5 Songs is a weekly series where we point out the strange, the grand, and the unique connections between our favorite songs. Let’s get weird.

Words by Chris

Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, there was always this weird anti-Ohio attitude that cut deeply. Although without Ohio, none of us in Beaver County, living on the border, would be drinking any beer in high school. So thanks, East Palestine, for your beat-up 7-Elevens. It’s a place that people like to leave and write songs about, so here are some Post-Ohioan songs filled with regret and sadness! I will catch heat for this, so keep in mind the most famous song about Ohio is the one where 4 kids get shot to death by the military.

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“Ohio” / Modest Mouse

Alright, easy one. A song that chants, “Ohio, you’re so Ohio” is kind of obsessed with what plainness can do to you, and is supported wonderfully by that classic Mouse twangy meandering madness. Somewhere between locations on a long drive through the never-ending flatness, there is this nagging want for things to change over, “I’m upset and I leave the door open wide. Our hearts are used-up, cracked, and dry. Pull the scabs off of regrets. We haven’t learned to eat our conscience yet.” One is affected inside by the wide open spaces outside, leaving everything empty.

Modest Mouse / Ohio

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“Carry Me Ohio”/ Sun Kil Moon

This song is so filled with regret for a lost love that it’s as if the person is actually dead (which I think might be true). It’s a Mark Kozelek song, so the vocal melody is really beautiful, and the guitars ring and ring, and one gets lost in the sheer composition of the song. The chorus though has this transcendent quality, “Heal her soul. Carry her, my angel, Ohio.” It’s a version of letting go. It’s sentimental. It’s a great song.

Sun Kil Moon / Carry Me Ohio

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“Bloodbuzz Ohio” / The National

The lead single from High Violet is kind of an anthem for The National, going from Ohio to New York City, carrying your shit across the Mid-Atlantic, while also leaving a lot of baggage behind, only to come back and face it. Within the little romantic story told here (“Lay my head on the hood of your car, I take it too far”) and the punctuating rhythm, the song has this feeling of coming back home after a life as a kind of runaway, and trying to find a good reason that it happened, something unselfish. Is the “bloodbuzz” just the energy of moving on from home? Is it that feeling of restlessness, inspired by the outside world to “move on” from your home life? Fuck if I know, but the syncopation in this song convinces me that the only real thing is restlessness.

The National / Bloodbuzz Ohio

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“Please” / Clem Snide

This song captures the feeling of letting your guard down with someone, and hoping they don’t hurt you. It’s just Eef Barzelay on guitar and vocals, with that reverb sound that goes perfect with the confession of loneliness here. “I just drove back from Ohio, but not before they let me know the numbers, they weren’t looking all that good.” So it’s that sense of being vulnerable or at the mercy of a lot of potentially controlling things like a job, a lover, among other pressures. The regret here exists where one’s actions or words could cause something bad to happen. The refrain is like a prayer, “Please be sweet to me, my guard is down. Please just sleep with me before I drown.” Wow, it gets real on this song. Ladies, I give you permission to slap a bro who is begging for sex.

Clem Snide / Please

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“Ohio Clouds” / Laura Veirs

Here the weary memories of home are somber but not altogether bad. “Roll, Ohio clouds, oh roll on in and wash the cigarettes, the smell from grandma’s skin. Clear the dank and dusty kitchenettes, the bourbon bottles resting empty on the chest”—a strange level of sadness where one’s own stories seem unfamiliar or just too plain, like someone else’s memory backlit like those clouds, just floating up over the flatland. Veirs gets a great twinkling sound out of her guitar—in this context her lead playing conjures someone a little sleepy, watching the weather on the front porch.

Laura Veirs / Ohio Clouds

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(BONUS SONG!)“Youngstown” / Bruce Springsteen

If you’re looking for maximum regret and maximum Ohio (why else read this far?), look no further than this song, which appears on The Ghost of Tom Joad during the Boss’s quiet years in the 90’s (and second attempt at the magic of Nebraska). A lot of what is told in this song rings true for cities in the Rust Belt where after the Vietnam War the use for steel went way down, and the old America crumbled, whole communities went under. Bruce even drops “Monongahela Valley” in this one, which puzzles me—I don’t think that place exists—and settles me down with a great lyric soon after: “Now sir, you tell me the world’s changed. Once I made the world rich enough, rich enough to forget my name.”

Bruce Springsteen / Youngstown

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Maybe they’ll make a t-shirt because of this post that reads “Ohio is for Regret”.No? Ok. Anyway, can you think of more songs about Ohio and sadness, or just about Ohio. Are you from Ohio? DId Chris offend you? Leave us some comments and thanks for reading.

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