The 30 Most Depressing Country Songs of All Time, Ranked

What makes a country song truly depressing? It’s the kind of song that doesn’t have a silver lining anywhere, no matter how hard you look.

In compiling this list of country music’s most depressing songs ever, we left out a lot of great sad songs, simply because they had an element of hope or redemption. In order to make the cut, these 30 tracks had to be pretty downright bleak: They tell the stories of people who are stuck in their difficult or tragic circumstances, with no hope of finding a positive spin on the situation.

Story songs made up a big component of this list. Reba McEntire offers up a tragic tale of preventable illness and death, Dolly Parton shares an unwed mother’s grim fate and Tracy Lawrence paints a desolate picture of a man mourning the family life he almost had. Cody Johnson and John Anderson relay gripping tales of regret, while some other artists, like Dierks Bentley, are in flat-out denial about their unfortunate circumstances.

Read on for Taste of Country’s list of the most depressing country songs of all time. Does your No. 1 match our No. 1? Feel free to let us know in the comments.