Sometimes I Love It When You Break My Heart
25 Songs that are achingly, depressingly, painfully beautiful. |
| 1 | Red House Painters
Mistress (Piano Version)
oh Mark Kozelek, I could put any of your songs on here... I'll put a Sun Kil Moon song on later. |
| 2 | Talk Talk
Runeii
That reverbed guitar lick at the beginning, just melts me dammit. |
| 3 | Stars of the Lid
Tippy's Demise
When the violin breaks from the oscillating drone and runes down the scale. Yeah. |
| 4 | Sufjan Stevens
Flint
Simple piano part and the ascending trumpet. Plus it's about the city of Flint, how depressing is that? |
| 5 | Tom Waits
Georgia Lee
A gorgeous piano ballad. Some of the saddest lyrics I've ever heard. |
| 6 | Ralph McTell
Streets of London
East Coast classic with some sad lyrics and great folk guitar. |
| 7 | Bon Iver
Re: Stacks
Like I need to explain this. |
| 8 | Sigur Ros
Untitled 3
Everyone knows the part that where the piano goes up an octave. |
| 9 | Radiohead
Motion Picture Soundtrack
The organ and Yorke tug your heart strings one last time. |
| 10 | Pink Floyd
The Great Gig in the Sky
Vocal solo |
| 11 | Okkervil River
So Come Back, I Am Waiting
It was between this, The Glow and A Stone but this epic pulls it out as the ending is just epic. |
| 12 | Pepe Romero
Concierto Andaluz - Adaggio
Classical guitarists interpretation of the Rodrigo piece is at once technically marvelling and played with great emotion. The ending is fantastic as it symbolizes Rodrigo's stillborn baby rising to heaven with a picardy third. |
| 13 | Neutral Milk Hotel
Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2
As if any list of this nature could be made without this song. |
| 14 | The Decemberists
The Crane Wife 1 and 2
Not so much Pt. 1 as Pt. 2 with the breaking up "Heart" into a multi-syllabic cascade. |
| 15 | Eluvium
Repose in Blue
Great for night time driving |
| 16 | Antonin Dvorak
Serenade for Strings
Dvorak is great and this serenade is incredibly pretty. |
| 17 | DeVotchKa
How It Ends
"And you already know. Yes you Aaaaaaalready know, how this will end." |
| 18 | Godspeed You Black Emperor
The Dead Flag Blues
That monologue, that violin. Creep, beautiful, everything. |
| 19 | Do Make Say Think
Reitschule
Their older stuff isn't my favourite, but this song is sweepingly cinematic and atypical beautiful for a band who take a more fun approach to post-rock then most other bands. |
| 20 | Charles Spearin
Mr. Gowrie
The reverb drenched and backwords guitar bring a soft ambient undertone to a sad story of love from a Canadian immigrant |
| 21 | Sun Kil Moon
Lucky Man
The guitar work is great and the vocal melody is among Kozelek's best. |
| 22 | Billy Joel
Lullaby
So this is pretty cliche, but it's still a great song. It's also really fun and easy (unlike most of Joel's work) to play on piano. |
| 23 | Andrew Bird
Souverian
Especially the second half with the echoing drums. |
| 24 | The Antlers
Wake
the vocal melody in the first half is equal parts catchy and depressing. |
| 25 | Jeff Buckley
Hallelujah
For very personal reasons, but even if I didn't have those reasons, this would still be a perfect fit to round out the list. |
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