A Playlist of Achingly Beautiful Music

Since I recently finished John O’Donohue’s book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, I’ve been trying to actively bring more beauty into my life, and to recognize the beauty that already surrounds me. The first place I went to was my digital music collection, where I tried to put together a playlist of beautiful music. As I scanned through my collection looking for songs and pieces of music to include in the list, I was struck by how many of them dealt with sadness or longing. Songs like:

• “Everybody Hurts” by REM
• “One Day I’ll Fly Away” by Nicole Kidman from the film Moulin Rouge
• “The September of My Years” by Frank Sinatra
• “Pie Jesu” arranged by Andrew Lloyd Weber
• “Sail On” by the Commodores
• “Abraham, Martin and John” by Dion
• “Into the West” by Annie Lennox from the film The Return of the King

As I continued putting the list together, I was reminded of a quote by Edgar Allan Poe in an essay he wrote about composing his haunting poem, “The Raven.” He said, “Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”

So that became my chief criteria for choosing songs for this list of beautiful music. These are songs that nearly bring me to tears. I call the list “Achingly Beautiful Music.”

I’ve also been experimenting with the Spotify music service, so I thought I’d embed the playlist below so you could hear what I mean. The iTunes playlist this is based on has 292 songs, but Spotify didn’t recognize all of them, so there are only 152 songs on the list below. Not all the songs fit the criteria, and I’m still tweaking the list; but as I’ve been listening to this music over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself more attuned to the beauty that surrounds me in other areas of my life.

O’Donohue writes, “All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul.” In these songs, I hear echoes of my own soul. Perhaps you, too, will hear something of yourself in this music. Let me know if any of the songs on the list touch you as they touch me. And I would love to hear about other music that speaks to your soul in an achingly beautiful way. Please feel free to share your musical inspirations in the comment box.

(Update: apparently you can only listen to the playlist below if you have the Spotify desktop app installed and running on your computer.)