The lines in my hand tell me I'm wrong

I've may have mentioned this before but: I love sad songs. Since my mom used to sing "Show Me The Way To Go Home", I've been morbidly attracted to melody changes that sound like a heart breaking, drawn to songs that sound like crying, no matter what the actual subject matter is. I can call these songs "beautiful" and "lovely" all I want, but it's the sadness of the songs that keeps pulling me back.

It's because of this that I can't stop listening Elliott Smith's early version of "Miss Misery" (listen). The famous version is a pretty song, but stripped of the studio instrumentation, it becomes an absolute heartbreaker. And though the later version features a more clever lyric, the hook line of the song is given extra sad weight with the perfect rhythm for the melody: "But it's alright, 'cause some enchanted night, I'll be with you." It kills me.

Like the Innocence Mission or Sufjan Stevens, I'll have to force myself to stop listening to it when I realize that replaying it over and over and having it hit me again and again is beginning to affect my mood for the worse. But I'm not ready to stop listening just yet.