Somber Songs
 

What songs are good for when you're sitting there reflecting on your life, the memories, all the people you don't see anymore and just contemplating the universe?

You know, the one that you want to come on while you're driving alone in the middle of the night thinking.

My favorite:

Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah

Kruder and Dorfmeister - Gone

Barclay James Harvest - One night

" everybody needs someone to love, everybody needs a friend
everybody needs someone to care"

It's not exactly songs (which may or not even be very somber) that I want to come on when I'm driving alone in the middle of the night thinking, but songs that, for whatever reason, will trigger this somber mood in me, and there are a number of them:

A Perfect Circle - Orestes
A Perfect Circle - 3 Libras
Don McLean - American Pie
Eagles - Desperado
Iron And Wine - Cinder And Smoke
John Mellencamp - Small Town
Lynyrd Skynyrd - The Ballad Of Curtis Lowe
Nine Inch Nails - Something I Can Never Have
Nine Inch Nails - A Warm Place
Nine Inch Nails - And All That Could Have Been
Ozzy Osbourne - Mama, I'm Coming Home
Pink Floyd - Mother (Well, most of The Wall, honestly.)
Radiohead - Subterranean Homesick Alien
Sigur Rós - Glosoli (Thanks again, btw. ;) )
The Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight, Tonight
Tool - Sober
Tool - Patient

Vibrasphere - Manzanilla
Xerxes - Blessed
Shpongle - ...And the Day Turned to Night
Claude Challe - Free at Last
Karsh Kale - Epic
Astral Projection - 10,000 Suns
Lemon Jelly - '64 aka Go
Banco de Gaia - We All Know the Truth (You Have God)

massive attack songs - too many to list
my life with the thrill kill kult - resisting the spirit
pantera - planet caravan
pearl jam - indifference
depeche mode - 'little fifteen' or 'in your room' or 'pimpf'
metallica - nothing else matters
dead can dance - too many to list
led zeppelin - no quarter
many more but this should get you started

Also, pretty much the entire 'Are You Shpongled?' album by Shpongle. Maybe DMT gets a little crazy but the rest are very downtempo; meditative with a lick of electronic psychedelia.

These are just really mellow and I really enjoy them:

New Slang -The Shins
Steps and Numbers -Appleseed Cast
Tonight, Tonight -Smashing Pumpkins
Don't Panic -Coldplay

"The Heart asks Pleasure first" from the movie soundtrack "The Piano", played by Michael Nyman. That's the first song to come to mind.

Future Sound of London - Cerebal

Sigur Ros - Ebow

Boards of Canada.

And if I am in a metal mood, a playlist of Pelican, Isis and Red Sparowes.

I guess it all depends on what kind of music you associate the past with.

I know this is a bigass bump, but I came back because I'm doing an all-nighter since it's spring break and I just felt like listening to music alone, not having any distractions.

I guess I should contribute since I bumped.

Metallica - Orion

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Badlife

Enigma - Sadness

The Orb - Into the 4th Dimension or Outlands

Joydrop - Beautiful

Matchbox 20 - album title Mad Season, track 13 (I don't have the title, but look it up on amazon; it doesn't suck as much as the band's name would suggest it would)

Eric Clapton - (last half of the old version of) Layla - I play this on piano a lot when I'm trying to feel something. My last band used to close every show with this section of that song, and it was incredible every time.

For some reason, all those classic rock bands that would sing a song and then, after the singing was over, just jam afterwards - the second ('jam') half of the song was soooo much better than the song itself; I should someday record a set of CDs with just the second-half-of-the-song jam sessions of those bands. The radio stations always cut that stuff short and it pisses me off - some of the best music for reflection ever played. Even the jam sessions of metal bands imitated this (e.g. metallica's fade to black). Stuff like this makes me want to quit school counseling and go back to teaching music. Some of the stuff my students and I went through when looking at american popular music was amazing and I miss it.

Take a look at your classic rock collections and remember to pay attention to those jam sessions if the songs have them. There's no lyrics during them to distract you from what you have on your mind, and the music seems to be just perfect for whatever it is that you're thinking about. You'll thank yourself.

*crap removed*

The heart of the matter by Don henley. always makes me slightly miss my ex wife for about 30 seconds