Those of you who have been with this blog for a while already know that I’ve written a lot about sad songs here before. In fact, there was a moment a few years ago when this blog enjoyed a little celebrity as my site was the first thing that came up when you Googled “sad songs.” I’ve said many times that, for me, the basic formula for a truly great song has only four ingredients: 3 chords and a sad story. So, today’s charge in the 30 Day Song Challenge is a welcome one for yours truly.
I consider myself not only a lover of sad songs, but a connoisseur of sad songs. And just as all sadness is not the same, neither are all sad songs. I have a particular fondness for those that tell a sad story, however tragic or mundane, but I also like the ones that kind of sneak up on you with their sadness. I like the ones that shouldn’t be sad but sound so anyway. I like the ones that are just about being sad as much as the ones about not being sad that are sad despite themselves. Sadness is a human experience that can be, often is, devastatingly painful and paralyzing. It also can be, and too often is, a very lonely experience. One the very best things about sad songs is that they somehow manage to diminish the feeling of being totally isolated and alone in one’s sadness. In that way, the right sad song at the right time is the very best kind of emotional bandaid. It won’t heal and it doesn’t repair whatever caused your pain, but it can provide temporary cover for the wound.
Choosing a great sad song is different than choosing a song that makes me sad, though. This one makes me sad. It’s the Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris version of “Love Hurts” (posthumously released on Gram Parsons’ 1973 album Grievous Angel):
This song was originally written by Boudleaux Bryant and originally recorded by the Everly Brothers in 1960. A year later, Roy Orbison’s version first made the song a hit, and it enjoyed another popular revival after Nazareth covered it in 1976. (The Nazareth version, with Dan McCafferty’s wailing tenor vocals, is probably the one most familiar to people.) My guess is that a million other people with some rudimentary skill on the guitar have played this song at some point. But there’s just nothing like the Parsons/Harris version. It’s so soft and so vulnerable, and they deliver it with such heartbreaking believability, that it gets me right at my core every time. I don’t think a case needs to be made for why this song makes me, or anyone else, sad. That seems obvious. But I do want to say a few things about why I think this song might be one of the greatest songs ever written.
I’ll ask you to engage for a moment in what the folks in my profession call a “thought experiment.” Imagine that we separated the lyrics of “Love Hurts” from its musical composition. Now imagine that someone sat down and played the chords for “Love Hurts” to you (without any words). Would you think it was a great song? I’m guessing not. It has a few basic chords that progress in an entirely formulaic way. The structure of the song– verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus– is also formulaic. Without any words, it’s pretty boring and repetitive piece of music.
Now imagine that someone handed you the lyrics to “Love Hurts” and asked you to read them, without any music. (Go ahead, read them here.) Would you think they were the lyrics to a great song? Or even a mediocre song? My guess is that most people would mistake those lyrics for the angst-ridden bad poetry of someone around 10th or 11th grade. I mean, even if you forget the rest of the song, would anyone give the thumbs up to a friend who wanted to write a sad song entitled “Love Hurts”?
So how is it, I ask you, that you can take a totally mediocre chord progression, put it together with a less-than-mediocre set of lyrics, and somehow get a great song out of it? (Seriously, if you have an answer to this, please let me know post haste.) My guess is that it has a little to do with the artists’ delivery, a little to do with the universality of the emotion, a little to do with song’s simplicity… but the rest is just musical magic. “Love Hurts” is a great song that makes me sad when I hear it because it captures so effectively the hurting and scarring and wounding and marring that love often inflicts on its victims, and because (like the song says) it makes me sad to think that the fools who only think of “happiness, blissfulness, togetherness” are fooling themselves. (But, like the song says, they’re not fooling me.) It also makes me sad because I suppose there’s a little part in all of us that at times will grant, and simultaneously resent, that love may only be “just a lie.” If the song is true, if it is the case that love is permanently damaging for those whose hearts aren’t strong enough and tough enough to take a lot of pain… well, that’s just a sad, sad truth.
But, the (other) truth is, “Love Hurts” also makes me sad because I didn’t– and can’t–write a song like that.
I agree that a sad song is different from a song that *makes* you sad. A song that *makes* you sad is also very different from one that you might gravitate toward when you already are sad. The type of sadness this particular song conjures in me– and yes, it sneaks up on me–is a pain similar to that of nostalgia. I have imagined the song being played on flute or violin and I think my heart would still ache a bit in a very similar way–one of my criteria for a truly sad tune is that the instrumental version still hurts–though I agree that there's something mysterious about *why* this is great. I really, really enjoy this particular version of the song.
I am agreed too, it is a great fun to write good songs,