12 Bittersweet Songs to Open Your Heart to the Terrible Beauty of Life

This is in response to episode 843 of The James Altucher Show with Susan Cain. The episode is about Melancholy.

If you assemble this list of songs and listen to it in one siting, please do not hold me accountable for what happens to you. Each of these songs is beautiful and a bit sad, but together they are devastating.

Preview

1. Into My Arms by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

This is an incredible love song. One of the best.
Some of my favorite lines:

I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

2. Rock Bottom Riser by Smog

This is a song about making mistakes, hitting rock bottom, and climbing back up with the help of your loved ones.
Some of my favorite lines:

I left my mother
I left my father
Left my sisters too
Left them standing on the banks
And they pulled me out
Of this mighty, mighty, mighty river

I am a rock
Bottom riser
And I owe it all to you

3. Innocent When You Dream by Tom Waits

Some of my favorite lines:

We're running through the graveyard
And we laughed, my friends and I
We swore we'd be together
Until the day we died
Until the day we died

And it's such a sad old feeling
All of the fields are soft and green
And it's memories that I'm stealing
But you're innocent when you dream
When you dream

4. The Park by Feist

I love this song, especially when Bon Iver sings it. Some of my favorite lines:

With sadness so real
That it populates
The city and leaves
You homeless again
Steam from the cup
And snow on the path
The seasons have changed
From the present to past

5. In the Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel

This is a song about coming to terms with your own inevitable death. It's about appreciating the beauty and wonder of having lived at all.

Favorite line:
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all

6. Ghost Town by First Aid Kit

A song about longing for something in the past that is impossible to have now, even if it still exists. It's about "the one that got away."

Some of my favorite lines:

And I remember how you told me
All that you wanted to do
The dream of Paris in the morning
Or a New York window view
And I can see it now you're married
And your wife is with a child
And you're all laughing in the garden
And I'm lost somewhere in your mind
If you've got visions of the past
Let them follow you down
For they'll come back to you someday

7. Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying by Belle and Sebastian

Some of my favorite lines:

Oh, that wasn't what I meant to say at all
From where I'm sitting, rain
Falling against the lonely tenement has set my mind to wander
Into the windows of my lovers
They never know unless I write
"This is no declaration, I just thought I'd let you know goodbye"

8. The Latter Days by Frontier Ruckus

Some of my favorite lines:

The Latter-Days are harder than I ever could've known
Come back to retrieve me sometime soon
If the Latter-Days are ending then I hope I'm ending too
And buried someplace where your breath tastes new to me and
Always blowing, so my body's bent and bowing
Deep into the day's ending in summer
The Latter-Days are always panting like a
Second-Comer

9. Tiger Mountain Peasant Song by Fleet Foxes

This is a song about grief. It's about the curious feelings that come when someone dear is gone and your mind is broken. First Aid Kit did a great cover of this song.
Some of my favorite lines:

Dear shadow alive and well
How can the body die
You tell me everything
Anything true

Jesse

I don't know what I have done
I'm turning myself to a demon
I don't know what I have done
I'm turning myself to a demon

10. Willow Tree by Chad Van Gaalen

Some of my favorite lines:

Sleep all day
Just waiting for the sun to set
I hang my clothes
Up on the line
When I die
I'll hang my head beside the willow tree
When I'm dead
Is when I'll be free

11. Crow Jane by Two Gallants

Some of my favorite lines:

But who’s gonna save me from myself?
Gotta lay the blame on someone else

Somehow I ain’t got no hope
'Cause I’m still runnin’ from the sheriff’s rope
My shoes don’t fit me 'cause they filled with dope
Crow Jane quit me and I just can’t cope

12. Hoppípolla by Sigur Ros

Vindur í
og útilykt? af hárinu þínu
Ég lamdi eins fast og ég get
með nefinu mínu
Hoppa í poll
Í engum stígvélum
Allur rennvotur(rennblautur)
Í engum stígvélum

Translated:
The Wind
An outdoor smell of your hair
I breathe as hard as I can
with my nose

Jump into puddles
With no boots on
Completely drenched(Soaked)
With no boots on

Rick_Holland