The National is my favorite band, insofar as such a thing exists. They are the only artist to put three songs on this list, and that would make sense, because I love overwrought poetry and being sad in general.
These songs--"90-Mile Water Wall" and "Slipped" and "Daughters of the Soho Riots," as well as "Runaway"--tend to have at least one line that for some reason really resonates. "I'm looking for a trap door trigger / to drop me out of your view" or "It'll be summer in Dallas before you realize."
For "Runaway" that line is "What makes you think I'm enjoying being led to the flood?"
It just falls out of your mouth, for one, and the complexity of emotion it conveys: the flood, whatever it is, which someone's leading me to but either doesn't know it or isn't aware that it'll be unpleasant. It's just five minutes of that, nestled into a river of eighth note triplets that just sort of rock you to sleep (notice what Aaron Dessner does in the live video, as opposed to Matt Berninger, who's probably just rocking back and forth because he's shitfaced).
And that's really the point of this whole exercise, because being told everything's going to get better is the most fucking annoying thing in the world, particularly when anyone who's paying attention knows it's not true. Sometimes you just need to embrace the darkness and wait it out until you feel a little more like "Feel Good Inc." and there's no danger of stabbing the first person who tells you it's all in your head or that things aren't that bad. I don't know if that's a healthy reaction, but it's why I've embraced the Especially Sad The National Songs over the years--it might be pretentious indie snob-rock, but it lacks the cloying pretension that everything works out in the end.
