Day 4: A song that makes you sad
Oh are there a lot of these. I do love a good sad song. Now, to be clear, there are many songs that make me cry--but for different reasons. Heck, "I Wanna Be," makes me cry sometimes, but just because of those aforementioned squishy feelings it makes me feel. Some songs, like Creek Mary's Blood (Nightwish)--the orchestral version, anyways--or the ending theme from Skies of Arcadia, which I maintain has the best ending of any song ever, make me cry because of the instrumentation. I get a little weepy at beautiful music.
But that's different from a song making me sad, of course. And there are still quite a few of these. As with my previous categories, I'm kind of limiting myself to songs that come to mind more or less immediately, and only one song hops right into my head:
This is another animé song, but this one's in English, so nothing should be lost in translation. Sadly, the above link does not have the lyrics (I simply could not find one that did), but it's pretty easy to get them. I won't spoil the ending to this absolutely excellent series (Cowboy Bebop...anyone who enjoys animé needs to watch this. It is sublimely awesome in so many ways), but this is the final song from the series. Obviously the symbolism is thick throughout the whole song, and you don't need to know how it ends to understand the metaphors for death, redemption, and even life. It is my opinion that you don't need to see or even know the animé to appreciate this song. But it may still be one of those internal, personal things about music that makes this song connect to me.
But even still. I play this song every time someone I know dies. It is sad and hopeful all at once. So maybe it doesn't deserve to win the "sad" song award...but it's kind of bittersweet, so I think it belongs here.
"Everything is clearer now. Life is just a dream, you know, that's never-ending. I'm ascending."
And remember: "no black and white in the blue."
Ok, now...if I had thought of this one first, I may have made it my winner. But I'm relegating it to runner up because Blue popped into my head first. Even still, this song is one of the most sorrowful songs I've ever heard--possibly because it followed one of the saddest endings to any movie/book ever (Lord of the Rings, of course).
It bears noting, however, that this song and Blue share some (many) similarities. Both are about death quite clearly, but they oppose songs like "In This River" (Black Label Society) and "Asleep" (The Smiths). Each of those songs seem to almost linger on the actual death, which makes them sad, but in "Blue" and "Into the West," Kanno and Lennox go beyond death into metaphors of freedom and ascension. Those of you who know me best know I am not a religious person and do not necessarily believe or disbelieve that there is something after death--but the bittersweet nature of these songs, the metaphor and poeticism of them--make them clear top choices. They just have so much more power, so much more weight, than a song that just lingers on the stagnation of death (though "Asleep" quite clearly uses sleep as a metaphor for death--and in fact suicide--it's just never had as much weight to me). That being said, I would have to give "In This River" and "Asleep" honorable mentions. It also bears noting that "Into the West" reminds me a lot of the ending of Dragons of Summer Flame (Dragonlance) when all the Companions were finally reunited. Yeah, if you're not a Dragonlance fan, you have no idea what I'm talking about. But it made the song doubly relevant to me.
Honorable Mentions: Tong hua (Guang Liang) - I think this is the name of the song. I've heard it called Fairy Tale. It's in Chinese, but I think it's pretty clear from watching the video what it's about. I heard/saw it the first time in Taiwan at karaoke and I cried. In front of my students without even knowing what the lyrics meant. It was kind of embarrassing.
"In This River" (Black Label Society)
"Asleep" (The Smiths)
6.24 - added "Hero of War" by Rise Against to the Honorable Mentions.
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