Bleakest lyrics regularly heard on classic rock radio

classic rock songwriters much more likely than punks to be in their 30s and wondering on some level wtf they're doing with their life. plus loss-of-innocence crap maybe. i just watched american graffiti and read ebert's review which stresses this whole "this is before kennedy got killed and everything changed" kinda thing. we could ridicule that all day but clearly if roger ebert felt feelings like that, maybe george lucas did too and also idk jackson browne.

they were also in danger of getting shot and killed. john lennon, say, and pete townshend came from roots way more working class than joe strummer or lou reed. their uppity-ness was more dangerous. pete wrote songs about getting molested as a child. that's pretty fucking bleak. likewise so is plastic ono band. "london calling" is a self-help anthem compared to "behind blue eyes"

Finished with my woman cuz she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time

Can you help me
Thought you were my friend

"All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy" is sort of brilliant imo,

Best line in that song, of course, is the bleakest one of all - "Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry"

Floyd may have been the most consistent purveyors of classic rock bleakness

We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

more petty:

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin
Gonna leave this world for awhile

more resigned than bleak i suppose

I don't feel you any more
You darken my door
Whatever you're looking for
Don't come around here no more

I think we've estabished that half of all classic rock songs have bleak lyrics.

"Jack and Diane" is a weird one for me. When I first heard the song as a kid, I think I thought that Diane must have gotten horribly injured in a car crash or something. Afaict, though, they lost the thrill of living because they grew up and had normal adulthoods.

Hm, that's probably unfair because I don't want to imply that someone can't have a thrilling life after injury and disability.

Shoulda had a noms thread first.

"Paradise By the Dashboard Light" is actually about sex with Meatloaf

more petty:

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin
Gonna leave this world for awhile

― Keks + Nuss (contenderizer), Friday, April 8, 2016 1:16 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i saw something once speculating that "Freefallin'" was about heroin? like the "vampires" are addicts

more petty:

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin
Gonna leave this world for awhile

― Keks + Nuss (contenderizer), Friday, April 8, 2016 1:16 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Second verse:

I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I wanna lay like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me

third verse:

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

It will now forever be impossible for me to refrain from mentally admixing these lyrics and songs.

no such thing does give me a strangely bleak feeling

like all that stuff Werner Herzog says about what he sees in the faces of bears is sort of what I imagine about the souls of John Mayer fans

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

i gotta make a mash up where right after it's just a lie you *cut* RISE ABOVE WE'RE GONNA RISE ABOVE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH2w6Oxx0kQ

All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

i see old lunch called it earlier.

I know people love this song, but I try to avoid it because for various reasons it bums me out beyond belief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTIB10eQnA0

be someone
be someone

;_;

Seriously, it's a plunge into hopefulness/hopelessness and you can sense that it's a cycle that will never stop repeating until the narrator dies (or worse, somehow doesn't die)

This city desert makes you feel so cold
It's got so many people but it's got no soul
And it's taken you so long to find out you were wrong
When you thought it held everything

You used to think that it was so easy
You used to say that it was so easy
But you're tryin', you're tryin' now
Another year and then you'd be happy
Just one more year and then you'd be happy
But you're cryin', you're cryin' now

Way down the street there's a light in his place
He opens the door, he's got that look on his face
And he asks you where you've been, you tell him who you've seen
And you talk about anything

He's got this dream about buyin' some land
He's gonna give up the booze and the one night stands
And then he'll settle down, it's a quiet little town
And forget about everything

But you know he'll always keep movin'
You know he's never gonna stop movin'
'Cause he's rollin', he's the rollin' stone
And when you wake up it's a new mornin'
The sun is shinin', it's a new mornin'
But you're going, you're going home

then we were drivin', drivin' in your car...

Was wondering if Suzanne Vega might fit here. Don't really know what counts as classic rock just thinking about songs I heard on daytime radio

who's gonna tell you when
it's too late
who's gonna tell you things
aren't so great
you can't go on
thinking nothing's wrong
who's gonna drive you home tonight

who's gonna pick you up
when you fall

xpost
who's gonna hang it up
when you call
who's gonna pay attention
to your dreams
who's gonna plug their ears
when you scream

you can't go on
thinking nothing's wrong
who's gonna drive you home tonight

who's gonna hold you down
when you shake
who's gonna come around
when you break

Just take those old records off the shelf
I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself

― ejemplo (crüt), Thursday, April 7, 2016 6:46 AM (4 days ago)

I love this, also out of context it is my life

Any Harry Chapin song fits this. What's more depressing than "Cat's In The Cradle"? And "Taxi", in addition to be pretty bleak, is maybe the most absurdly dramatic and pretentious thing ever recorded (hard to top a Sylvia Plath poem sung in falsetto)...tbh it always makes me laugh when I hear it and sometimes I watch this live version to cheer myself up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfqjKDRQvWI

did you guys know if you are depressed and you hear a song at work or in the grocery store, it is a bleak song of dusty nothingness that speaks to the emptiness of mankind, even if ja rule made that song

Harry Chapin doesn't actually get CR airplay anywhere, does he? (Nor Suzanne Vega.)

I heard Taxi a few times on classic rock radio in St. Louis in '08 or '09, but I think that was because that station had No Repeat Weeks. Growing up in Nebraska, every station played "Cat's In The Cradle". That might be a regional thing though.

Oh, cool.

cats in the cradle is a brutal tearjerker. kid was neglected by his busy father, who is now a lonely, elderly man, neglected by his son. the song pretends to be about the cycle of life but it's just about a cycle of neglect.

or maybe it's not pretending anything. the dad realizes the son grew up "just like him," too preoccupied with work to make time for his family.

the socialist in me wonders whose really to blame here: the dad for losing sight of priorities, or the insane working hours americans are expected to keep

fast car is pretty much the saddest song i have ever heard. i didn't even know it until raymond posted it and i listened again. jesus christ.

like all that stuff Werner Herzog says about what he sees in the faces of bears is sort of what I imagine about the souls of John Mayer fans

this is cracking me up.

Burma Shave by Tom Waits has a similar theme to fast car but is way more depressing.

disagree, there's a theatrical nature to waits thing that sort of keeps you at arm's length

be someone
be someone
;_;

Angel of darkness is upon you
Stuck a needle in your arm
So take another toke, have a blow for your nose
One more drink fool, will drown you
Ooooh that smell
Can't you smell that smell
Ooooh that smell
The smell of death surrounds you

which reminds me of:

I hit the city and I lost my band
I watched the needle take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done

out of the blue and into the black
they give you this but you paid for that
but once they're gone you can never go back
when you're out of the blue and into the black

'Fast Car' is bleak, but even bleaker, albeit for a different reason, is the Jonas Blue cover version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjnadPBMJGs

Most depressing Waits lyric I've ever heard is from "A Little Rain," on Bone Machine:

She was fifteen years old
And she'd never seen the ocean
She climbed into a van with a vagabond
And the last thing she said
Was "I love you Mom"

jesus