Ivy started something. You know Ivy – always started something. Over at Music City Bloggers, She challenged readers to come up with the saddest country song of all time. Many songs were proffered. At last glance, one commenter got it right.
Hear the lonesome whipperwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
Im so lonesome I could cryIve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry
Add Hank’s high lonesome to those lyrics and this song out-sads any of those other choices. Cash’s rendition of ‘Hurt’ is mournful, but Hank is still the king.
4 Comments
August 29, 2007 at 5:24 am
I didn’t suggest any Hank songs cause that’s understood, even more so than the George Jones lot.
I don’t look at Cash’s “Hurt” as sad at all. It certainly ain’t “If You’re Happy And You Know It” but to me, that song is Cash looking back at his life, acknowledging both good and bad. Like most lives, it was full of both very high and very low moments. It’s sorta like an updated version of “My Way.” I guess people look at it as sad cause this was the last video and was done right before they died. He couldn’t have done a better song.
August 29, 2007 at 6:55 am
I think of “Hurt” as sad because it sounds like such a poor assessment of a life and so full of emptiness and regret.
But yeah, Hank was implied.
August 29, 2007 at 7:59 am
hearty concurrence here
August 30, 2007 at 9:31 am
I would have to nominate George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” with the classic refrain – “He stopped loving her today/They placed a wreath upon his door/And soon they’ll carry him away/He stopped loving her today.”