Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Saddest Songs in the World: Part 1

Sad songs are kind of my thing. I’m an ex-goth and a Morrissey junkie. But I’m not talking teenage melodrama, I mean the kind of songs that rip your heart out of your chest and heft it into traffic. . . . this will be an ongoing, randomly updated segment in the column, so feel free to post your own in the comments section.

This week's entry: “Time to Pretend” MGMT

Songs don’t get any sadder than this. They just don’t. MGMT has managed to create a lush electronic wasteland where the narrators are so tragically aware of the choices they’ve deliberatly made, that the only thing left to do with their spent lives is OD. Bummer.

It’s the bridge that kills me every time:

I miss my sister, miss my father
Miss my dog and my home
Yeah, I miss the boredom
And the freedom
And the time spent alone

These are the things we forget about as we grow up. This is the end of innocence, right here.  But it's delicatly handled, simply shrugged off as, "well, live and learn."  There's no self-grandizing nostalgia, just the very simple admission that maybe hanging out in Paris, shooting drugs and banging models isn't what life is all about.

And it’s the most depressing, most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Morrissey has never written a single line that conveys as much melancholy as “Time to Pretend,” let alone a whole song.

It's also got a really bizarre music video

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