Most Depressing Albums Of All Time
Submitted by julesyoung on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 05:38
Tags:
- Amplified Heart - Everything But The Girl
- Berlin - Lou Reed
- Blue - Joni Mitchell
- Closer - Joy Division
- The Diary - Scarface
- Dummy - Portishead
- The Final Cut - Pink Floyd
- Here, My Dear - Marvin Gaye
- If I Could Only Fly - Merle Haggard
- I'm A Bird Now - Anthony And The Johnsons
- Life - Neil Young
- The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
- Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen
- New Skin From The Old Ceremony - Leonard Cohen
- Only The Lonely - Frank Sinatra
- On The Beach - Neil Young
- The Painted Word - Television Personalities
- Shoot Out the Lights - Richard And Linda Thompson
- Songs Of Love And Hate - Leonard Cohen
- Songs From A Room - Leonard Cohen
- Vauxhall And I -Morrissey
- Violator - Depeche Mode
Nice list. Some recommendations...
To me, Suicide's self-titled debut is much more depressing than any of these I've heard. Also, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is a bit more devastating than Mitchell's Blue. If you've heard it Lisa Germano's Geek the Girl should rank high. Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden, including their follow-up Laughing Stock, Nico's Desertshore, Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails, Slint's Spiderland, Leonard Cohen's Songs of Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake's Pink Moon, Nick Cave's The Good Son, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, Charm of the Highway Strip by Magnetic Fields, Y by Pop Group, Tonight's the Night-Neil Young...there's more but that's off the top of my head.
Yeah most scaruffian picks are pretty depressing in some way (not that that's a bad thing), the best is probably Wyatt's Rock Bottom.
yep, that one too of course, is pretty good
Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures is one of the most depressing insights into a human psyche. Wish You Were Here is pretty depressing, on many different levels. Anything by Radiohead or Coldplay. Electro-Shock Blues by Eels is quite nice but it's about a fairly depressing subject, the suicide of the lead singer's sister.
Yeah, the Joy Division releases have a pretty creepy and depressing element built-in because you know the singer committed suicide right after. Same for Pink Moon and The Holy Bible...
Unsurprising to see Berlin there, on Rate Your Music there was a debate about this issue and that album was cited by far more than anything else. The Downward Spiral, Geek The Girl, Desertshore and The Marble Index by Nico and Violator all appeared frequently as well. Perhaps not the albums in themselves but knowing the back story there's a certain depressing element to Syd Barrett's solo albums.