Cry About It

I would like to talk about the "songs that make you slit your wrists". There is no My Chemical Romance on this list. This is a list of the songs that will break you, that will tear you apart, like love. These are the songs of the Dementors, the songs that burn away the light and leave behind the remnants of a faded glorious night; these are the songs that stole the sun from your heart.


Never Is a Promise - Fiona Apple
Oh, Fiona. You sing my pain.

You'll say, don't fear your dreams, it's easier than it seems
You'll say you'd never let me fall from hopes so high
But never is a promise and you can't afford to lie 

 But I do, I fear them, we all fear them. She is singing about alienation, and despair, and hope, but so gently and poignantly that it makes us want to sob quietly in a bathroom stall like we are sixteen again. We've all been lied to; we're all lied to; we've all been too proud.

But never is a promise, and you can't afford to lie..

To quote an entirely different band: what a shame we've all become such fragile, broken things. Melancholy.


Too Cold Here - Manic Street Preachers
I honestly think it's the whistle at the beginning that makes this song so aching, but I don't have an explanation for that. Perhaps there's something about whistling being so cheery, and then the song being so painful. We get off to a bright start:

 Born in burial gowns, recessing slowly
You soon wish you couldn't see at all
Tortured in the mind, six voices alone 

Born in burial gowns. There is nothing delicate about the representation of pain in this song. These boys want to make you feel it, feel every searing moment of it. 

Everyone asks what's wrong, but what's right? 

I mean, the song is right. But god, what else? 

High And Dry - Radiohead

It's the best thing that you ever had, the best thing you ever had is gone away. 

Yeah, I think that about sums it up. Heartbreak/heartache. I can pretty easily see myself crying into a carton of ice cream over this song.

All your insides fall to pieces

You just sit there wishing you could still make love 

Dive In - The Horrors

Tom Furse has said of this song: "It's like a sweet helplessness. It's helplessness, but you don't actually mind it." And you don't, but only because it's so beautiful; you don't mind going cold into the current. This song can be interpreted as being about suicide - it's hard not to interpret it that way - but, for me, it goes beyond that: it is almost a suicide note.

Away, away, away you go
Before they push you under
Away, away, away you go
Before they pull you in

And we return to our sweet helplessness. 

Back To The Old House - The Smiths

I know, The Smiths are the most cherished, cliché misery band in the whole fucking melancholy world.  

Listen, though. 

I would rather not go
Back to the old house
There's too many
Bad memories

It's about lost love:

And you never knew
How much I really liked you
Because I never even told you

But it hurts like a painful childhood memory. It aches with all the things that hurt you when you were innocent. It will make you suffer in silence. 

Hurt - Johnny Cash

This song was used very recently in the trailer for the video game Prototype 2. It played during televised Toronto Blue Jays baseball games. Woe to you if you didn't catch the remote in time to mute it. WOE. The original Nine Inch Nails version has a certain kind of pain as well; it's a darker, angrier pain. In the Johnny Cash version, all you hear is the pain of an old man and his regrets. CHRIST. 

Try to kill it all away

But I remember everything

Death Is Not The End - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Nick Cave makes my soul feel all the emotions. When he sang Shiver with The Birthday Party, I felt my skin crawl in a pre-gothic way. His cover of Bob Dylan's Death Is Not The End makes me feel something entirely different. It's not a suicide note, not exactly. There's the desire to die, but too much strength to let go. It's an unwillingness to fall apart even when that is all that remains to be done. It is strength and despair and everything that is human.

And all that you held sacred
Falls down and does not mend

Black Star - Radiohead

This song makes me ache with how perfectly it represents every time my depression affected my boyfriend, my father, my mother. 

I know all the things around your head and what they do to you
What are we coming to?
What are we gonna do?

I truly do not know what else to say about this song; it encapsulates the reality of living with a bitterly depressed loved one, and it makes me ache with empathy.

Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist - Muse

When I make suicide playlists, this song always plays second to last. 

I know you're in this room, I'm sure I heard you sigh

and then

Look through a faithless eye, are you afraid to die?

Christ, Matt. I'm terrified.

Still A Long Way To Go - James Dean Bradfield

Before I went into the hospital, this song was all I could listen to: I would lie in my bed, wrapped up in and immobilised by blankets, just trying to be safe and listening to this song. 

You're falling through the night, and giving in to bad dreams

I don't want to give in, but I think the same "sweet helplessness" applies here, too. It's the certainty of despair.

Like laughing in the dark, to keep the dogs at bay

Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky - Manic Street Preachers

I think that this song hurts largely because of the music. The lyrics are Richey, which just makes everything hurt more, as it always does when you know they're Richey lyrics and you know how the story ends. Oh, Richey. You destroy us. I wonder how you would feel, knowing your songs have such power. Maybe you do know. 

Here chewing your tail is joy

Such a cheery image, but it conveys the apathetic despair of a deep depression. 

Crowd Surf Off A Cliff -  Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton

I mean, if you're going to open with cursed with a love that you can't express, it's not for a fuck or a kiss, you have to know that things are going to end in tears. And then if we're going to end with I wake up lonely....

I mean, fuck. Emily Haines' voice is so gorgeous, so haunting, so much the siren luring you to the rocks. 

Are we breathing? Are we breathing? Are we wasting our breath?

William's Last Words - Manic Street Preachers

This song had to be on here, but I am dreading writing about it. The Manics have said very specifically that it is not Richey's suicide note, that they do not see it that way, but it is very hard to hear it as anything but. Maybe not his, but a suicide note regardless. 

It's hard not to quote the entire fucking thing. 

I'm just gonna close my eyes, think about my family
And shed a little tear

 Shed a little tear and it's good night, nos da. To everything and everyone you have ever loved. 

Street Spirit (Fade Out) - Radiohead

I can feel death, I can see its beady eyes

CHRIST.  

Cracked eggs, dead birds
Scream as they fight for life

 CHRIST. I'm about ready to go off myself now. Thom Yorke et al are so good at the imagery that tears at your heart, at every fibre of your being. 

Yeah, so music is your boyfriend. Okay, so music saved your mortal soul. Fine, you love the song AND the singer. You still have to acknowledge that very little has such power to hurt and save and make you ache, ache with the hurt or as you scream as [you] fight for life.
And I haven't even touched the break-up and heartbreak songs.
I just wanted to make you feel. I know you probably know how music can affect you. I know you've been hurt by it and saved by it. I know there's a song that takes you back so strongly that it stops you in your tracks.
I really just wanted to make you cry.

Immerse your soul in love.