A few weeks ago, a Very Kind Listener asked for a soundtrack to accompany “being awake at 3am with a heart accumulating microcracks like the tibiae of the greenest of Marine recruits on a forced march with a pack that weighs as much as they do.”
This seems like a good time to honor this vivid request because there’s a lot of heartbreak going around at various scales. Individual. National. Maybe even planetary. The humiliations and insults of living in an exhausted age take a toll, and I admire how our Very Kind Listener captures this sensation in the image of a heart gradually breaking beneath the weight.
Slowly, as they say. Then all at once.
There are a few ways to tackle this, radio-wise. The obvious move would be to queue up some sad-sack ballads and call it a night. But grief rolls heavy. Heartbreak is hot-blooded. Sometimes it sounds less like weeping and more like a scream. So I’ve stitched together five all-time heavyweight favorites, chosen because they sound very much involved with the human condition. When Kim Sun’s voice drops at the two-minute mark, you’ll know if this is for you. These voices have lived heavy. They understand that grief is the price of love.
Everything worthwhile rests on a knife’s edge, which brings us back to the Tannhäuser Gate, that strange zone between wakefulness and sleep, suspended between doubt and faith—and I hope this half-hour captures the bleary sensation of tuning a radio in the hour of the wolf, hoping to hear a voice that knows what it’s like. Sometimes wisdom is tonal, and sometimes it’s concrete, like when O. V. Wright sings I want to go to heaven but I’m scared to fly.
- Kim Sun + Shin Jung Hyun - The Man Who Must Leave
Beautiful Rivers And Mountains | 1973 | More - O.V. Wright - Everybody Knows
(If It's) Only For Tonight | Back Beat Records, 1965 | More - Chen Mei Feng - 誰能知道我的情 (Who Can Know My Love?)
Singapore, 1969 | More - Dilber Doğan – Yıkılla Köyler (Destroyed Villages)
Yıkılada Bizim Köyler | 1988 | More - M83 - Farewell/Goodbye + Je Vous Hais Petites Filles
Before the Dawn Heals Us | Mute, 2005 | More
Also includes several layers of crackle and reverb, along with echoes from Skeeter Davis, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Nancy Sinatra, The Paris Sisters, and more.
Listen below—better yet, keep it classy and download this state-of-the-art MPEG Audio Layer 3. Or here’s a joyless Spotify playlist if that’s your thing, but you won’t get any crackle or reverb or Al Green easter eggs, and you won’t hear Chen Mei Feng sing “Who Will Know My Love?”
The next episode will invite you to attend a Professional Holiday Party.
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
Midnight Radio 011 | Download
