This reminded me of another one that gets me every time - Kermit singing Rainbow Connection.
A pair of World War I songs:
Ich Hatte Einen Kameraden
Green Fields of France
Your Long Journey by Robert Plant & Allison Krauss
The Dutchman, here by Steve Goodman
Old Brown Dog by Ralph McTell
The last segment of American City Suite by Cashman & West (starting around 3:30)
Then there’s pretty much all the father/daughter songs, like “I Loved Her First” and “Turn Around” and “Scarlet Ribbons”.
Here’s another vote for that.
If “He Stopped Loving Her Today” doesn’t get you, then you have no heart.
A lot of Les Miz, Godspell…etc…
No scorn; you probably know that song is about her relationship with God, so it deserves a lot of slack being cut.
I have never heard it again, and I can not find a recording of it, but I once heard Frederica Von Stade Sing Shubert’s Ave Maris with a full choir behind her. I was driving an had to pull over until the song was done…
Stan Roger’s “Field Behind the Plow”- my father was a farmer and it makes me miss him acutely.
And, of course the ever popular “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.”
I saw Mary Poppins in the theater when I was seven and Feed the Birdshad a similar effect on me. Part of it was that, even at that age, I knew the old woman in the song needed to sell crumbs not just to feed the birds, but to feed herself.
For from the Home I Love from Fiddler on the Roof usually gets to me.
There are many songs that choke me up but the one that is closer to what the OP is looking for is Jeanette’s Porque te vas.
It came out when I was extremely young, perhaps 3 or 4 so it’s one my earliest musical memories. Everytime I hear it, it brings me back to the house where I grew up. Specifically, the living room. I’m sitting on the carpet, next to the sliding glass door that led to our garden. The sun is shining, of course.
By that time I had already heard plenty of songs in French or English so discovering one in Spanish was weird to me.
Then, there’s the complete disconnect between her voice (sad, soft and lonely) and the marching music (upbeat and swinging) that accompanies it. I couldn’t make sense of it.
I don’t speak Spanish but I looked up the words I didn’t understand in a dictionary (since French’s my mother tongue, I could understand some of it anyway). It turns out it is a sad song. But even now, the emotions that this song conjures up have nothing to do with the lyrics. It’s a mixture of chilhood nostalgia, exoticism and paradox. That’s what makes it special to me.
Landslide, by Stevie Nicks
I hope I don’t fall in love with you by Tom Waits
closer to fine by the Indigo Girls
Several of the songs mentioned always put something in my eye…
One not previously mentioned, Roxy Music’s “More than This”. The melancholy music plus the lyrics. It’s also a favorite song.
The last verse of Don Henley’s Boys of Summer for reasons I’m not sure of. But it does just about every time I hear it.
Pretty much this for me, too.
Virtually anything by Dan Fogelberg, but especially this one: Leader of the Band. Gets me every time.
Years before he died, I introduced my husband to this song and he asked me to play it at his memorial service. Little did we realize how soon that would be, but of course I did as he asked. It always made me tear up and now I can hardly listen to it: Dante’s Prayer, Loreena McKennitt. And I’m a damn atheist.
Someone shared this awhile ago and it’s another one that yanks me apart emotionally: Colder Weather, Zac Brown Band
Here’s another: Digging Shelters, Neil Halstead
And another: Shotgun Down the Avalanche, Shawn Colvin
Ok, I’ll stop now. My list would be a long one, and the older I am, the worse it gets!!
No, I didn’t. Well, it’s still a good song.
The two worst ones for me are Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” and Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt.”
I can’t believe I’m the first one to mention those.
I couldn’t imagine a song making my choke up or cry. But there are some sad songs that sorta “move me,” I suppose.
Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton
Solitude by Black Sabbath
Changes by Black Sabbath
And the album Blue by Joni Mitchell. Yea, the whole album. Especially the song Little Green.
What a coincidence… we had the same thought at the same time.
REM - Everybody Hurts. The song is beautiful and Michael Stipe’s voice is awesome in that song.
The Beatles - Let It Be. It was played at a funeral I attended years ago. A young dad died (30’s), just dropped dead. He was a huge Beatles fan and they played that song as the coffin was being carried out of the church, with his sons aged 4 and 6 and his wife walking behind. Everyone in the church was sobbing, bawling. Every time I hear it, I’m back in that church.
Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water. I don’t know why it makes me tear up every time.