My wife, the lovely and talented NANCY McCALLION recently blogged about sad songs. She listed a number of her favorites and explained why and how they affected her. Being a brilliant songwriter herself, her insights were acute, insightful, and entertaining She requested others weigh in on  their favorite sad songs. Here's my humble offering -

 One that tears me up just thinking about it is I’M HENRY THE EIGHTH, I AM. The bouncy feel of the tune belies an undercurrent so bleak one has to delve back to Euripides’ MEDEA to find a just comparison. The narrator, contemplating his mundane, frighteningly pointless, and most likely agoraphobic life, can go no farther than next door to find a mate. Once this is achieved, the revelation that he is not only her 8th husband but that the previous 7 had the exact same surname, leaves him barely able to function. Trapped in a cycle worthy of Dante’s downward spiraling inferno, he endlessly repeats his self-flagellating mantra “I’m Henry the 8th I am, Henry the 8th I am, I am” ad infinitum…Emphasizing his revelation of wasted, unending hell, he spews with bile and cynicism, “SECOND VERSE, SAME AS THE FIRST!!” Meanwhile, the unnamed fickle ingenue, proudly announces that she “Wouldn’t have a Willie or a Sam.” These names, carefully chosen, reverberate with a sense of impending doom and unbearable melancholy. “Willie” obviously refers to WILLIE LOMAN the hapless protagonist of Arthur Miller’s tragic masterpiece, DEATH OF A SALESMAN – A man who has become a footnote to his own life – burdened with a job creeping up on obsolescence, an embarrassment to his family, suicide rapidly becomes a more and more attractive way out.
“SAM” more than likely refers to SAM THE LION, a central character in McMurtry’s THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. Sam’s demise triggers the final death knell to the nearly lifeless small Texas town that is the centerpiece of this tale of wasted youth and dashed hopes. Pathetic perhaps, but understandable why she wouldn’t have a “Willie or a Sam!”
Even the band’s name – HERMAN’S HERMITS conjures up feelings of sadness and isolation. The band leader, HERMAN, representing the heartless God that oversees his flock of HERMITS – What is a more graphic reminder that we die alone than the image of the “hermit?” Are we not all “hermits” in the end? As bleak as this this song is, their follow up, MS BROWN YOU’VE GOT A LOVELY DAUGHTER was so overwhelming in it’s depiction of mendacity and despair, that three members of the band committed suicide soon after the recording was completed. ( The bassist, COLIN MORELY died of auto erotic asphicsiation, so I guess he really doesn’t count).