The article highlights three 1970s folk or folk-adjacent songs chosen for their particularly sorrowful themes and emotional impact. It argues that each song captures a different form of pain—war trauma, despair and loneliness, and conflicted longing—making them powerful but difficult to revisit frequently.

John Prine’s “Sam Stone” portrays a returning soldier struggling with addiction and the lasting consequences of war, drawing partly on Prine’s own veteran perspective. Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” follows a man overwhelmed by isolation and suicidal thoughts, while Blaze Foley’s “If I Could Only Fly” expresses the tension between restlessness, love and another lonely night. The article presents all three as enduring songs whose specificity makes their sadness widely relatable.