The Sounds of Heartbreak: My 10 Favorite Sad Songs and Compositions

Although, like most people, I prefer cheerful and upbeat music - say, John Williams' Raiders' March, Billy Joel's Uptown Girl, or The Beatles' Eight Days a Week, there are periods when all I'll listen to is melancholic, even bitterly sad songs. Whether this is simply a matter of taste or a reflection of my own psyche is a thorny question; like most things in life it's neither one nor the other but a combination of the two. In any case, I think that most of us have songs, movie themes or even "serious" classical music pieces that we listen to when life hands us a bad hand of cards - loss of a job, stress, illness, or a love affair gone terribly wrong.


Here, then, are my Top 10 Favorite Sad Songs and Compositions:


1. And So It Goes (Billy Joel): I first heard this bittersweet ode to a doomed love affair - as Billy Joel describes it, "about a relationship you know won't last" - while watching his HBO concert from Yankee Stadium in 1990. Billy hadn't performed it in the concert proper - either on the TV special or the live show I had attended several months before - so when I heard the sad piano solo intro and the opening lines (In every heart there is a room/A sanctuary safe and strong/to heal the wounds from lovers past/until a new one comes along...), I was not only surprised, but I actually misted up. As another Joel song title would put it, Don't Ask Me Why; I wasn't dating anyone nor would I seriously fall in love with anyone for almost a decade, but I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. Perhaps it was just the melancholic mood of the words and music, or perhaps it was foreshadowing a life-changing event, but And So It Goes never fails to move me, as it brings to mind a certain young woman who I sang this song to when we met one chilly February afternoon several years ago.

2. Since I Don't Have You (The Skyliners): This song from the doo-wop era, written by Joseph Rock and performed by The Skyliners, is a love-lost song (boy loses girl, falls into despair) featured in the American Graffiti soundtrack. Its lyrics are a bit over the top at times (I don't have plans and schemes/And I don't have hopes and dreams), but I can identify with them.