Part of Housman's charm, even now, is the way he makes that sadness sound and feel so sweet: Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills What spires, what farms are those?
Duffy describes the towering chalk cliffs as "a glittering breastplate", and references literary antecedents such as Edgar in Shakespeare's King Lear, who describes the "dreadful trade" of the samphire pickers clinging to the cliff face, and Matthew Arnold, who wrote of "the eternal note of sadness" sounded by the waves and shingle in Dover Beach.
As Caribou, the Canadian producer has gradually become one of dance music's best-loved eccentrics, revered for the way his breakthrough 2010 album Swim makes weird, psychedelic sadness sound like a sweaty E-hug, and uniting indie and electronic fans.
They've got a new album out by now, but the highlight again comes from You Forgot It In People: a version of the ballad Lover's Spit that is bruised and beautiful, the sound of dignified sadness; it sounds like the best song ever written, and for days afterwards I listen to the version on their odds-and-sods compilation Bee Hives on repeat.
Sadness never sounded so beautiful.
During my visit "Damnation" was playing, its sound, sadness and luminous black and white lending an elegiac mood; the Spielberg would change the show's tone entirely.
But for me it just feels sad – a sadness whose depths have yet to be fully sounded, far less processed into comedy.
"Sorrow" is a lovely word, but we've come to use it to elevate sadness, and now it sounds like sermonizing.
Lydia Davis Collected Stories ✒There's a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else's work in the morning; it's as if stillness experiences pain in being broken.
They had this overwhelming sadness — this deeply mournful sound.
