Sad Songs Blogfest

This blogfest is hosted over at Spunk on A Stick. (Is that a creative name or what?) Each blog features a list of our favorite moving or touching songs. Music is right up my alley so I'm going to get to it. In no particular order:

1. Cras numquam scire by Yucca. This is the theme song for The Mystic Archives of Dantalian. The booklover-oriented show is a mixture of slice of life and the supernatural, with a dash of Lovecraft. It's a personal inspiration, and I cannot describe the feelings I have of this song.

2. Exit Music for a Film (Radiohead Cover) by The Scala & Kolacny Brothers. I promise this isn't going to be solely choir music. Radiohead's original song was moving enough, but the eerieness of this cover cannot be matched. I always feel like I'm about to view something holy whenever this comes to play.

3. Bad Moon Rising by Creedance Clearwater. (See? This is different.) To be honest, Supernatural has me jump whenever I hear this song. Mainly because of the muscle memory from the scenes of the show when it played. Every time it plays, you know something bad is about to happen. It's excellent for writing those cheerful-wham!bam!-whatjusthappened scenes.

4. Safe & Sound by Taylor Swift feat. The Civil Wars. I'm no Taylor Swift fan, but this song hits all those right buttons. It might be because it evokes that dreadful moment when (spoilers for the end of the Hunger Games no. 1!) Peeta and Katniss are on the train and they realize nothing's going to be the same. /tears.

5. Drumming Song by Florence + The Machine. This song. This song. I dare to listen to this and try not to feel yourself getting pumped up. Listening to this makes you feel like anything's possible.

6. Cry Cry Ballad Ver. by T-ara. K-Pop has been (awesomely!) getting traction in the Western world, and T-ara is one of those girl groups that lets out hit after ridiculously catchy hit. Cry Cry was released in November along with a fifteen minute dramatic music video that puts Lady Gaga and the majority of action blockbusters to shame. (It's also a cliffhanger, continued in their second release of - wait for it - Lovey Dovey.) As T-ara is filled with magnetic voices, the MV is accompanied by the ballad version. The version ripped straight from the MV starts with the haunting voice of a child crying out for her father and ends with the grown girl sobbing for her surrogate father. Listen to it. Weep. Watch the MV, and weep again.

7. Fan by Epik High . This is an example of Korean hip hop, and this song was composed and written exclusively by the group's three members, which include a poet turned rapper, an underground disc jockey and a Stanford graduate turned hip hopper. The song itself is catchy, but combined with thought-provoking lyrics and an equally controversial music video (an obsessive fan kidnapping her favorite celebrity), it raises itself above its genre propensity for dance and ballad hits. You may find yourself uncomfortable with the lyrics, but Epik High immerses itself often in the perspective of its subject (they even went so far as to embody a corpse in one song). They don't share feelings with their content.

8. This spot is tied with two songs from the Black Butler soundtrack. I myself haven't watched the show, but I stumbled upon Si Deus Me Relinquit on Youtube and have been hooked to all its dark melodies. It's haunting enough without the translation of the title and the Latin lyrics being If God has forsaken me. /cue sobfest. Then there's the eerie The Slightly Chipped Moon. If that title doesn't get your hairs all up in a row, the singer's wavering, operatic voice definitely will.

9. Girls Girls by Wonder Girls. Yes! Another K-Pop song! The Wonder Girls have made yet another US single (didn't knock Nobody from its top), but I'm still stuck listening to their other album. This song in particular holds a special place. It's basically a song about empowering girls. I dare you not to listen to the opening (This song is for the girls all around the world) and not end up singing along by the second chorus.

10. Main Theme by Senju Akira. If anyone was to ask what my favorite book in the world was I'd have to go with Fullmetal Alchemist. Yes, I understand it is a graphic novel. Yes, I am apologizing to my childhood for not going with Harry Potter or [Insert novel by Diana Wynne Jones or Tamora Pierce]. But FMA has to be the most intelligent, thought-provoking medium I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. It spawned two adaptions, and when you can hold the more inferior and divergent of the two above most things on TV, you know it's good. Even more, when you can listen to a song and feel every moment of shock and amazement and grand scale epicness, you know what you're listening to is good.

(Warning: do not read the comments. They are spoilers, sadly. Every one of them.)