Eh-hem! Mike + the Mechanics were not a one-hit wonder. They also had a hit with All I Need Is a Miracle. What can I say? I liked that band!
Friar Ted, you’ve got excellent taste in music.
On the other hand, I may not. You see, the song which makes me tear up every time it comes on the radio, even when I’m driving and singing along with it is Break Away by Kelly Clarkson, I think. It’s not just that the song is so typical of who I was when I was a lonely teenager in a small town, it’s that it became popular right when my grandmother died earlier this year. It’s the chorus that gets me.
Damn it! Where are the tissues?
CJ
I miss you, Grandmama. Sorry I wasn’t there.
Oh, Lord! Anyone who can listen to Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt” without tears is a stoic of the nth degree! And, while I’m not a particularly religious person, virtually any of Aaron Neville’s versions of sacred songs is likely to create a tissue shortage around my house. (His “Ave Maria” is really, truly how it was meant to be sung. Period.) While buttoning up the back of my wedding dress, my mother sang Harry Belafonte’s “Turn Around” (“Turn around and she’s two, turn around and she’s four, turn around and she’s a young girl going out of the door…”) Sob! (And then touch up the makeup!) And Garth Brooks’ “The Dance” never fails to make me cry – it was played at the funeral of a dear, dear friend, and I can’t hear it since without breaking down. Finally, Sarah McLaughlin’s “In the Arms of the Angels,” and Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” remind me of that guy I’ll probably always love, but with whom things never quite work.
Being an Aussie male I don’t cry listening to any song. If I did cry I would probably be listening to Sinead O’Connor’s Three Babies:
In my soul
My blood and my bones
I have wrapped your cold bodies around me
The face on you
The smell of you
Will always be with me
Each of these
My three babies
I was not willing to leave
or Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy where prisoner Joe sings to his brother Dan:
Oh praise the Baby Jesus, have a Merry Christmas,
I’m really gonna miss it, all the treasure and the trash
And later in the evening, I can just imagine,
You’ll put on Junior Murvin and push the tables back
And you’ll dance with Rita, I know you really like her,
Just don’t hold her too close, oh brother please don’t stab me in the back
I didn’t mean to say that, it’s just my mind it plays up,
Multiplies each matter, turns imagination into fact
and Christmas is coming, I will be listening to it soon.
I haven’t actually requested that “Old and Wise” be played at my funeral (I dunno, it always seemed kinda like tempting fate to mention it) but I have often thought that I would like it to be. Hopefully a long time from now.
“30Kft” by Assemblage 23. It’s a stark little song that’s simply an answering machine message from a guy who’s calling his wife from a plane that’s on its way to crashing. Haunting, powerful stuff and never fails to make me tear up every time I hear it. Though I don’t think he meant it to be a 9/11 song (it came out in 2004), that’s the feeling I always get from it.
“Hello, if you’re there pick up the phone
I’m calling from 30,000 feet above you
The captain’s just informed us that our plane is going down
So I’m calling for one last time to say I love you…”
Agreed about “Old Friends” by Simon and Garfunkel. I’ll add in “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” and “Silent Night/7 O’Clock News,” too.
