Songs that make you cry

i could on here, i must like to cry....

With all due respect, this song makes me cry too -- but for entirely different reasons. I cry because I cannot believe the band that wrote "Deuce" and "Cold Gin" could turn out such a gloppy dollop of tepid cheeze whiz as this (then again, they did give us "Beth", alas).

The only song that can guarantee a lump in my throat ABSOLUTELY. EVERY. DAMN. TIME. is "This Woman's Work" by the incomparable Kate Bush. Without fail.

"ruby's arms" by tom waits (live version on 'big time' only)
"i've got to dance to keep from crying" by smokey robinson
"just my imagination" by the temptations
"it never entered my mind" by miles davis quintet (on "workin'")
"across the universe" by the beatles

"Don't Give Up" by Gabriel/Bush
"Pearl of the Quarter" by Steely Dan
"Where the Streets Have No Name" by U2 (ever since that Super Bowl performance, I connect it with 9/11)
"Misery" by Merle Haggard (covering Bob Wills)
"Outfit" by Drive-By Truckers
"Holland 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel
Dylan's Blood on the Tracks -- the whole thing.

... and then a few will catch me if in a raw emotional mode, stuff that is so exultant that I lose it occasionally -- Television's "Marquee Moon," "Freebird," "Crosseyed and Painless," "Dr. Jimmy/The Rock/Love Reign O'er Me."

I somehow associate U2's Stuck in a Moment with going to my own wedding, specifically dealing with my wife losing her dress right before the ceremony (informal wedding, new dress procured quickly with help of some dear friends, makes a good story now). i think we heard the track in the cab on the way to the ceremony (dress crisis in the past) but perhaps I added that memory in afterwards.

I'm not a big crier from songs but those two are probably in the realm for me.

Tom Waits - Martha
Beach Boys - God Only Knows

On its own. I like to pretend it has nothing to do with the film.

"Something Changed" - Pulp
"Time" - Tom Waits
"West Palm Beach" - Will Oldham
"All That I Got Is You" - Ghostface Killah
"Pearl of the Quarter" seconded
Large chunks of Bacharach and David
Pretty much anything when I've had a few.

But there are lots of songs that will make me tear up if they're passionate and vibrant, and the artist is dead now. Listening to the song makes me grasp the fact that the artist was actually full of life once. Practically every song by Laura Nyro will do this to me.

"Unravel" by Bjork (while seeing her live in Boston in 99)
"Cocoon" by Bjork (first time i heard the record, in the midst of intense unrequited love)
"Switched on Bach" by Wendy Carlos (during a psychological beakdown)
"Caroline Says Pt II" by Lou Reed (while driving home after a breakup)
"Always on My Mind" by Pet Shop Boys (last night was the first time i ever heard this. it didnt make me cry but it did make me sad and feel bittersweet)

-- Orange (monkeynibje...), February 1st, 2005.

Every one of there songs would probably be on my list, but when i think back on it, they mostly just made me momentarily depressed and nostalgic.

~3 years ago, Boards of Canada - "Dawn Chorus" (after a long drunken night, it was actually dawn by this point).
~4-5 years ago... a few DMB songs got me on various occasions when I was entirely sober.

Yeah, that one.

Also:

Somewhere Over The Rainbow - from The Wizard of Oz
Climb Every Mountain - from The Sound Of Music

"Innocent When You Dream"-Tom Waits (first time seeing him play live, 5 years ago)
"Footsteps" - PJ (the first time they ever toured Australia, 1995. I just couldn't believe I was finally seeing them play.)
"Nothing Compares 2 U" - Sinead O Connor (hubby snuck this in on a compilation cd he made for me when we got engaged. him not being the soppy type usually, I burst into tears)
"True Colours"- Cyndi Lauper (Last year, live. My sister -still in Australia- loved this song when we were kids, and I started crying because she wasn't with me to see her sing it.)

Oh. And "If You Leave" by OMD makes me cry every time without fail. No real reason though, I just think it's a sad song.

The live "Train Song" from Big Time kills me.

The first song I remember making me cry was Let it Be when I was in 8th grade. I was such a wuss.

"You've Changed" -- Billie Holiday
Untitled 2 (from ()) - Sigur Ros
"I Believe in You" - Talk Talk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_NxYbfNYZU

I've only heard the Mott version.

"Dreaming With a Broken Heart"--John Mayer. just captures the exact feeling you have when someone you loved is gone and you are still in the stage where you can't get her out of your mind, so it's just torture to go to sleep, but too painful to stay awake.

This one also hits me for other reasons...namely:

*There was a devastatingly beautiful and sad routine choreographed to it on So You Think You Can Dance
*John Mayer's Continuum was one of the first things my g/f and I bonded over. When we split briefly the first time, I thanked God I didn't hear that song or I woulda lost it.

"sensitive"
"straight"

"clever"

"upstanding"
"dutiful"

stfu

• Dennis Wilson, It's Not Too Late
• Iron & Wine, Bird Stealing Bread
• Bruce Springsteen, One Step Up
• The Clientele, Losing Haringey
• John Coltrane, Blue Train
• Grant Hart, You Don't Have To Tell Me Now

No Matter What - TI :`[

Billie Holiday's recording of I Thought About You

I was embarrassed to say "Rainbow Connection" but then I saw it upthread - OTM. Such a corny song but it freaking destroys me. I'm sure it's partially a sentimental attachment - songs you sang in elementary school chorus can do weird things to you. If you get misty-eyed at the Kermit version check out the reprise at the end - "The lovers, the dreamers, and YOUUUUUUU!" Oh my god...

Under the right circumstances, most of the acoustic side of "Rust Never Sleeps" could do the trick - especially "Thrasher" ("they were waiting...waiting.") "There Goes The Sun" by the Pernice Brothers. "Da Art of Storytellin' Pt. 1" (Andre's verse). "Return of the Grievous Angel." "Here Comes A Regular."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAM8Hc4qUG8

some of the right answers in this thread: Up On the Roof, Andre's Da Art of Storytellin' verse, Oh No Not My Baby and Pearl of the Quarter.

a couple of my favorite Public Enemy and James Brown songs do this with intensity alone.

I discounting stuff from early age to mid teens because emotional music seemed more of a shock at that age and it wasnt difficult for any very sad song to make me cry.
But none of these songs make me cry every time, but they are the ones most likely to...

Beach Boys - "Baby Blue" ((A Dennis Wilson song from the late 70s; I was really pissed off when there was a big Dennis hype back a few years ago and nobody talked about this song despite it being one of the most powerful things they ever did))

Red House Painters - "Katy Song"
Red House Painters - "Down Colorful Hill"
Neil Young - "Philadelpia"

I sometimes cry when I get really excited, in that case...

Yes - "Gates Of Delirium"
Rush - "Cygnus Hemispheres"
Renaissance - "Scheherazade"
Frost - "Milliontown"

I might have cried from some early Emperor too.

bill withers - my imagination
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp3g2QJNBtQ
the rhodes, harp and guitar are enough to get me but then you add withers and my eyes dont stand a chance to stay dry

I’m sitting in a brewery having a beer and “Ready or Not” by Jackson Browne comes on the house music and I immediately get the goosebumps and teary eyes. Other JB songs including “Before the Deluge” do this too. I’m not a mega fan or anything but some of his songs just hit me that way.

echo and the bunnymen - nothing lasts forever

"Vieilles courroies" by Harmonium.

Time to pretend by MGMT got me real emotional driving to a med school test the other day. Hit me straight in the stomach. Hopeful I'm not pretending

nizlopi jcb song

Unexpectedly, "Grounded" by Pavement got to me a couple weeks ago. I guess age & nostalgia put it over the top because I've always loved the pathos of it, it's been one of my favorite songs for decades now, but it never made me cry before. Suddenly, it was like I was seeing it from the old doctor's perspective and all the boys he'd seen dying on these streets throughout his career & malkmus just driving the chorus right into my chest.

I guess I'm not the only person this happens to. I guess maybe I'm getting more emotional as I get older. Its weird because sometimes I get a little teary-eyed about a song that is not even such a sad song. Other songs that are much sadder have no effect. It seems kind of random, but particular singers seem to have the effect more than others.

billie eilish’s ‘what was i made for?’ does this on the reg for me recently

This is kind of embarrassing but sometimes it feels more like tears of gratitude than tears of grief. Like I'm crying that such a beautiful song exists or something. I don't know. Guess I should see a therapist.

suede - “sleeping pills”

give me the time they kill

i've had the stones exile on main street on repeat in my car cd player for literally months and almost every time i get to 'shine a light' i cry. 'make every song you sing your favorite tune'

crying because a song is beautiful is one of life's greatest pleasures. i think most people could probably do with some therapy, but not for that reason.

Aside from the songs of my youth and a brief dalliance with poptimism in the 00s, I'm not really into pop. We play some around the house for our kids but shake it off was literally the only taylor swift song I knew. So I put on 1989 in the house a couple of times and got into it a little bit, then yesterday decided to put it on when I went for a run. When the chorus of out of the woods came on I started welling up, wtf! I think it was 10% crying @ beauty, 10% feeling simpatico with the lyrics, and 80% welling up at completely random things now I'm a dad.

I pity people who don't tear up from the beauty of music

Sorry, I'm a crying elitist

The bit in What a Wonderful World when he says 'they'll learn much more than I'll ever know' always tips me over the edge.

Bonnie Raitt “Nick Of Time”

The 6ths - Just Like a Movie Star

Pet Shop Boys, Being Boring

By the time we get to the third verse, I’m a weeping mess (I never dreamt that I would get to be the creature that I always meant to be, but I thought, in spite of dreams, you'd be sitting somewhere here with me)

A couple Bruce Hornsby songs of late but Song C got me real good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTiMCE8Z32A

Anchorage by Michelle Shocked

map, “shine a light” doesn’t make me cry but it does make my heart feel bigger. same with “let it loose”

last song to make me well up was probably “this is the sea” by the waterboys. zevon’s “desperados under the eaves” got to me a few days ago too

The 6ths - Just Like a Movie Star

As You Turn To Go will do it for me

sometimes it feels more like tears of gratitude than tears of grief. Like I'm crying that such a beautiful song exists or something.

YES, I dig it.

This sort of thing happens to me so often since I last had neurosurgery that I could probably almost eschew music that doesn't elicit such observable physiological responses lol. Endless songs, many already mentioned, but it's the ability of wordless music to do it that endlessly amazes me.

eg.
Messiaen - 5th movement of Quator pour la fin du Temps
Love Unlimited Orchestra - Love's Theme
Janko Nilovic - Pop Avenue (HEAPS of corny/manipulative library music c.1972 really - those cats knew what they were doing)
Andrew Wasylyk - Last Sunbeams of Childhood
Ravel - 2nd movement of Piano Concerto in G
Piero Umiliani - almost the entire soundtrack of La ragazza fuoristrada fercrissakes
Aphex Twin - Mookid/Alberto Balsalm sequence
Donald Byrd - Lansana's Priestess

There's several that make me tear up, the one that gets me going more than any other is Wyatt's Sea Song

there are a few songs that make me cry in grief and pain on sade's soldier of love, like absolutely bawling. for such a smooth and immaculate recording artist, that is a seriously harrowing album.

Messiaen - 5th movement of Quator pour la fin du Temps

is this the cello one?

Cello and piano, yep!
Also apologies to the French for mangling spelling.

I was just on a car drive with an early 00s Low soundtrack going and pretty much every Mimi lead had me misty-eyed.