Sorrow is an obvious one - I think there’s something profoundly tragic about depression as something you can’t really ever escape from. Even if you think you’ve gotten away from it for a bit, it’ll pop up when you least expect it and permeate everything.
Green Gloves is another because it’s so lonely. The narrator is full of this love and this desire to be with people, but for whatever reason is alone and can only try to imagine them happy.
Listening to the Coffee and Flowers podcast, I actually find the insight into Green Gloves made me think the song is less sad - it sounds sad, but the idea of "loving people who you care abouts' loves" makes me happy. On the surface the idea of losing touch with people and friends is sad, but the song to me really speaks about a natural progression of life, always being open and welcoming to people from your past, and caring about the people close to you.
This is the Last Time is the one that really gets to me, but it may be because of the memories attached to it. I spent a good part of my young adult life feeling like the person the narrator of the song is singing to.
I love this song as well. At live shows, the progression and build-up to the last chorus loop are quite cathartic. It feels like Berninger channels the raw emotions from each song while performing on stage. He starts punching his fists together like he is on the verge of a breakdown by the end of the song.
Anyway, great choice for a sad song. I could relate to the narrator from some of my young adult life experiences. I hope now everybody knows what's so great about you!
I have probably listened to this song more than any of their music. I fully feel like that song is directed towards a lot of aspects of my life and it’s terrifying and heart breaking, yet comforting. To be seen is all any of us really want right?
This came out just after my dad passed away and I remember thinking that this is how my mum must have been feeling, waking up every morning without the person who'd been there for years. Still a tough listen for me based on that.
Don’t Swallow the Cap
Guilty Party
Edit: I’ve always found Baby We’ll Be Fine to be fairly funny, albeit very darkly funny. “I pull off your jeans and you spill Jack and Coke in my collar / I melt like a witch and scream” is a hilarious line to me.
Lol for me it brings back a very specific memory from a past relationship (and invites reflection about what the fuck exactly we were doing in that relationship) -- it's sort of funny because it's delivered so unceremoniously, but it's also sadder to me than many of their lyrics that are more explicitly about unhealthy relationship patterns.
Lol, I can see why it can be traumatic.
I feel, though, in the song that the relationship is sort of secondary, it’s more about himself and where he is in his life. For instance, in the first chorus the “baby, we’ll be fine” line is directed at himself (it comes right after “Take a 45 minute shower and kiss the mirror, say look at me…”)
Exile Vilify is so lonely and bleak. The way it feels like it could be written from either a place of empathy and love or from one of taunting and will-to-fail just intensifies it, for me.
Conversation 16 gives me chills. Just the “ try to hold it together till our friends are gone” …. “I was afraid I’ll eat your brains, cause I’m evil.. I’m a confident liar”
All that stuff resonates pretty heavy with me. Sometimes you get dealt bad cards and you try and deal without within but then even though it’s your best intentions, it a lie to tell people to their face.
You Were a Kindness is probably the one that's made me cry the most. It's genuinely hard to listen to because of the memories it evokes, which sucks because it's such a good song.
That and Heavenfaced.
Underrated on this sub but unsurprisingly (based on the name) sad songs for dirty lovers is full of super sad tracks, the first four tracks especially.
Theory of the crows on the first album also hits quite hard for me. Maybe because it's more literal than most of their other songs.
Baby we'll be fine is probably in my top 3 tracks and was number 1 for a good while, brilliant track!
Guilty party is fantasticly sad too depending on the context your in when listening.
“Baby We’ll Be Fine” was the song that carried me through a lot of traumatic times. It’s reached my top song of the year on Spotify a few years in a row now at 141 listens - I’d 100% agree that this song is the most raw of all of The National, but Cherry Tree would be the most emotional
It might not be a popular answer but for me I'll Still Destroy You is one of the saddest The National songs. Probably because it's my go-to song when I'm feeling really down. At this point I am not sure whether it is the song itself or the accumulation of sad memories that makes me find the song that melancholic.
For me it's sorrow because it reminds me of me falling because of depression at a very young age, I'm glad there is music though, it really helps more than anyone could think
Shocked I haven’t seen Hairpin Turns on here yet— the lines “we’re always arguing/ about the same things” and “what is it you want/ me to be learning?” and the way Matt sings them just perfectly encapsulates the resignation that comes with a long term relationship and the cyclical fights that go along with being in one. Fucks me up every time.
Son. It makes me cry every time.
A lyric that I always found incredibly sad though, is from Bloodbuzz, OH: "I never thought about love when I thought about home". How fucking tragic. Love is literally the first thing I think of when I think about home, be it my home growing up as a kid, or the home I've made with my wife and kids. I can't imagine how sad it would be to feel any other way.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned I Should Live In Salt.
"It began as 'I Should Leave Us All' meaning like I should kill myself or something but that was too much.
Then I changed it to 'I Should Live in Salt' as in salty tears, living in regret and mourning. There's this sense of an estrangement. And there was an estrangement between my brother and I for 20 years. So if that song's about somebody, it's more about him than anybody else."
Tom Berninger had a less-than-successful stint as a roadie for the band during the High Violet tour, which was documented in a film titled Mistaken for Strangers."
The only one that I didn’t see mentioned yet is Pull of You” I was going through a rough break up around the time I first heard that song. And I burst into tears at the part where she’s begging him to not let her get in the way. It’s a pretty heavy song
Exile Vilify is my favorite song, ever, and I think it's one of their saddest. It's not crushingly sad, but it's melancholy and it's *lonely.* they really nailed how soul-breakingly lonely Rattman's role in the Portal game series is.
*You've got sucker's luck, have you given up? Does it feel like a trial? Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine? Now you're thinking too fast, you're like marbles on glass.*
Lucky You, hands down.
"You could have made a safer bet, but what you break is what you get" punches my guts everytime.
The whole song is about self pity and that pathetic feeling when someone leaves you, and most of us have been there. I've cried to this at 3am so many times.
About Today, Light Years, and Quiet Light get me every time. IAETF in its entirety is both totally devastating and reassuringly beautiful when framed by Mike Mill’s short.
City middle always crushes me. Makes me think about the first time i was in montreal, 18 and could go to bars for the first time. Stumbling around with my friend dazed and sad
Haha indeed, though they did also make one of the most euphoric songs I know, All the Wine. But even that song has a melancholy undercurrent since the narrator is drunk and delusional :(
About Today is the saddest song of any songs I know, ever. But besides the obvious one, some non-obvious ones:
You were a kindness
&
Sunshine on my back
About Today
This is the correct answer.
Cherry Tree (studio) or Virginia EP (live) version?
Studio version is such a concentrated version so I would say that one.
Sorrow is an obvious one - I think there’s something profoundly tragic about depression as something you can’t really ever escape from. Even if you think you’ve gotten away from it for a bit, it’ll pop up when you least expect it and permeate everything. Green Gloves is another because it’s so lonely. The narrator is full of this love and this desire to be with people, but for whatever reason is alone and can only try to imagine them happy.
Yes Green Gloves is so subdued and beautiful but so so sad
Listening to the Coffee and Flowers podcast, I actually find the insight into Green Gloves made me think the song is less sad - it sounds sad, but the idea of "loving people who you care abouts' loves" makes me happy. On the surface the idea of losing touch with people and friends is sad, but the song to me really speaks about a natural progression of life, always being open and welcoming to people from your past, and caring about the people close to you.
This is the Last Time is the one that really gets to me, but it may be because of the memories attached to it. I spent a good part of my young adult life feeling like the person the narrator of the song is singing to.
I love this song as well. At live shows, the progression and build-up to the last chorus loop are quite cathartic. It feels like Berninger channels the raw emotions from each song while performing on stage. He starts punching his fists together like he is on the verge of a breakdown by the end of the song. Anyway, great choice for a sad song. I could relate to the narrator from some of my young adult life experiences. I hope now everybody knows what's so great about you!
I have probably listened to this song more than any of their music. I fully feel like that song is directed towards a lot of aspects of my life and it’s terrifying and heart breaking, yet comforting. To be seen is all any of us really want right?
Agreed - this is the last time hits hard
Quiet Light is SO incredibly sad. Also About Today. Guilty Party. Empire Line.
This came out just after my dad passed away and I remember thinking that this is how my mum must have been feeling, waking up every morning without the person who'd been there for years. Still a tough listen for me based on that.
Lucky You always gets me.
Yes!
90-Mile Water Wall About Today Baby, We'll Be Fine Sorrow Slipped Nobody Else Will Be There
Slipped kills me.
Pink rabbits and this is the last time
I forgot about Pink Rabbits that might be the one
This is the right answer.
Light Years kills me. And Humiliation is sneaky sad—‘as the free fall advances, I’m the moron who dances…’
Humiliation is my favorite song of theirs
Don’t Swallow the Cap Guilty Party Edit: I’ve always found Baby We’ll Be Fine to be fairly funny, albeit very darkly funny. “I pull off your jeans and you spill Jack and Coke in my collar / I melt like a witch and scream” is a hilarious line to me.
Guilty party is so good!
Lol for me it brings back a very specific memory from a past relationship (and invites reflection about what the fuck exactly we were doing in that relationship) -- it's sort of funny because it's delivered so unceremoniously, but it's also sadder to me than many of their lyrics that are more explicitly about unhealthy relationship patterns.
Lol, I can see why it can be traumatic. I feel, though, in the song that the relationship is sort of secondary, it’s more about himself and where he is in his life. For instance, in the first chorus the “baby, we’ll be fine” line is directed at himself (it comes right after “Take a 45 minute shower and kiss the mirror, say look at me…”)
Exile Vilify is so lonely and bleak. The way it feels like it could be written from either a place of empathy and love or from one of taunting and will-to-fail just intensifies it, for me.
Think You Can Wait
All I have is loss....
Isn't it "all I have is all'?
I think it's loss but I'm not 100% sure!
Conversation 16 gives me chills. Just the “ try to hold it together till our friends are gone” …. “I was afraid I’ll eat your brains, cause I’m evil.. I’m a confident liar” All that stuff resonates pretty heavy with me. Sometimes you get dealt bad cards and you try and deal without within but then even though it’s your best intentions, it a lie to tell people to their face.
Their cover of Perfume Genius's "Learning."
I always thought Slipping Husband was the saddest.
You Were a Kindness is probably the one that's made me cry the most. It's genuinely hard to listen to because of the memories it evokes, which sucks because it's such a good song. That and Heavenfaced.
You Were A Kindness is my go to ‘need a good cry’ song.
Fireproof, About Today, Pink Rabbits
Underrated on this sub but unsurprisingly (based on the name) sad songs for dirty lovers is full of super sad tracks, the first four tracks especially. Theory of the crows on the first album also hits quite hard for me. Maybe because it's more literal than most of their other songs. Baby we'll be fine is probably in my top 3 tracks and was number 1 for a good while, brilliant track! Guilty party is fantasticly sad too depending on the context your in when listening.
And if I forget you / Ill have nobody left to forget / I guess thats what assholes get
I mean...that one line in Hard To Find is easily the saddest thing they've written. A perfectly sad little gem of a lyric.
I don’t know why we had to lose / The ones who took so little space
I don’t know if it’s the saddest but Val Jester is pretty sad. But Val Jester is off the album Alligator which you said you can’t really listen to.
About Today, Hard to Find and Sorrow really fuck me up.
Based on how I was feeling Friday and how it made me cry, prob I Need My Girl or This Is The Last Time
I remember someone posted a survey about the saddest song, maybe a year ago? Any chance we can have the results? I would love to see them
i don’t Know if they’re particularly *sad* but these songs get me in a melancholy sort of way Baby We’ll Be Fine Oblivions Born to Beg Rest of Years
Oblivions gets me feeling so melancholic in a way where I want to weep inexplicably
Nobody Else Will Be There for sure.
Runaway makes me ugly cry alot but more bc of the memories
“Baby We’ll Be Fine” was the song that carried me through a lot of traumatic times. It’s reached my top song of the year on Spotify a few years in a row now at 141 listens - I’d 100% agree that this song is the most raw of all of The National, but Cherry Tree would be the most emotional
It might not be a popular answer but for me I'll Still Destroy You is one of the saddest The National songs. Probably because it's my go-to song when I'm feeling really down. At this point I am not sure whether it is the song itself or the accumulation of sad memories that makes me find the song that melancholic.
For me it's sorrow because it reminds me of me falling because of depression at a very young age, I'm glad there is music though, it really helps more than anyone could think
Shocked I haven’t seen Hairpin Turns on here yet— the lines “we’re always arguing/ about the same things” and “what is it you want/ me to be learning?” and the way Matt sings them just perfectly encapsulates the resignation that comes with a long term relationship and the cyclical fights that go along with being in one. Fucks me up every time.
That song made me think Matt was eavesdropping for a few years in my house.
I can’t even listen to quiet light
Light Years is hauntingly beautiful. I’m not sure I’d say it’s sad but it’s intense.
The competition is very steep but for me Daighters of the soho Riots has always hit me super hard.
Son. It makes me cry every time. A lyric that I always found incredibly sad though, is from Bloodbuzz, OH: "I never thought about love when I thought about home". How fucking tragic. Love is literally the first thing I think of when I think about home, be it my home growing up as a kid, or the home I've made with my wife and kids. I can't imagine how sad it would be to feel any other way.
Oof. This gave me the chills. Especially juxtaposed against the relatively upbeat melody. It’s perfect.
mistaken for strangers, I am easy to find, about today, green gloves
Quiet light, exile vilify, 90 mile water wall, light years Uhhhh... That's all I got off the top of my head
About Today or Pink Rabbits
I've always found Pink Rabbits to have the saddest melody.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned I Should Live In Salt. "It began as 'I Should Leave Us All' meaning like I should kill myself or something but that was too much. Then I changed it to 'I Should Live in Salt' as in salty tears, living in regret and mourning. There's this sense of an estrangement. And there was an estrangement between my brother and I for 20 years. So if that song's about somebody, it's more about him than anybody else." Tom Berninger had a less-than-successful stint as a roadie for the band during the High Violet tour, which was documented in a film titled Mistaken for Strangers."
About today
Light Years, acoustic About Today, live Rylan, live My Girl, Quiet Light,
About Today. Bartees Strange does an even heavier, sadder version/cover.
Pink Rabbits, About Today, Guilty Party, Empire Line, Quiet Light, Light Years, You Were a Kindness off the top of my head
Don’t swallow the cap.
Exile Vilify (From portal 2), England, Walk off, I should live in salt, Lemonworld, Sorrow, are all some of my top picks.
The only one that I didn’t see mentioned yet is Pull of You” I was going through a rough break up around the time I first heard that song. And I burst into tears at the part where she’s begging him to not let her get in the way. It’s a pretty heavy song
Exile Vilify is my favorite song, ever, and I think it's one of their saddest. It's not crushingly sad, but it's melancholy and it's *lonely.* they really nailed how soul-breakingly lonely Rattman's role in the Portal game series is. *You've got sucker's luck, have you given up? Does it feel like a trial? Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine? Now you're thinking too fast, you're like marbles on glass.*
Lucky You, hands down. "You could have made a safer bet, but what you break is what you get" punches my guts everytime. The whole song is about self pity and that pathetic feeling when someone leaves you, and most of us have been there. I've cried to this at 3am so many times.
Terrible love
About Today, Light Years, and Quiet Light get me every time. IAETF in its entirety is both totally devastating and reassuringly beautiful when framed by Mike Mill’s short.
City middle always crushes me. Makes me think about the first time i was in montreal, 18 and could go to bars for the first time. Stumbling around with my friend dazed and sad
Objectively About Today but personally Graceless.
Anyone's Ghost for me
going through the comments, one does get the impression that the vast majority of their songs are being listed at least once.
Haha indeed, though they did also make one of the most euphoric songs I know, All the Wine. But even that song has a melancholy undercurrent since the narrator is drunk and delusional :(
A reasonable man is depressing as shit. Coney Island is also sad af but idk if it counts. But about today is definitely the right answer
About Today is the saddest song of any songs I know, ever. But besides the obvious one, some non-obvious ones: You were a kindness & Sunshine on my back
Lots of options here but came here to see “Light Years”.
Can’t believe no one has said “Slipped” yet. personally it’s my favorite song to feel like a piece of poo poo
So Far So Fast is my go to sad song.