I wish I could claim that I’m tough as nails, that nothing can make me cry etc etc. But really, lots of things can make me blubber. Like certain songs. Like “Edelweiss” which inevitably makes me break up like a depressed housewife watching her favorite soap opera.
“The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics (a one-hit wonder from the 80s)
“So In Love” by k.d. lang (orginally a Cole Porter ballad, she turns it into a mourning dirge for a lover dead of AIDS in Red, Hot + Blue)
“Star Wars Cantina” by Weird Al Yankovic (tears of laughter for this sendup of Barry Manilow’s Copacabana)
“Wendy” by The Association (tears of: Please… For the love of God… change the station)
Listening to a song hardly ever makes me cry, but singing certain songs does:
“Everything I Own” by Bread
“Leader of the Band” by Dan Fogelberg (when the time comes, I plan to sing this at my father’s funeral)
“Scarecow” by Melissa Etheridge (I’m always fine until “I can forgive, but I will not forget”)
“Emily Remembers” by Suede (about an Alzheimer’s patient and her elderly husband who remembers everything for her … including that she loves him)
“American Child” by Phil Vassar (“in '45 he fell down beside an American child” kills me every time)
Cripes, now I need to go listen to some Will Smith or something!
Quick Silver Daydreams (Of Maria) by Townes Van Zandt. And quite a few more of his.
Making Pies by Patty Griffin. And again, many of her other songs.
And Dolly Parton’s Jolene. No really, it does sometimes. That horrid feeling is just so damn recognisable.
About a month ago, I was telling a friend that I can’t think of any song that has ever made me cry. I will cry at movies at the drop of a hat, and I admit that the music playing in the background often is a factor, but I couldn’t think of a song and a song alone that has ever made me shed a tear.
And then I discovered a website linked to my public library that plays classical music. I went through the Tchiachovksy listings and spotted “Serenade for Strings”. “Hey”, I said. “I remember when we played this in high school orchestra.”
Two seconds into the piece, I went all blubber mouth and broke out into painful goosepimples. Without fail, whenever I think of a specific phrase in the first movement, I get misty-eyed. Shit, it’s happening now. :sniff:
“Baby Grand” by Billy Joel & Ray Charles (and not because Ray isn’t with us anymore)
“I’m Carrying” by Paul McCartney
“Wanderin’” by James Taylor
“Until You Come Back To Me” by Aretha Franklin
There are more, but I can’t think of them at the moment. Some songs just push my buttons with their incredible excellence. They don’t even have to be sad.
And more I’m sure (almost anything by Low or Songs: Ohia). Most of them have some special significance or association with a time period or specific person.
I’m a big crybaby, so what? [reassert manliness] You got a problem with that?[/RM]
And yeah, they’re listed alphabetically by artist. I just went down my list o’ mp3’s.
Seeing as how I’m a total weepy girly baby at movies and even some TV shows, it’s kind of surprising that music doesn’t actually make me cry. But some make me come awfully close:
I second that one. The line “I see friends walking by saying ‘How do you do?’/What they’re really saying is ‘I love you’” is what does it.
Starálfur by Sigur Ros. Only because it was used in the jaguar shark scene of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which always has me blubbering.
Llorando by Rebekah Del Rio from the Mulholland Drive soundtrack.
Leeds by the Indigo Girls. The line – which sounds dirty out of context, but isn’t – “Find the open hole and press your fingers there with all your might, before the last ounce of my spirit bleeds on the pristine sheets of this hotel bed in Leeds.”
Sweet Thing by Van Morrison. The line “And I will raise my hand into the nighttime sky, and count the stars that’s shining in your eye.”
I have to say that video killed Back to One for me. It’s such a hopeful song about the beginning of a strong love and then that video. . . stupid, melodramatic, make-me-weep video.
Also, from Warren Zevon’s last CD Keep Me in Your Heart. But he cheated because he was dying when he recorded it.