#12 Beth Orton - Blood Red River

Album: Central Reservation (1999)

Lyrics excerpt:
Why must people always want what they never have?
Why is it a crime to miss a part of you that's bled?

How did we get so far?
How do we move so fast away
From the lilac-lilied lake
I'm sure we used to play
Is it only a dream away?

Reasons to love this song:
Beth Orton is famous for her blend of folk and electronica, but my favourite song of hers is pure folk, a melancholy ballad. Orton's voice, which I have seen described as "autumnal" -- in my opinion, a very fitting description -- is perfectly suited for the strong sense of regret expressed in this song, regret for crossing the line and getting to a point from which there is no turning back. Blood Red River makes me imagine a bleak landscape in black and red.

Link to Amazon preview:
Blood Red River

YouTube link:
Beth Orton and guitarist Ted Barnes performing the song in 1998

#11 Loreena McKennitt - All Souls Night

Album: The Visit (1991)

Lyrics excerpt:
Bonfires dot the rolling hillsides
Figures dance around and around
To drums that pulse out echoes of darkness
And moving to the pagan sound.

Standing on the bridge that crosses
The river that goes out to the sea
The wind is full of a thousand voices
They pass by the bridge and me

Reasons to love this song:
The first song by Loreena McKennitt I ever heard was her version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and I immediately became obsesssed by her. Her versions of traditional songs were captivating enough, but her own songs impressed me even more, with their exploration of history, literature and folklore, and of the ancient beliefs hidden in them. All Souls Night is a song I would like to, one day (or night), listen to while actually dancing around a bonfire.
According to the liner notes for the album (they can be read at Loreena McKennitt's official site), the imagery in the lyrics is inspired both by the Japanese tradition of placing floating lanterns on waterways leading to the sea to comemmorate the dead, and by the bonfires lit in traditional Celtic celebrations of All Souls Night.

YouTube link:
Loreena McKennitt performing the song live in Alhambra in September 2006

#10 Tanita Tikaram - Twist In My Sobriety

Album: Ancient Heart (1988)

Lyrics excerpt:
I don't care about their different thoughts,
Different thoughts are good for me
Up in arms and chaste and whole
All God's children took their toll


Look, my eyes are just holograms
Look, your love has drawn red from my hands
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety

Reasons to love this song:
This was the first song by Tanita Tikaram I have ever heard, and it will always remain one of my favourite songs by any artist. Tanita Tikaram's deep voice and calm way of singing seemed to appeal more to my brain than to my emotions, and to fit better with autumn and winter than with spring and summer, so I listened to her albums Ancient Heart and The Sweet Keeper a lot while studying for university. Despite this cerebral quality of her music, I have no clue what this song -- one of my favourite songs -- is about. But somehow it doesn't seem to matter.

Link to Amazon preview:
Twist In My Sobriety

YouTube link:
The official video

#9 Vienna Teng - Passage

Album: Warm Strangers (2004)

Lyrics excerpt:
I died in a car crash four years ago.

My tree drinks melted snow,
Just eight feet tall, a pale and fragile thing.
Bee stings, beaches, bright vacations,
Sunburnt high-school graduations,
A sparrow healing from a broken wing.
This year a glimpse of second chances:
Tiny apples on my tree's branches

Reasons to love this song:
This is one of those songs I can't listen to without feeling close to tears. It is an a capella song like, for example, Suzanne Vega's Tom's Diner or Tori Amos's Me And a Gun, but in these two songs the a capella singing conveys a feeling of intimacy. In Passage it, appropriately, sounds haunting and otherworldly.
The song is sung from the point of view of a young woman who has died in a car crash, and is now watching her family, her co-workers and her lover as they react to her death and as their memories of her slowly fade through time. The fading away of their memories feels even more heartbreaking than their grief.

Link to Amazon preview:
Passage

Youtube link:
Vienna Teng performing Passage live in 2006

#8 Suzanne Vega - Gypsy

Album: Solitude Standing (1987)

Lyrics excerpt:
You come from far away

With pictures in your eyes
Of coffeeshops and morning streets
In the blue and silent sunrise
But night is the cathedral
Where we recognized the sign
We strangers know each other now
As part of the whole design

Reasons to love this song:
Gypsy was recorded for Suzanne Vega's 1987 album Solitude Standing, but like Calypso from the same album, it was written much earlier in 1978. It is an account of a romance with a stranger from a distant land; it ends with the two lovers parting, but the narrator promises her lover that he would "hear himself in song blowing by one day". According to Suzanne Vega, the song is based on her first romance, with a Dadaist artist from Liverpool (whom she also refers to in another song: In Liverpool from 99.9° F (1992). The song is evocative, romantic, nostalgic but not at all sad -- a story about a romance that meant a lot to the author but was never meant to last.
Link to Amazon preview:
Gypsy


YouTube link:
Suzanne Vega talking about the romance that inspired the song

Another account of the story can be found here.

#7 Neko Case - Margaret vs. Pauline

Album: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (2006)

Lyrics excerpt:
Everything's so easy for Pauline
Ancient strings set feet a light to speed to her such mild grace
No monument of tacky gold
They smoothed her hair with cinnamon waves
And they placed an ingot in her breast to burn cool and collected
Fate holds her firm in its cradle and then rolls her for a tender pause to savor

Everything's so easy for Pauline

Reasons to love this song:
Besides having a powerful voice, Neko Case is a great lyricist. Margaret vs. Pauline is a good example both of her poetic imagery and her dark sense of humour (in this interview she says that one of the reasons she likes Russian folk tales is the fact that, for the Russians, "death is funny").
The lyrics describe two girls, one of whom feels only mild emotions and leads a calm, graceful life, the other unfortunate enough to feel everything too strongly. Pauline is the luckier one, but there is no doubt that Case's sympathies are on Margaret's side.

Link to Amazon preview:
Margaret Vs. Pauline (Album Version)

YouTube link:

Neko Case performing Margaret vs. Pauline live in 2007.