What is the most haunting song you have ever heard?

Question

Even though I said I did not care for music from the 1970s, I listened to the song "Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. About a big merchant vessel that sank during a fierce storm in the Great Lakes of North America, and there were no survivors.

Frightening and sad.

Phoenix98 · Accepted Answer

The most haunting? Hmm

Giuseppe Tartini - Devil's Trill Sonata

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Zl9FTlKK1e0

Here's what makes it so haunting the story of how this song came to be.

One night in 1713, the Italian violin maestro Giuseppe Tartini had the strangest dream. He dreamt the Devil appeared and offered to be both his servant and master. Seduced by such a prospect, Tartini had no hesitation in selling Satan his soul.

The Devil asked Tartini to give him a music lesson, which the maestro did, demonstrating to the Evil One the magnificent skill he’d built up through years of learning, practice and performance. Tartini then passed the Devil his violin to see if the Fiend could reproduce any of what he’d been taught.

The Devil confidently took up the instrument and Tartini was astounded when he began to play with incredible virtuosity, delivering a performance which was powerful and intense, but exquisitely tasteful and executed with the most breath-taking precision. The Devil’s playing easily surpassed even Tartini’s brilliance. Tartini stared at the Fiend, his mouth dropped open, time seemed to halt as the most amazing music poured from the violin.

The moment he woke up, Tartini reached for the violin lying by his bed, eager to recreate the Devil’s tune. Tartini was probably in that state in which the worlds of wakefulness and dream mingle, in which sleep’s fantastical logic floats above the solid and prosaic. With the Devil’s notes echoing faintly in his head, Tartini’s drowsy fingers fumbled on the strings as he strove to delve back into his dream.

However, as Tartini put it, his attempts were ‘in vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best I ever wrote … but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.’

Out of his efforts to remember the diabolically brilliant tune, Tartini did produce an impressive – and technically demanding – piece of music: his Violin Sonata in G Minor, otherwise known as the Devil’s Trill Sonata. But while – from the hundreds of compositions he wrote in his lifetime – this piece would remain Tartini’s favourite, he felt it was ‘so inferior to what I heard that, if I could have subsisted by other means, I would have broken my violin and abandoned music forever.’

That is the story recounted by Tartini himself on how the song the Devils Trill Sonata came to be.

As beautiful as it is it also sounds twisting and weird compared to modern versions of it which add to it's haunting feeling, it's beautiful but as your listening to it you can't help but sense or feel like something is off or not right. Befitting of something made by Satan.

Jersey2 · Accepted Answer

Under The Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers is about addiction and a band member trying to score drugs under a bridge but to do so he lowered himself to telling lies and faking who he was.

It was a private personal poem at first and he didn’t want to make a song of it but the other band members found it and talked him into it. For me, this song also reminds me of losing my mother which is why I wanted to understand the writer’s true meaning for why he wrote it.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YBAc62X4wb4

Julie_TS · Accepted Answer

How about 'My Immortal' by Amy Lee & Evanescence.

My Immortal is a powerful, hauntlingly beautiful ballad dealing with the loss of a loved one. The lyrics perfectly capture the enduring nature of grief and the many conflicting emotions that comprise grief: sadness, anger, exhaustion and maybe most importantly the desperate desire for things to be as they were.

#IsaidIwouldntcry

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5anLPw0Efmo

jennifer_bloom · Accepted Answer

I used to hate my job at a Mexican restaurant cause my co workers would play a song with the lyrics

"run for your life, cut you with a knife."

And I'm like, how psycho do these people have to be to like this type of music? I was worried my co workers were psychopaths or gangsters.

abc3643 · Answer

"Colours" by The Sisters of Mercy / The Sisterhood "Echoes" by Pink Floyd "Prayers For Rain" by The Cure "Disintegration" by The Cure "Béla Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus "Day of the Lords" by Joy Division

Constatine · Answer

Peter hollens : into the west.

original writer was partially inspired by the premature death from cancer of 17-year-old New Zealand filmmaker Cameron Duncan.

it projects the idea of life and death, and ultimately one's journey home. The first verse talks about a weary soul and the calling from across the distant shore, reflecting the idea of life's journey and the longing for peace and rest that comes when it's time for one to make their journey home. The chorus then speaks of a horizon that exists in the afterlife, with white gulls calling across the sea and a pale moon rising to signal the arrival of a journey's end

The way Peter sings lead vocal and all the harmonics gives me a sad feeling with shivers.

bowenw · Answer

Probably the theme song from the Titanic: This one also comes to mind:

YesterdaysChild · Answer

It was sunk by a UFO and the crew was Shanghaied to work as slaves on their mother ship. But as least they got to see Orion up close.  Welcome Earthlings!

Sonorous · Answer

I'm gonna go with the first minute & a half of this song before the violin comes in:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hQZfGa5t4e8

It gives me a feeling that I am being watched. Maybe by things that aren't human. Maybe even by things that are pretending to be human.

ShesRad80 · Answer

...

CrimsonAngel09 · Answer

Honestly, Memphisto by Depeche Mode and the beginning of Fire On High by ELO.

Andres77 · Answer

and …

4ngelic · Answer

daddy (korn) the song is about the lead singer's sexual abuse as a kid and in the song recording he has a real flashback and a breakdown

exitseven · Answer

Since Halloween is coming up I think this is appropriate.

Date_a_Snob · Answer

Shine Your Light by Robbie Robertson from the movie Ladder 49

tfan1 · Answer

Theme to 2001 - Thus Spake Zarathustra Theme to Walt disney’s - The Black Hole

KrakenAttackin · Answer

That is a great song and a great story. There is a solid documentary on the sinking of the Edmond Fitzgerald on YouTube

DerekC321 · Answer

In the Year 2525

BLP11520 · Answer

I don't know about haunting, but some songs stand out more than others The Doors Rides on the storm is one.

Pterodon · Answer

The sound of a common loon on an early foggy very still morning

Slingblade1126 · Answer

Calling All Angels by Train.

Mansearching · Answer

Tom's Diner

LunarEclipse433 · Answer

Tubular Bells

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