Music to cry to

Cafe Society
21

Well hell, that just made ME cry.

I’m one of those constantly-leaky types anyway, so it’s not unusual to see me go all weepy at the drop of a hat, but my younger brother loves to exploit this tendency in me. So he forced me to listen to Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take The Girl” and it took me almost an hour to recover from that one.

“The Minstrel Boy” makes me cry, no matter who performs it. I’m a fan of the folk band Minstrels of Mayhem, and on their most recent release they have a song called “Lost In The Blue” - it sounds like your everyday ordinary English sailing song, until you listen to the lyrics and you realize it’s about the space shuttle Columbia. An excerpt:

"On the twenty-eight voyage into the blue
'Twas the oldest ship in the fleet
Columbia left with a breach in her hold
On a mission she’d never complete.

Some men and women they cower in fear
Others move on though the road is unclear
So let’s sing of the bravery of Columbia and crew
And all of the souls who are lost in the blue."*

:frowning:

22

Yeah, I teared up a little too.

the three songs that always make me cry are all related to actual events:
Red Army Blues by the Waterboys,
Me and a Gun by Tori Amos and
(uncool, I guess)Fragile by sting.
Nothing like killing politically compromised soldiers to mournful sax, a cappella date rape and acoustic S.American death squads to make me cry.

23

Harry Chapin is good at tearjerker songs. “Mr. Tanner” and “Better Place to Be” tend to do that to me.

24

Any old thing makes me cry. But the song I steer strictly clear of is Wasted Time on the Eagles’ Hotel California album. That song nearly makes me do myself harm.
One song I actually enjoy torturing myself with is One Tin Soldier by Coven. I like singing along with it right up to the line “Peace on earth was all it said”, which is where my throat closes up and I can’t finish. :slight_smile:

25

Jeez, I can’t believe I forgot “Travelin’ Soldier” by the Dixie Chicks. Makes me cry every single time I hear it. What a sob-fest. Great song.

26

“And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” is the only song I can think of that nails me every. single. time.

27

Have to agree with Tracy on that one. “Never knew there were worse things than dyin’…”

Moxy Frouvos [sp?] does a song called, “The Drinking Song.” The line in it, “Told him he couldn’t just die…” Brings me back to a moment where one of my best friends was dying in the hospital, and we all knew there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

On the other side of things, there’s a song out by a country artist currently called “Skin” about a young woman with cancer. The song itself gets me somewhat weepy, but the last verse has me crying for a very different reason (don’t want to spoil the song for anyone who hasn’t heard it, but let’s just say I highly recommend it.)

28

Ok, thought of another one: my favorite contemporary jazz singer is a woman called Suede, and she does a song called “Emily Remembers.” It’s sung from the POV of an old man who is caring for his senile wife (Emily), and is about how she remembers all these things from the past but doesn’t remember most of her life with him, or that he’s her husband, so he remembers for her. (Like NoCoolUserName did when writing about “Solsbury Hill,” I’m tearing up just writing about it…)

It’s a beautiful song: it’s one of the few that I will cry to when I just hear it, and fugheddabout singing it. It always makes me think of my grandmother, who was senile (and being taken care of by my grandfather) before she died.

Gets me every time. :slight_smile:

29

I grew up in the same town as the guys from GC. In fact they attended a rival high school, and many of the “band-guys” from our school were in their circle of friends. Waldorf Worldwide biznatch!

30

The Ballad of Ira Hayes sung by Mr. Johnny Cash gets me every time.

31

Ode to Joy

32

The best sad music produces what’s called a “sweet pain”.

The Flower Duet from Lakme. It’s just improbably beautiful; almost gives me hope for humanity, which is very painful.

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s arrangement of “Over the Rainbow”.

33

“Contact” has you weeping like a baby? I guess if you’re on the receiving end of the rough stuff, you’ll get a few tears :wink:

Okay, the segue into the slow “I’ll Cover You” is pretty crushing. What really makes me bawl is the end, curtain call during the show, the happiness without Angel, then she comes out. I lose it. The fiance had fun gently insulting me after we saw the show together and she saw me slowly weeping the entire second half.

Outside of shows, I’ve cried over some of the normal fare. “Cats in the Cradle” does it particularly well (always makes me wish I had a far better relationship with my dad than I do). I have Billy Joel’s “Miami 2017” on a mix CD that has become pretty unbearable since Sept 2001.

I actually got a little choked up the other day, quite out of the blue, hearing Dave Matthews Band “Crush” on the radio, a reminder of a past flame.

And wow I’m blanking on many many more. Most of them very associative, not heart-wrenching in and of themselves.

34

OK,

I’ve been going through some depression for a bit.

Here are the tunes I pull out so I can cry.

Bruce Springsteen
The Rising
Into the Fire
Lonesome Day
You’re Missing
Promised Land
The Lion King B’way soundtrack
The Stampede
Rafiki Mourns
Endless Night

O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack
Big Rock Candy Mountain (it’s about dying and going to Hobo heaven)
You are my Sunshine (it is a breakup song)
Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
O Death

I don’t like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats

Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary

Men of Harlech

Symphony No. 3

Lento-Sostenuto tranquillo ma cantablie by Henryk Gorecki (used in the film Fearless)

Into the West from The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the KIng
And because of childhood memories, (good ones)

Snoopy’s Christmas by the Royal Guardsmen.

35

Piano Man - Billy Joel (only because of memories attached to it, nothing to do with the song itself)

36

Is no one moved to tears at the sound of their national anthem, whatever it is?

Boy, I am. Any national anthem, actually. I am real fun at baseball games, rodeos and the like.

I think this comes from a childhood experience. I was on a boat, the S.S. America, coming home from a year on an AFB in Germany with my mom, and I was about six. This is not normally how an Air Force family travels but I think my mother wanted to keep close watch on the BMW bubble car she was bringing home, and to save some money by driving it across the country. (Or maybe she just wanted all the quizzical looks and the questions—what is it, a motorized roller skate? It opens from the front?)

At any rate being the only kid on board, except for some babies, I had found an old German couple and was “helping them learn American” while they “helped me learn German” which consisted of my asking them, “Was ist das?” They’d answer me, and then they’d ask me, “What is that?” and I’d tell them the American name. They were very nice about it. I was of an age where I could do that kind of thing all day, and I probably did, doubtless boring them to distraction.

But at last the day arrived (8 days is a long time, to a 6-year-old) when we disembarked, and the band was playing patriotic music, of course, as the Statute of Liberty came into view and during the whole time we were disembarking. My elderly German friends were close enough for me to see them and they were small, not really too much taller than I was, so I had them in view, in the crush of people, as we walked down the ramp. And the band was playing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” otherwise known as “God Save The Queen,” and I was so dumb I thought the last part of the first line was “O-V-I-C,” not “Of thee I sing.”

Anyway, my mother had me firmly by the hand. About this time the band launched into the “Star Spangled Banner,” which was probably going to be its finale, and suddenly my old German friends tripped on the gangplank, which was kind of knobby and rough, and dipped and swayed a bit, although gently, as a result of the movement of the boat. As they were old and frail and I worried about them I dragged my mom forward to see if they were okay and help them up, only to find out they hadn’t tripped. They had reached the end of the gangplank and fallen to their knees, both of them, on purpose, so they could kiss the ground.

37

I was thinking of Johnny, too, but “Supper Time” instead.

38

“I Get Along” - **Pet Shop Boys ** (went through the messiest, nastiest breakup with my fiance when that song came out, and it suited my situation very well - it still hits a little too close to home for me)

I can’t listen to “30Kft” by Assemblage 23, because it tears me apart just thinking about it. It’s about a man who’s on a plane that he just finds out is going down, so he calls his family on his cellphone and leaves them a long, loving message, and his message (and the whole song) ends abruptly in soft static.

Also by Assemblage 23, the acoustic version of “Ground”.

There are some songs that catch me unexpectedly, though they might be the happiest, most hopeful songs - I think that’s sometimes why they get me. I cry when I’m really happy occasionally, too :smiley: Examples of those:

“Yakusoku wa Iranai*” - from Vision of Escaflowne.

    • “I Don’t Need Promises”

And “Purachina*” - from Card Captor Sakura.
*- “Platinum”

39

Something’s Always Wrong by Toad the Wet Sprocket

From Rent, the song I’ll Cover You makes me tear up.

Creep by Radiohead used to make me cry, now it just makes me sad.

40

Glad to Be Unhappy , sung by Billie Holliday on her album Lady In Satin .

Her voice is shot all to hell, her life was shot all to hell, and she sounds so tired of it all.