Songs that make you cry

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  • 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
I'm forgetting a lot of songs.

Daniel, Esq., Monday, 3 August 2009 00:47 (fourteen years ago) link

three months pass...

No Matter What - TI :`[

bnw, Saturday, 7 November 2009 02:32 (fourteen years ago) link

Billie Holiday's recording of I Thought About You

iago g., Sunday, 8 November 2009 18:53 (fourteen years ago) link

one year passes...

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."

thewufs, Thursday, 9 June 2011 05:02 (twelve years ago) link

two years pass...

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.

g simmel, Saturday, 23 November 2013 17:03 (ten years ago) link

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.

Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 26 November 2013 01:37 (ten years ago) link

six years pass...

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

Spottie, Friday, 30 October 2020 00:22 (three years ago) link

three years pass...

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.

Requiem for a Dream: The Musical! (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 18 April 2024 23:27 (one week ago) link

echo and the bunnymen - nothing lasts forever

brimstead, Friday, 19 April 2024 00:09 (one week ago) link

"Vieilles courroies" by Harmonium.

Halfway there but for you, Friday, 19 April 2024 02:31 (one week ago) link

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

H.P, Friday, 19 April 2024 02:48 (one week ago) link

nizlopi jcb song

massaman gai (front tea for two), Friday, 19 April 2024 03:52 (one week ago) link

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.

BrianB, Friday, 19 April 2024 12:46 (one week ago) link

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.

o. nate, Friday, 19 April 2024 16:08 (one week ago) link

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

memphis milano: the new trend of the 80s (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 19 April 2024 16:32 (one week ago) link

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.

o. nate, Friday, 19 April 2024 18:34 (one week ago) link

suede - “sleeping pills”

give me the time they kill

brimstead, Tuesday, 23 April 2024 21:43 (five days ago) link

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.

he/him hoo-hah (map), Tuesday, 23 April 2024 23:50 (five days ago) link

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.

ledge, Wednesday, 24 April 2024 08:38 (four days ago) link

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

H.P, Wednesday, 24 April 2024 09:25 (four days ago) link

Sorry, I'm a crying elitist

H.P, Wednesday, 24 April 2024 09:25 (four days ago) link

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.

giraffe, Wednesday, 24 April 2024 09:59 (four days ago) link

Bonnie Raitt “Nick Of Time”

Drowning in TG, he sent me Discipline (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 24 April 2024 10:09 (four days ago) link

The 6ths - Just Like a Movie Star

cajunsunday, Wednesday, 24 April 2024 10:29 (four days ago) link

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)

Xgau Murder Spa (nikola), Wednesday, 24 April 2024 11:59 (four days ago) link

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

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

I Chet the Holmgren (Spottie), Thursday, 25 April 2024 06:16 (three days ago) link

Anchorage by Michelle Shocked

m0stly clean (Slowsquatch), Thursday, 25 April 2024 07:17 (three days ago) link

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

the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili), Thursday, 25 April 2024 13:23 (three days ago) link

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 defenestration of prog (voodoo chili), Thursday, 25 April 2024 13:31 (three days ago) link

The 6ths - Just Like a Movie Star

As You Turn To Go will do it for me

Colonel Poo, Thursday, 25 April 2024 13:58 (three days ago) link

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

Nag! Nag! Nag!, Friday, 26 April 2024 00:55 (two days ago) link

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

you can see me from westbury white horse, Friday, 26 April 2024 01:11 (two days ago) link

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.

he/him hoo-hah (map), Friday, 26 April 2024 01:25 (two days ago) link

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

is this the cello one?

the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili), Friday, 26 April 2024 01:55 (two days ago) link

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

Nag! Nag! Nag!, Friday, 26 April 2024 02:42 (two days ago) link

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

Western® with Bacon Flavor, Friday, 26 April 2024 06:28 (two days ago) link


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