Richard E Grant names the “saddest” song of all time
In a new interview, Richard E Grant has picked the “saddest” song of all time, and it comes via Joni Mitchell.
In a new interview with The Independent, Grant reflected on the death of his wife of 35 years, Joan Washington, who passed away from lung cancer in early September 2021, eight months after the diagnosis. In the discussion, he looks at his 2022 memoir, A Pocketful of Happiness, which uses Washington’s letters as the central thread.
At one point, she writes of how “the world feels quite beautiful”, and quotes the likes of John Donne and DH Lawrence. Elsewhere, she speaks of how many times she had replayed a message from Grant on the answering machine.
Grant says in the new interview that for the past 20 months, he has lived life according to the book’s title, an explicit instruction from Washington that he should try to find “a pocketful of happiness in every day”.
Elsewhere in the interview, E Grant tells the interviewer that he keeps a record of the saddest musical notes he comes across and is “struck” by how deeply they can affect him. When asked to name the “saddest” song of all time, he named Joni Mitchell’s 1971 song ‘A Case of You’ from Blue.
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