I thought of this one when I turned my handy dandy mp3 player on random. It picked up Into the West, the Annie Lennox song from Return of the King. It was also one of the songs at the funeral of a good friend in December '04 – he died all too untimely in a motorcycle accident, and one of my fonder memories of him was when we all – him included – went, at his urging, to Fellowship of the Ring in full hobbit garb (sans hairy feet).
So I got to thinking about the other songs that do this, but the only other one I can think of is The Rainbow Connection, another funeral song – this one for my fourth grade teacher, a marvelous woman who died over the Easter weekend when we were her students. It was a marvelously uplifting funeral, but the song still chokes me up to the point that I sometimes threaten people who play it at me.
What’s yours? And the story if there is one and it isn’t too painful…
‘Into the West’ was inspired by a young New Zealand teenager, Cameron Duncan, who wanted to be a film director, but was seriously ill. Later it was first performed publically at his funeral.
I agree absolutely.
My own tear-jerker is James Taylor’s ‘Fire and rain’, especially when I found out what was behind the lyrics:
There isn’t any song that makes me cry every time, but there are some songs that really hit me hard. The top three are VNV Nation’s “Forsaken (Vocal Version)”, Mesh’s “I Can’t Imagine How It Hurts”, and Anything Box’ “An Ending”.
*I woke today, and felt your side of bed
The covers were still warm where you’d been layin’
You were gone, my heart was filled with dread
You might not be sleeping here again…
It’s all right, 'cause I love you
And that’s not gonna change
Run me round, make me hurt again and again
But I’ll still sing you love songs
Written in the letters of your name
And brave the storm to come
For it surely looks like rain
*
…side note…shannon…sweetness…i will ALWAYS love you…
The Bee Gees’ Inside and Out always gets me. Something about the lyrics touches my cold, cold heart. Or maybe it’s the way they’re sang.
I ain’t no vision, I’m a man Who loves you, inside and out Backwards and forwards with my heart hangin’ out I love no other way What are we gonna do if we lose that fire?
If I were capable of crying, these are the songs that’d do it…
Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens Only Love Can Break Your Heart Neil Young Maybe Not Cat Power (and she’s got a lot of sad ones…) How it Ends Devotchka I Hung My Head Johnny Cash Manchild Eels Can’t Stand Me Now The Libertines
Billy Vera and the Beaters’ song “At this Moment”. Not just because of the song itself, but because of the sad episode of Family Ties that it’s from.
Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money” used to make me run to my bedroom as a youngun cryin’ and cleanin’ my room. (My mom who was a work-at-home parent decided to go to work right before that song came out. I had a lot of guilt for no reason about that and that song brought it out in spades).
Movin’ on to my adult life, there are two big songs that really stick out and are correlated to a sad break-up:
I just discovered Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails on an ad for The Sheild. I start to choke up when I hear
What have I become,
My sweetest friend?
I cry at a lot of songs that deal with loss or family estrangement; Linkin Park’s Numb really encompassed how I felt toward my father at about age nineteen.
Me, too. I listen to this CD all the time, and when he sings those words the second time, I can just hear a smile in his voice. It makes me wonder if he was looking at June as he sang them.
