If I talk about this song too long, I will explode into tears, I love it and need it so much.

This is the greatest song Elliott Smith ever recorded - on just his second album. "Independence Day" is the more musically accomplished on a grand scale, as well as being full of its own amazing poetics, and it's my true favorite. But "Needle In the Hay" is his signature song.

The guitar work: There are six strings on a guitar. Most of this song, he strikes maybe three - minimal, tightly knotted chords.

The double-tracked vocal melodies are fiercely exhilarating. The singing is a physical presence, never more so than the (now I'm crying) third verse, where he finishes the line "You ought to be proud that I'm getting good marks" with a sustained hiss, turning the "s" sound from a melody into a spitting of feeling.

Paired with the Richie scene in Wes Anderson's film The Royal Tenenbaums (which is where I heard it first and discovered Elliott Smith), the effect is overwhelming.

It is a sad song. It is a sad-sounding song.

Sadness is, if you can believe it, sad. And exhausting. Nobody should enjoy songs like "Needle In the Hay" simply because they are attracted to darkness and morbidity. That said, sadness, which we've all deeply experienced, is one of the truest, rawest, royal states. It is something worthy to survive. It is not always mental illness or a chemical condition. It is a profound, spiritual state emanating from damage, loss, time, the culmination of decisions and circumstances, and much, much more. It is deserving of poetry. Worthy of wisdom. It is a matter of soul. It is humanity.