What Songs Make You "Tear Up"?

[Quasimodem]

That's the long "ea" up there, my fellow little heathens.

For me it's Happy Trails by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

When my Dad brought me and Mom and little bro to the States in 60, that was one of the first shows I watched. Hence my emotional attachment.

I also like the "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood" theme. He was my first American friend.

Sorry! Guess y'all thought I was "cool" huh?

Q

[Lobsang]

If you mean 'feel sad' or 'weep' then for me it's Bright Eyes.

Not now, but when I was a kid, watching watership down, that movie made me weep.

So did lassie.

[lissener]

"Dry Your Eyes" by the Streets, on the new A Grand Don't Come for Free. Possibly the most emotionally honest breakup song ever.

Plus, PG's "In Your Eyes" still gets me every time. And Bowie's "Heroes."

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

"Burning Bridges" by the Mike Curb Congregation

All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories

[Fish]

Not much music does that to me—I guess 'cos I'm a musician. However, the song that leaps to mind is the triumphant thematic restatement of the "Jesus Christ Superstar" number. You know, the instrumental bit right after the 39 Lashes where Pilate tells Christ "die if you want to, you misguided martyr!"

And I'm not even religious!

[Ephemera]

Depending on my mood, any number of songs can. The last one that I can remember getting a bit teary over was "Losing My Religion" by REM. I can all too easily identify with the emptiness of unrequited love.

[Eve]

But since 9/11 I can't listen to Billy Joel's "Miami 2017" . . .

I've seen the lights go out on Broadway--
I saw the ruins at my feet,
You know we almost didn't notice it--
We'd see it all the time on Forty-Second Street.

You know those lights were bright on Broadway--
But that was so many years ago . . .
Before we all lived here in Florida--
Before the Mafia took over Mexico.
There are not many who remember--
They say a handful still survive . . .
To tell the world about
The way the lights went out,
And keep the memory alive . . .

[peculiar hailstone]

You Again by Richard Shindell
Flashlights by Tracy McNeil

[START]

Boys 2 Men- "Mama"

[Baker]

I once worked nights making doughnuts, with a guy who liked, really liked, country music. I can take it or leave it, mostly leave. This guy would get to work early so he could select the station, and I didn't argue, because it was better than Top 40's music.

Two songs got to me, corny as they were. Don't know the artists though.

The first one wasI'm Looking for Something in Red" When she gets to the part about "I'm looking for something in blue/Something real tiny/the baby's brand new" I always tried to be facing away from my coworker, as I didn't want him to see me get teary eyed.

I would do the same thing when If You Get There Before I Do" started playing. It makes me think of my 99 yr old grandmother, who is waiting to rejoin my grandfather.

[Ross]

I never knew that was what Losing My Religion was about.

I'll second Bright Eyes. Garfunkel's voice is so evocative, I can hardly help it any time I hear the song. I've lost people, lots of people, and it brings the whole thing back every time. What's hard is that the song is not a happy song, it's a "why do we die?" song.

Lots of people apparently get all teary over Rolf's "Two Little Boys".

... Did you think I would leave you dying
When there's room on my horse for two
Climb up here Joe, we'll soon be flying
I can go just as fast with two
Did you say Joe I'm all a-tremble
Perhaps it's the battle's noise
But I think it's that I remember
When we were two little boys...

Stupid soppy geeks.

::sniff::

[Ephemera]

"Losing My Religion" is one of those songs that has about a dozen different commonly believed interpretations and unrequited love is only one of them.

It's the one I obviously believe it to be about though.

[Fish]

Eve, that's a great song! I wondered if he'd play it during some of the 9/11 memorial concerts, but we got New York State of Mind instead.

[ioioio]

The Little Drummer Boy always gets to me, and I'm not even religious.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

"Same Old Lang Syne" by Dan Fogleberg is as close as I get to getting teary-eyed.

It's that whole "love that could have been" thing.

[tremorviolet]

"Feed Jake" by the Pirates of the Mississipi

If I die before I wake, feed Jake, he's been a good dog,
My best friend right through it all, if I die before I wake,
Feed Jake

I guess 'cause it's an animal thing which always makes me tear up...

[Zjestika]

The song "Upward Over the Mountain" by Iron and Wine makes me nearly die, it is so sad. I spent an afternoon listening to it on repeat and sobbing. (I'm not sure why I remember that so fondly...)

Also, "Red" by Okkervil River. Both songs are about a child's relationship with a parent. I might have issues.

ZJ

[SolGrundy]

"What a Wonderful World" as performed by Louis Armstrong.

Because it is.

[Evil Captor]

Anything by Digger Smulkin, particularly "Send in the Corpse"

[Quasimodem]

Originally Posted by Qadgop the Mercotan

"Burning Bridges" by the Mike Curb Congregation

Qadgop!

It's the only reason I watch the film Kelly's Heroes.

Qadgop!

(In case anyone hasn't figured it out yet, Qadgop (among a few others) rules!

Quasi

[samclem]

"Joe Hill" as sung by Joan Baez. Can't explain it.

[pepperlandgirl]

I Don't Believe In the Sun--Magnetic Fields.

I don't believe in the sun,
How could it shine on everyone,
and never shine on me?

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Originally Posted by Quasimodem

It's the only reason I watch the film Kelly's Heroes

Wouldn't it just be easier to get the Mike Curb Congregation "Greatest Hits" CD?

Tho seeing this group also did "It's a small world after all" and "I'll give you a daisy a day, dear" I must admit my nostalgia for them suddenly lost a bit of its poignancy for me.

But it is a great tune. And great minds think........ something something.

[SallyStar]

What Songs Make You "Tear Up"?
Old Days - Chicago
Bridge Over Troubled Water - S&G

[Bad News Baboon]

I tear up at Stevie Wonder's Isn't she Lovely:

Isn’t she lovely
Isn’t she wonderfull
Isn’t she precious
Less than one minute old
I never thought through love we’d be
Making one as lovely as she
But isn’t she lovely made from love

[spiralscratch]

Bob Mould, "Can't Fight It"

Divied up the friendships that we used to share
Try and understand me if I stumble now and then
Some miscommunication stood between both you and I
You made your decision, here's hoping it's the right one
But God knows this decision you can change
And I can never hold you down again, this I understand
So please forgive the tears, there's no turning back

It's gone and I can't find it
You're gone and I can't fight it

Pearl Jam, "Black"

How quick the sun can, drop away
And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass
Of what was everything
All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything
All the love gone bad turned my world to black
Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all I’ll ever be

I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life, I know you’ll be a star
In somebody else’s sky, but why
Why, why can’t it be, why can’t it be mine

Mojave 3, "Mercy"

your life is like a song, you´re living like a fool
you´re living like a fool, but i can´t tell you right
you´re taking all the time, you´re taking all my time
you´re living like a fool
and i can´t tell you right

mercy i can´t see your heart
i can´t feel your love

"Mercy" also has one of the saddest-sounding guitars that I've ever heard.

Slowdive, "Primal":
Printing the lyrics for this song just doesn't work. They don't really make sense outside the actual song. There's just a huge amount of emotion in how the song builds up and how it is sung. I suppose that's true of any of the songs listed in this thread, but for this one it seems more so somehow. It's kinda hard to explain.

[Already in Use]

"Watermelon in Easter Hay" by Frank Zappa (most gorgeous guitar solo ever), the Kronos Quartet version of "El Llorar" (I'm a sucker for any weepy Mexican music, especially with violins and falsetto singing), and probably a few Beatles songs. Sometimes Devo's "Beautiful World" almost causes that reaction in me, especially after I saw the video, with its ironic juxtaposition of upbeat music and lyrics with found footage of old-fashioned optimistic ideas of the future along with horrors like the KKK, nuclear death, starvation, and police brutality. But usually it just makes me smirk.

[spiralscratch]

Originally Posted by Aesiron

"Losing My Religion" is one of those songs that has about a dozen different commonly believed interpretations and unrequited love is only one of them.

This is true.

I always felt the song was about that feeling you have when you fall for someone, and you have no idea how they feel about you. It's about searching for clues to their feelings, and dropping hints to them about how you feel. It's about gearing yourself up to admit to this person your feelings towards them, and recognizing how exposed you are emotionally in doing so. It's about that feeling of dread you have knowing that the other person might not feel the same way.

It's that huge, nervous knot in your stomach, put into song.

[Cisco]

The Legend of John Henry's Hammer gets me every time ever since I was a little kid. This part has always really gotten to me:

Trains go by on the rails John Henry laid.
They slow down and take off their hats, the men do.
When they come to the place John Henry's layin', restin' his back,
Some of 'em say, 'Mornin', steel driver! You shor' was a hammer swinger!
Then they go on by, pickin' up a little speed. (Clickity clack, clickity clack, clickity clack, clickity clack)
Yonder lies a steel drivin' man, oh lord!
Yonder lies a steel drivin' man.
Yonder lies a steel drivin' man, oh lord!
Yonder lies a steel drivin' man.

But now I think this part gets to me even worse, because it reminds me of my Grandfather who was every bit the man that John Henry was and now has brain cancer:

Ya know, I believe this is the first time I ever watched the sun come up
That I couldn't come up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------



I know this one sounds pretty lame...

I've never been able to test this theory, but I've always thought that if I ever heard a really good rendition of Beethoven's 9th live in concert I might just well up with tears of joy.

[Cisco]

Great.

I've cried twice in the last 7 years.

Once a little over a year ago when my girlfriend of two years dumped me, and once right now.

I shouldn't have looked up the lyrics to that song

[Snooooopy]

At the end of the J. Geils Band's "Centerfold" -- the lines "Oh no, I can't deny it / Oh yeah, I guess I gotta buy it" make me tear up, because it's such an amusingly knowing, funny twist. Will the narrator, who has spent the entire song sadly detailing how the pure, innocent memory of his old crush has been spoiled by the sight of her in an adult magazine, let ANY of that get in the way of some good ol' masturbating? OF COURSE NOT! Because he's a guy.

[hybrid_dogfish]

Weezr-I Do

All the times you came
I should've ran away

You told me that you'd always love me
You told me that you'd always love me

And the games you played
Were meant to lead me on

You told me that you'd always love me
You told me that you'd always love me

I think the last line, "Never more again / Will I believe the sun" is just so sad, the feeling that you can't trust anything anymore.

[syncrolecyne]

The only song that ever did this to me was "Beautiful Boy" by John Lennon. Of course the context that makes it so weepy is that very soon after this song was released, John Lennon was killed. This part really makes me sad...

Out on the ocean sailing away
I can hardly wait
To see you come of age
But I guess we'll both just have to be patient

[vivalostwages]

Jeff Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."

[Only Mostly Dead]

Originally Posted by Fish

Eve, that's a great song! I wondered if he'd play it during some of the 9/11 memorial concerts, but we got New York State of Mind instead.

Actually, if I remember, he did play "Miami" at the Concert for New York, precluded with a statement something like "when I wrote this, it was science fiction. I would never imagined it could come true."

And it definitely chokes me up when I hear it now. I'd put it on a mix CD about a month before 9/11, and haven't really been able to listen to any of the album, just knowing that's on there.

Other songs that do it: the finale of Rent, more because I picture the staging of the show when I hear it than the song itself.

Dang...I know there's others, I just have blocked them so thoroughly that I just can't remember right now.

[rackensack]

Several Pogues songs do it for me, especially "Fairy Tale of New York", "Broad Majestic Shannon", and their version of "And the Band Played 'Waltzing Matilda'".

[medstar]

The them from Terms of Endearment never fails to make me misty.

[Starguard]

Alone Again ..Naturally

by Gilbert O'Sullivan

Just a little while from now
If I'm not feeling any more sorrow
I promise myself, to treat myself
and visit a nearby tower

Climbing to the top
Gonna throw myself off
In an effort to
Make it clear to who
ever what it like when you're shattered

Left standing in the lurch, at a church
where people are saying
"My God thats tough she stood him up
no point in us remaining"
I may as well go home
cause now I'm on my own

"Alone again..Natrually"

To think that only yesterday
I was cheerful, bright and gay
Looking forward to, but wouldn't do
The role I was about to play

But as if to knock me down
the allergy came around
and without so much
as a mere touch
shook me into little pieces
leaving me to doubt
talk about "GOD AND HIS MERCY"
Oh if he really does exist, why did he desert me.
In my hour of need, I truly am indeed

Alone again...Natrually

It seems to me that there are more hearts
still in the world
that can't be mended
left unattended
what do we do..what do we do

lyrics..lyrics lyrics"

Looking back over the years
and all else that appears
I remember I cried
when my father died
never wishing to hide the tears
She was 65 years old,
my mother God rest her soul
she has left to stand,
by the only man,
she;d ever had been taken
Leaving her to starve
with her heart, so badly broken
despite encouragement for me
no words were ever spoken

When she passed away, I cried and cried all day

Alone again..natrually

Alone again ..natrually

[Glory]

Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chaplin.

[The Man With The Golden Gun]

Truly Madly Deeply by Savage Garden.

Probably the saddest song possible.

[Stoid]

Lots, but the first one that pops into my mind is "Company" by Rickie Lee Jones. A very dear friend of mine died around the time I was listening to that album, and the music and performance are heartbreaking, but the lyrics rip me up (partial!) to this day:

I'll remember you too clearly
But I'll survive another day
Conversations to share
When there's no one there
I'll imagine what you'd say

I'll see you in another life now, baby
I'll free you in my dreams
But when I reach across the galaxy
I will miss your company

[Enright3]

Amazing Grace

It's one of the songs that my children picked for my wife's (their mother's) funeral last summer. July 11th will be one year. It was her grandmother's favorite song.

Wow, Sorry to bring everybody down.

E3

[Stoid]

Also, can someone help me figure out what other song breaks my heart...it was a fairly big hit, I think, sung by a male solo singer. It had pretty big orchestration on it, and it was a song inspired by or about his father, and the thrust of it was telling people you love them while they are alive to hear it.

Any ideas?

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

THIS LINK TO THIS SONG REMINDS ME OF MY RELATIONSHIP TO MY OWN FATHER.

A child arrived just the other day,
He came to the world in the usual way.
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay.
He learned to walk while I was away.
And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew,
He'd say, "I'm gonna be like you, dad.
You know I'm gonna be like you."

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then."

[Delly]

You Can Still Be Free by Savage Garden

Into The West by Annie Lennox

[Snooooopy]

Originally Posted by Stoid

Also, can someone help me figure out what other song breaks my heart...it was a fairly big hit, I think, sung by a male solo singer. It had pretty big orchestration on it, and it was a song inspired by or about his father, and the thrust of it was telling people you love them while they are alive to hear it.

Any ideas?

I'm thinking "The Living Years" by Mike & The Mechanics. Male singer, lots of orchestration, mentions a father's death ... yep, all there.

[Squonk]

The first song that occured to me was "Keep Me in Your Heart." In fact, that whole album (The Wind) gets to me because he knew he was dying when he wrote/recorded it.

some other "favorite" sad songs:

- We'll Meet Again, Johnny Cash
- Red Dirt Girl, Emmylou Harris
- I Grieve, Peter Gabriel
- Beautiful Wife, Natalie Merchant
- That Song I always hear on the World Cafe around Christmas about the one-day Christmas truce when the British and German soldiers played soccer, Some country or folk singer whose first name may or may not be Joe.

Stoid - Some more info would help (like what decade it might be from). The only song that comes to my mind immediately is "The Living Years" by Mike and the Mechanics. I doubt that's it, though.

[Iacob_Matthew]

Aside from my car dying*, I haven't actually cried since I was eight. However, Puff the Magic Dragon always got to me back in my youth.
REM's Losing my Religion** has managed the response of getting angry to cover any emotion I might really be feeling, though.

*I'm a guy. Grandma dies? I'll miss her cooking, but she had a good, full life. Best friend, who I've made a point of not talking to for two years due to a fight, "accidentally" blew his own head off with a shotgun?** Pussy couldn't handle it. My car's totaled? I blubber like a baby for the better part of an hour.

**first double starred item got plenty of radio play about when I heard about the second double starred item.

[misstee]

Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton.


I can not sit through this song. It reminds me too much of what I have lost. When my grandma died a few years ago, I begged my family not to play that song, and they did any way. I got up and left half way through the memorial service.

[Myglaren]

I Come And Stand At Every Door, This Mortal Coil.

I come and stand at every door
But no one hears my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead, for I am dead.

Come Away Melinda, Uriah Heep.

Daddy, daddy, come and look
See what I have found
A little ways away from here
While digging in the ground

Tim Rose did it better, but not by much.