Most Pain and Suffering in a Band/Artist

[absyntheNsugar]

OK....which musical artists showcased the most suffering in their work?

Here's who I've got so far...add to the list

Karen Carpenter (of course, if you've been following the Lounge tonight)
Layne Stayley
Kurt Cobain
Henry Rollins


keep adding to the list...

[KissMyAsscroft]

Ian Curtis...

Joy Division

[absyntheNsugar]

3. Oh yeah...hung himself on an ice block

or so states the rumor....

[scottcsmith]

25. Yeah, Ian was fucked up

Psychotic, depressed and prone to fits of epilepsy. The pain in his lyrics, to me, is genuine and all the more heartbreaking.

[Paragon]

1. Richie Valens, the Big Bopper, Buddy Holly...

Sorry. :evilgrin:

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Harry Chapin

and the early REAL blues artists.

Kurt Cobain is a loser poseur in comparison.

Though I will add that Chapin's music isn't so much about his own pain, but he was DAMN good at naming and singing about the pain in others' lives.

And I know you're totally obsessed tonight with the "carpenter's music is all about pain and suffering and crying out for help" meme, and I agree partly, but not totally. It might have pain undertones, but on the surface it is not that.

[absyntheNsugar]

4. I never liked Harry Chapin

He seemed a bit too much like Thomas Kincaid...painting his idealized version of life but not having lived it himself....but then again I haven't done his stuff under a microscope yet...

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. idealized version of life?

the majority of his songs are utterly obviously about failure and sadness and losing out.

Not subtly so, but right there on the surface about pain and loss and unfulfilled dreams.

Idealized version of life? not.

[absyntheNsugar]

13. "Idealized" probably wasn't the best word

But idealized in an envisioned, not experienced way.

I mean he does great lyrics, but take Layne Stayley who has so-so lyrics but more than makes up for it in his delivery...you FEEL his heroin addiction all the way....

[Rabrrrrrr]

18. Perhaps the issue between us is that I don't find heroin addicts

to be a compelling reason to "get into" their music.

I'm all about music about the pain from bad choices one has made, but once it becomes continuously celebratory of the bad decisions, then it's just silly.

I don't know Layne Stanley, so can offer no opinion on him, but I don't find it compelling to think that, "Gosh, I can listen to this guy's music and FEEL his addiction". Who cares? I don't. He was, apparenrlly, a junkie, and to me that isn't interesting unless he were singing about AFTER he beat the addiction. Otherwise, it's just whininess.

But I don't know - since I don't know his music, maybe he isn't talking about how horrible a heroin addiction is, but that the pain of the addiction comes through in other ways in his music.

Please edify.

[absyntheNsugar]

23. Pretty much he sings about

How hard it is to go off heroin, and through his music he documents his struggle...and in the end he lost, dying alone as a hermit in an LA apartment.

Check em out sometime...

[Sandpiper]

27. I have to agree

Harry Chapin's songs are mostly tunes about lost opportunities that can never be recovered and the pain that accompanies this realization.

Cats in the Cradle should be mandatory listening for all crappy fathers.

[jus_the_facts]

5. PINK FLOYD

....THE SHOW MUST GO ON....

[opiate69]

6. Nick Drake...

[absyntheNsugar]

7. OMG Can't beleive I forgot him

Pink Moon, the entire album, screams out a cry for help....

[opiate69]

9. hehe.. that's exactly the album I was thinking of too

[KissMyAsscroft]

8. Also, Elliot Smith

forgot about him..

[Exultant Democracy]

30. I will second Elliot Smith.

[SarahB]

10. Janis Joplin

Or I could vote Billie Holiday again.

[bobthedrummer]

11. Just about any blues artist, easily the most intense emotions

are what the blues are all about.

[Westegg]

14. Hell, Morrison, for that matter.

"Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/
Ghosts crowd a young child's fragile, egg-shell mind.."

"This is the ennndddd...."

[absyntheNsugar]

15. Hell I love the Lizard King but...

I dunno about suffering...I think he drove into the abyss full speed laughing all the way...

[alfredo]

16. Janis Ian.

Portishead.

Barry Manilow For the listener only.

[Dookus]

17. Umm...

Billie Holiday.

[ironflange]

19. Gustav Mahler

EOT

[Rabrrrrrr]

21. Excellent choice! I agree

Even better choice than Harry Chapin.

Mahler, totally - that's why I love his music so much. Remains my favorite composer, and probably always will be.

[Bundbuster]

26. Have to agree with Mahler

but close behind would be Billie Holiday and Junior Wells.

[AlienGirl]

20. Phil Ochs

"Pleasures of the Harbor" is one of the saddest songs ever.

Tucker

[corporatewhore]

22. Robert Johnson/Billie Holiday there is a reason they call it the blues

I got to keep movin', I've got to keep movin'
Blues fallin' down like hail, blues fallin' down like hail

Umm mmm mmm mmm
Blues fallin' down like hail, blues fallin' down like hail

And the days keeps on worryin' me,
there's a hellhound1 on my trail,
hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

24. Hank Williams?

I pretty much hate country music, with the exception of Hank Williams. I think his tunes are so earthy and soulful that you can't help but get hooked by his sound. I understand that Hank Williams suffered from extreme back pain throughout his short short career. He lived a very wild life destroying hotel rooms, getting locked up in jails and sanitariums several times for public drunkenness, ingesting industrial amounts of morphine, amphetamines and other painkillers, and basicaly throwing his money away, caring not for material posessions at all, nor for his health, getting divorced and remarried on the spur of the moment, staying out all night and almost never resting or sleeping.

[Sandpiper]

28. Johnny Cash

That guy's music freakin' bled. In his music you could feel the genuine human emotion of a man whose life as hardscrabble as it gets.

When I compare that to the maudlin whining of some "I'm so misunderstood" 20-something rock star, it makes me feel like saying "ahh go soak yer head ya big baby."

[Susang]

29. Morrissey!

He's still suffering, even as we speak. Shhh...if you're quiet, you can hear him!

[regnaD kciN]

31. Tim Buckley

When you put his story together with that of his son Jeff, you start believing in the Greek concept of a curse hanging over some families...

:-(

[Screaming Lord Byron]

32. I don't buy the tortured artist myth, myself.

I don't see why Kurt Cobain should be held to be better than Black Francis, or John Lennon should be above Paul McCartney.