If you’re new to this newsletter, here’s what happens over here in our little Fierce corner of the universe. I share thoughts, musings, stories and studies to inspire our minds and remind our spirits that there are many ways to find inner strength when we need it. If you’re not already, please subscribe. I’d really appreciate it.
Oh, hi.
Last we met, I shared a meandering list of seven heart-wrenching songs that geniuses, songwriting geniuses, have provided us with—not just for our souls to find solace, but also (if we can take a break from our tears long enough) to help us see the process of expressing the hardest moments in life and how that act of articulation in and of itself could free us from some of the pain.
Picking up where we left off (get caught up here), below is part two, seven more songs rounding out this long list to show different ways to tell a story, and how that story might help us feel seen in our pain.
Hidden sad songs
As I researched this idea, I discovered discussion around sad songs that sound happy.
God bless the songwriters who package up real life pain in quaint, conventional ditties that the masses can devour without straining ourselves too much. Sometimes the hardest things to say need a sprightly melody. Maybe that’s the only way to open our hearts at tough times.
Songs #8, #9, and #10
A few that deserve mention: Help! — John Lennon’s lyrics cry out for help against the strain of fame…but boy, if it ain’t catchy!; Born in the USA — Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics about the desperation of a Vietnam veteran who can’t find his footing back in the good ole U S of A is set to a turbo-charged tune that is easily mistaken for a pro-America anthem; and Paul Simon’s Slip Slidin’ Away.
I’ll admit, even though Paul Simon is one of my favorite songwriters of all time, I’ve never really listened to these lyrics. Until now.
And I know a father
Who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons
For the things he’d done
He came a long way
Just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and headed home again
DANNNNG. Right through the heart.
We all know what this moment is, when the words of love or contrition or I wish I had given you more get stuffed down, never breaking through. Having hard conversations are, well, hard. So sometimes we just don’t have them. Which brings me to…
The words we cannot say.
Another song in that same vein of “I wish I was a better human but I am what I am” is serving
Longing.
More longing.
Disappointment.
Fear of vulnerability.
And longing.
And without further ado, let me introduce:
Top of the World — Patty’s Griffin’
(Wow. WOW! Patty Griffin, this singular voice soaring so beautifully with no backup.)
I wished I'd have known you
Wished I'd have shown you
All of the things I
Was on the inside
But I'd pretend to be sleeping
When you'd come in in the morning
To whisper goodbye
Go to work in the rain
I don't know why
Don't know why
Sigh. The heartbreak of this song. I’m familiar with the ennui and lyrics, having belted my little heart out to The Chicks version. (If you want another great Patty Griffin rendition—clearly I do because I just cannot get enough of her vocals—here’s a paired down version. Man, she’s just so good.)
Longing, Love & Loss
While we’re talking about The Chicks, here’s another song they made popular that hits. It HITS.
Travelin’ Soldier - written by Bruce Robison.
If you’ve noticed, all the songs I’ve listed were performed by their writers. Except this one. And while Bruce sings a nice version, The Chicks bring a power that conveys so much that I’m making an exception.
Over the years I listened to (and sung along with) this so many times, with no emotional connection.
Until I married my husband.
Sometime after that, I suddenly heard the lyrics in my heart and couldn’t not cry when I sang it, thinking about his deployment to Afghanistan in 2004, long before I met him.
And now, just as I write this, what is striking me most is the YouTube comments. Yes, you read that correctly. After playing this for years, I hadn’t glanced down below the video, but today, I did a saw a new comment (on this 12 year old video) that broke my heart. A woman, after six decades of silence, chose to share with the YouTube community just how personal this song is to her. (No spoilers, you have to listen to the song!)
If you’re not familiar with this song, here’s a little more about its credibility in the Country Music Cannon. From Wikipedia: “Kevin John Coyne, reviewing the song for Country Universe, rated the song No. 17 on his list of the 201 Greatest Singles of the Decade. He stated that "it's the story between the lines that drives home the tragedy, as both main characters have a palpable sense of loneliness that they finally find relief from in one another just before they are ripped permanently apart.”
The soldier’s sadness and loneliness and fear is tightly locked in the Army-issued footlocker of his soul. And yet. He speaks to her.
Our love will never end
Waiting for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone
When the letter says a soldier's coming home
Listen ‘till the end and you hear the instruments crying out. A violin and mandolin wailing.
This is what crushing sadness sounds like. And it’s beautiful.
The One That’s Personal
In the weeks that I’ve been writing this two-part newsletter, I put this song on the list but didn’t write a word about it. In all the drafting process, I didn’t make note of one thought or feeling. In a way, I was avoiding it. Finding a way why this next song hit me so hard took just a little more from me and I skirted around it until right now, the very last moment.
I realize it’s because this is the one that carried me through my own lowest days a few years ago.
While I didn’t grow up with Gordon Lightfoot (though I remember his name sounding funny when I was a kid), in recent years Spotify has served him up and he worked into my rotation. Specifically this song…
If You Could Read My Mind - Gordon Lightfoot
If you, like me, wasn’t that familiar with Mr. Lightfoot, let me introduce you to some lyrics from Bob Dylan’s favorite singer-songwriter.
If I could read your mind, love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind the drugstore sells
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take…
…I never thought I could act this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong
But the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back
When I was going through rounds of IVF after a few miscarriages in the years prior, I started to break a little inside. These lyrics didn’t actually make me feel better, but they gave words to the hidden fears.
…Namely that I would fail and no one wants to be with a failure. And that something would break in my marriage, irrevocably.
I played this song over and over, letting it reaffirm my fears. While it bordered on emotional cutting, it felt almost sensible because here was someone who said the things I worried about most; so clearly articulated that clearly my nightmares musin’t be unfounded. We look at ourselves as the Heroes of our own lives, but what if I was the Tragic variety, doomed? It felt good to know that this ick had all been felt by someone else before. Here it was perfectly said, beautifully articulated, and just so gut-wrenchingly real.
(Post script: If you don’t know Rick Beato on YouTube, he has an amazing series that I dip into from time to time as background while I’m writing, called “What Makes This Song Great?” It’s highly technical and I know noting about music production and music-making so most of it goes over my head but I like learning why some songs become immortal. If you’re curious about If You Could Read My Mind, here you go. )
As we’ve dipped into so many sad songs, we’ve explored so many ways for our soul to speak out. There are many I haven’t included. How could I? But you know them, the ones you turn to when your soul needs to express the pain it’s sifting through. Take, for instance, Adele’s Someone Like You, bursting with longing and misery over a long-broken romantic relationship. It’s a heart-ripper for sure. But if I were to list one more song, it comes back to the songwriter who inspired the concept for this post: Taylor Swift.
I’m ending here because, truly, I have no words after Taylor Swift’s Ronan.
The Finale
Ronan - Taylor Swift
Listening to many, many songs to assemble this two-newsletters-long list, I came across one more Taylor Swift song that I was not familiar with (there are plenty of her songs I’m not familiar with).
It eviscerated my heart. It’s about one of the pinnacles of pain—childhood cancer.
She took words from a mother’s blog about her young son’s cancer battle and brought their heartbreaking story to life in song. As I listened, round after round of tears pushed out of my eyes, flooding my cheeks faster than I could wipe them away.
This may be too much to bear, but if you choose to….
Why Did I Even Write This?
Oh, that’s a good question. This two-part newsletter cataloging 14 songs that shake us up from the inside was my way of answering: what is the power that sad songs bring to our life? Why do we need them to feel better, and not just why but how do the writers do it so well?
To me, this is all part of resilience and finding your way forward.
To get through the hardest moments of life, those moments covered in this long list—a break-up, an abortion, infertility, repression of feelings for loved ones, the loss of a love or a child—we need help. We need to find solace anywhere we can, and sometimes that’s in music. In the immortal words of Redditor @TheWordThat mentioned on a Sad Boy Power Ballads subreddit: “I mean singing a ballad about your emotions is definitely healthier than bottling them up.”
And as we make our way forward, remember, the only way to get to the other side of pain is to start by putting one foot in front of the other.
Onward.
Until next time,
xx M
Can a sad song save our soul?