Inspired by this quite excellent thread, I got to wondering what Dopers considered to be some of the most gorgeous songs ever recorded.
I’ll start with these:
[ul]
[li]“Winter” - Tori Amos[/li][li]“Mayonaise” - Smashing Pumpkins[/li][li]“Bad” - U2[/li][li]“In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” - Frank Sinatra[/li][li]“Vienna” - Ultravox[/li][li]“Enjoy the Silence” - Depeche Mode[/li][/ul]
Christmas Canon
Adiemus
Good call on the Enya.
I could probably come up with several. But, for now, I’ll go with Stardust.
The Righteous Brothers: Unchained Melody.
Nat King Cole: Stardust.
Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Iz. Yes, it’s my answer to a lot of these threads. No, I’m not getting tired of it.
Three by Cat Stevens:
Trouble
Lady D’Arbanville*
Angel of War**
The hymn Softly & Tenderly (particularly the version by Cynthia Clawson that opens the movie Trip to Bountiful)
*Written while he was dating actress/model/celebrity Patti D’Arbanville
**Essentially the same melody as Lady D’Arbanville, proving what many have suspected: that Patti D’Arbanville is in fact the angel of war
Agnus Dei, the choral version of Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber
Just thought of three more, all by the Red-Headed Stranger:
[ul]
[li]“Rainbow Connection”[/li][li]“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”[/li][li]“Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”[/li][/ul]
Small quibble: Leonard Cohen didn’t cover “Hallelujah”, so much as he wrote the thing.
Van Morrison has several that fit the catagory, including “In The Garden” and “Listen To The Lion”…
Slatkin conducting Barber. The performance is only a few days after the horror. There’s a bit of the film that is a few weeks after.
You’ll need something to wipe your eyes, btw.
Sinead O’Connor probably has a few candidates but I’ll go with This Is A Rebel Song and In This Heart.
As in the other thread, I’ll go with “I Only Have Eyes For You”, as sung by The Flamingos.
However, the Va, pensiero chorus from the Verdi opera Nabucco is possibly the most gorgeous music ever composed.
Makes me cry more often than not but I gotta give a link to Tori on the piano and not that anime stuffs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWmETxWM0h0&feature=fvw
The Dance by Garth Brooks.
My Immortal by Evanescence
Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the movie Once.