Each song below is in the “Sad Music Can Actually Make Us Feel Better” (see previous post) category. Take a page from Shrinking‘s Paul (Harrison Ford), who as a therapist prescribes listening 15 minutes a day to sad songs of your choice as a way to both express and contain acute grieving.
I. “Good Enough” by Sarah McLachlan (2006)
SongFacts.com: McLachlan’s fictional family situation in “Good Enough” just happens, she acknowledges, to mirror her own background of having an abusive father. The role of reaching out to another child friend in a bad situation is one she imagined for herself.
II. “Top of the World” by The Chicks (2002)
A father has died. In one of the most achingly sad songs ever recorded, his regrets are sung from his current (after-death) viewpoint.
…There’s a whole lot of singing that’s never gonna be heardDisappearing every day without so much as a word somehowThink I broke the wings off that little songbirdShe’s never gonna fly to the top of the world right nowTop of the world…
III. “Everything I Wanted” by Billie Eilish (2019)
Eilish’s brother Finneas, also a singer-songwriter, has been a main support for her in her periods of depression.
…And you say, “As long as I’m hereNo one can hurt youDon’t wanna lie hereBut you can learn toIf I could changeThe way that you see yourselfYou wouldn’t wonder why you hearThey don’t deserve you”…
A cover of “Everything I Wanted” by Wynonna Judd:
IV. “Piece by Piece” by Kelly Clarkson (2015)
When Clarkson, the first-ever winner of American Idol, returned to its stage in Season 15 to sing this newly recorded song about the father who abandoned her—and her husband who would never abandon their daughter—she is overcome with emotion toward the end.
It was so well received that the “Idol” version was later released as a single.
…Piece by piece, I fell far from the treeI will never leave her like you left meAnd she will never have to wonder her worthBecause unlike you, I’m gonna put her first and you knowHe’ll never walk awayHe’ll never break her heartHe’ll take care of things, he’ll love herPiece by piece, he restored my faithThat a man can be kind and the father should be great…
V. “Blue Bucket of Gold” by Sufjan Stevens (2015)
Stevens’s Carrie & Lowell album, a smash indie hit about his relationships with both his mother and stepfather, is full of sad songs. His mom Carrie, who suffered with mental illness and substance abuse, abandoned him in early childhood.
“Sufjan’s personal blue bucket of gold (that is, a treasure he has only heard of and can hardly imagine),” states Genius.com, “is probably a metaphor for his mother…Just when she returned into his life, she died of cancer.”
...Raise your right handTell me you want me in your lifeOr raise your red flagJust when I want you in my life…
In the version below of this “beautifully bummed-out tune” (AV Club) Stevens accompanies his friend Gallant, whose plaintive cover is astounding. Hold on until the very end.
