10 Bonnie Raitt: "I Can't Make You Love Me," from The Luck Of The Draw (Capitol, 1991) "I'll feel the power, but you won't..." It's all very "tasty" and L.A.-musoid, this smokey ballad of resignation to loss, but it also rings hauntingly true as an articulation of honesty in the midst of misery--which makes it as much a song of healing as anything else.
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9 Lorraine Ellison: "Stay With Me," single (Warner Brothers, 1966) "No, no! I can't believe!! You're leaving me!!!" The epic Bert Berns-Jerry Ragovoy ballad style taken to the outer limit, thanks in part to a borrowed Frank Sinatra orchestra. Building slowly to volcanic peaks, and laceratingly intense to the point of hoarseness, this is soul emotion at the edge of utter despair.
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8 Abba: "Knowing Me, Knowing You," single (Epic, 1977) "No more carefree laughter/Silence ever after..." Not the opening lines of a Radiohead, Big Star or Jeff Buckley song, but one by those fab four Swedish moppets so beloved of the young karaoke crowd. You see, the jolly, upbeat big-hair-and-shiny-suits story of Abba hid the sadness of two failing marriages, a sadness that bubbles to the fore here. As with the Everly Brothers or Carpenters, their arrangements may be flawless and their harmonies pitch-perfect, but there’s true heartache in them there grooves.
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7 Otis Redding: "I've Been Loving You Too Long," single (Volt, 1965) "You're tired, and your love is growing cold..." Good God Almighty! The prototype deep-soul howl of pitiful, nay, wretched lovesickness, sung by a big Georgia farmboy who's literally ravaged by need for his woman.
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6 Sinead O'Connor: "Nothing Compares 2 U," single (Chrysalis, 1990) Forget the famous video: it's all already here in Sinead's bruised rendition--simultaneously dazed and defiant--of Prince's perfect ballad. "I could put my arms around every boy I meet..." But you know she won't.
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5 The Righteous Brothers: "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," single (Philles, 1964) "You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips": it's got to be the second greatest opening line of any breakup song ever. (The greatest is surely from Raspberries’ ballad "Starting Over": "I used to be so f***ing optimistic til you said goodbye".) In theory it shouldn’t have worked, combining what was then almost a comedy act with Phil Spector, a man renowned for producing girl groups. Yet somehow it all came together in one of the most remarkable vocal performances of all time, with Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield madly swapping pleas like James Brown’s Siamese twins. "Baby, baby, I’d get down on my knees for you ... If you would only love me like you used to do." Sublime.
4 Kate and Anna McGarrigle: "Heart Like A Wheel," from Kate and Anna McGarrigle (Warner Brothers, 1975) "It's only love/That can wreck a human being and turn him inside out..." Forget Linda Ronstadt's limp cover: the sisters' original from their startling debut album simply wees all over it. Imagine Les Voix des Bulgares transplanted to Acadia, with Kate and Anna's eerie, pellucid voices blending in a meditation on love and loss that's all about a kind of mystical bewilderment. Almost supernaturally moving.
3 Frank Sinatra: "I'm A Fool To Want You," from Where Are You? (Capitol, 1957) "But then would come the time that I would neeeeeed you..." A second stab at one of the very few songs Sinatra had a hand in writing--a song born of his debilitating pain over Ava Gardner--"I'm A Fool" is the desperate sound of a Man Who Loves Too Much, who keeps going back, masochistically, to the woman who's destroyed him. One of Frank's all-time peaks.
2 Roy Orbison: "It's Over," single (Monument, 1964) "Your baby doesn't love you anymore…" (Hey, why don't you spell it out for us, Roy?) Over a rat-a-tat, execution-squad bolero beat, the Big O gives unearthly voice to what one only call terminality. Still terrifying after all these years.
1 George Jones: "He Stopped Loving Her Today," single (Epic, 1981) "He said I'll love you 'til I die..." Curly Putnam and Bobby Braddock wrote the shamelessly weepy lyric and melody; producer Billy Sherrill coated the track in sumptuous Nashville surround-sound; and then the greatest country singer of all gave the performance of a lifetime--a vocal imbued with deep, knee-quaking compassion for the poor schmuck who never got over the love of his life... until now, when he's "all dressed up to go away". I don't care how hard-bitten you may be, I defy you not to get a lump in the throat from this 20-year-old classic of cornball liebestod. It's utterly transcendental--the most heartbreaking record ever made.
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