents, must be unreasonably biased or greedy, or whatever, it would unreasonable for us to assume that we, through some miracle, have completely escaped those same bad characteristics.

All those who accept this logic, and I don’t see how anyone could argue against it, should take a step back the next time they think they are, without a doubt, right in an argument.

Besides, there’s a practical reason for delivering criticism and arguments in a moderate, or thoughtful, reasoned way. Demonizing those whom you oppose isn’t going to win any opponents to your side. As is the case in religion, we cannot win people over to the right side of a struggle by turning opponents into evil heretics and persecuting them. You don’t win converts with violence, either physical or rhetorical.

The real passage:

...I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men (merely because their situations might subject them to suspicion) into interested or ambitious views. Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable--the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.