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Music Thread: Country vs. Jazz/Songbook -- The Original Emo

Because I am feeling too tired today and too lazy about blogging my interesting intellectual/law related blog posts, let's do pop culture, which always generates comments.

Sort of along the lines of the question posed here, and very similar to the question posed in High Fidelity, what music do you listen to in order to exaggerate a certain emotion? Whenever I am in the throes of infatuation, love, or heartbreak, the three most Whiny McEmo emotions I can think of (because depression about my professional prospects doesn't have many musical articulations--no one ever wrote a country-western song called "I Ain't Done With My Dissertation and I Ain't Got No Other Job Prospects"), I bounce back and forth between country and jazz/songbook.

Representative songs that I listen to at those various stages, not exhaustive:

Country:

-I Fall To Pieces - Patsy Cline
-I'll Share My World With You - George Jones
-Crazy - Patsy Cline
-Cold Cold Heart - Hank Williams
-The Pain of Loving You - Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt
-You Don't Know Me - Eddy Arnold (or Ray Charles)
-Ring of Fire - The Carter Family
-He Stopped Loving Her Today - George Jones
-It Mattes To Me - Faith Hill (don't be a hater, it's old Faith Hill)
- To Know Him Is To Love Him - Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt
-Leavin' On Your Mind -- Loretta Lynn
-I Can't Love You Anymore - Lyle Lovett
-All The Right Reasons - The Jayhawks
-Leavin' - Shelby Lynn

Jazz/Songbook:

- Heart and Soul
-That's All
- I'm Confessin'
-The Nearness of You
-I Fall In Love Too Easily
-Prisoner Of Love
-These Foolish Things
-The Man I Love
- Love Me Or Leave Me
-Autumn Leaves
-What Remains of Our Love (Que Reste T'il de Nos Amours)
-The Night We Called It A Day
-I Get Along Without You Very Well
-I Don't Know Enough About You

There's a lot of great pathos in country music, and it definitely makes me cry, and I like to listen to it while I'm baking and wiping away the tears inevitably means flour-dusted hair. I end up looking like Rogue in an apron.

But I have to say, for pure emotiveness without being all anorexic emo boy, I gotta go with jazz. Nothing makes me feel more love, longing, and loss than the voice of Billie Holiday or Lena Horne.

What kind of music do you favor for indulging in your emo side? Which would you vote for in the country vs. jazz smackdown?

Full post as published by Law and Letters on February 28, 2008 (boomark / email).