Yes! Finally a new 5 songs blogpost. It took me forever to select these 5 beautiful songs, sung by melancholic men. Because, turns out, that is quite a big category: sad male singers who sing sad songs about sad things. It’s a thing. And I like it. I have listened to a ton of melancholic men over the past few weeks years and these 5 are the best, if you ask me!
1. Aron Wright – Build it Better
This song gave me the idea for the theme. Not because I had never heard a sad song by a man before – sad songs are kinda my thing, as you know. But this particular song, by Aron Wright, made me want to do a blogpost with only male voices. I heard ‘Build it Better’ in the TV show The Good Doctor [I wrote about that show here]. I looked it up, put it on repeat and never looked back. It’s beautiful.
2. Keaton Henson – Sweetheart, what have you done to us
This guy is the poster boy for melancholic men. It is a song that dwells, that blames, that hurts, that feels: all the things melancholic men do best. I think Keatons voice is so interesting and fragile.
3. Ben Howard – I Forget Where We Were
My love for Ben Howard goes back… pff.. I guess it must be fourteen years now. To the first time I saw him live, in a small city pub. Tickets were eight bucks and there were maybe fifty people there. I fell in love with his voice, his lyrics, his guitar. I have seen him live half a dozen more times since that first gig. The venues got bigger – too big really – but his music can still pull you to a small place in your hart, in your head. I Forget Where We Were is one of my favorite sad songs by Ben.
4. Jason Isbell – How to Forget
A completely different kind of melancholic man than Keaton Henson, but they come in many shapes and forms. Even though this song is a lot more upbeat, the lyrics are just perfect for this theme. I love it. “Give her weed, give her wine, give her anything but time, get her out of here”. If you can not relate to these lyrics, were you ever really young?
5. Ray LaMontagne – Empty
Another amazing dweller. Ray LaMontagne has a beautiful and soothing melancholic voice. It is so soft – he pushes out the words, like little grey clouds of sadness. He swallows syllables and part of your pain, just by singing for you.
As I mentioned I had a hard time making the cut. There are so many more talented melancholic men. On my list were Jacob Banks, with Unknown and David Gray, with This Years Love, but also Tom Odell, Damien Rice, Kodaline, Michael Kiwanuka, Kings of Convenience and Ben Harper write beautiful sad songs.
