Leann Rimes “How do I live”
Back in 97 when this song was popular, it was the last song my neighbor sang to on the radio. Moments later her dad dropped her off at school, she crossed the street, and was hit by a speeding car. She died 5 days later.
How Can I Help You Say Goodbye by Patti Loveless. The song is about loss from childhood through adulthood, and I always wonder how many takes Patti had to do to get through that last verse.
Ditto ‘Mad World’ and ‘The Rose’ Also Where Have You Been by Kathy Matea makes me bawl like a baby.
If we’re talking about devastating Irish songs, this needs to be included - The Town I Loved So Well by The Dubliners (Luke Kelly singing). A wonderful, terrible song about the effect of the Troubles on ordinary people, among other things that went wrong in Derry.
Also Emmylou Harris, Mary Black and Dolores Keane singing Sonny’s Dream. It’s actually the piping in the middle that gets me every time, I know one of the players is Liam O’Flynn but I’m not sure who the other one is.
And finally Luke Kelly again, in his final performance, singing the Night Visiting Song. A somewhat melancholy song anyway, but as a goodbye it’s devastating. Whilst the Dubliners have a reputation (not wholly undeserved) as a drinking and partying band, their ballads, and not just Luke’s, are often extraordinarily powerful. John Sheahan’s fiddle playing helps that greatly, as does the fact that they’ve had some of Ireland’s greatest singers with them through the years.
Ditto, though especially Gary Jules.
“Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday”
Chevy Van - Sammy Johns. Lost youth.
“You Get What You Give” by New Radicals. The song and video came out near my high school graduation, and invariably I get a little emotional, mostly when I watch the video. Those kids all look like me and people I knew. It’s about (among other things) growing up, and it’s not schlocky or schmaltzy. It’s sincere, and I value that.
Likewise. And you’re right, of course: having had her is a joy that is in no way compromised by having lost her; thanks for your words.
Iris DeMent singing “leaning on the everlasting arms” at the end of the Coens’ True Grit. I’m not religious, but it gets me every time. ’
Oh, and “In the Garden” at the end of Places in the Heart
when [spoiler]everyone is at peace together, even those who died earlier in the movie[/spoiler]This verse always gets to me as well. I am a cancer patient, and I was in church a few months ago when this Hymn came up. I felt like such a baby…all misty-eyed in church.
And on the total other end of the spectrum, I always cry when I hear “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro. Worse. Stupid. Song. Ever. Intentionally meant to be over the top sappy, yet when those angelic voices start and the orchestral part kicks in at the end, I’m a mess.
Our organist would play through the first four or so verses of Amazing Grace and then let the music fall away so that we would be singing a capella
When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun
Cue the waterworks!
Ordinary World by Duran Duran.
I sat in the hospital ICU with my boyfriend, now husband, while he was in a coma and waited to see if “fate would tear us apart”. Everytime I hear that song I flash bake to that awful summer…
“Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul” from The Dream Of Gerontius, as the Guardian Angel dutifully delivers the Soul to Purgatory, and promises to come back for him:
A few years ago I was at a Remembrance Sunday service where they sang O valiant hearts, the first time I’d heard it since I was a youngster. I cracked like an egg by about verse three.
“Bui-doi” from Miss Saigon got me at the line about a camp for (illegitimate half-breed) children “whose crime was being born”.
And the ending of Les Miserables when Fantine and Eponine come to take Jean Valjean away… bawls
It is not a song, “per se” – It is an instrumental composition by Arvo Pärt. But it has this kind o effect on me.
I present for your consideration “Spiegel im Spiegel”, by Arvo Pärt, written in 1978:
Enjoy ^.^
Just did it to me again reading the lyrics of The Last Song by Elton John.
And at least once every Christmas season, the last line of I’ll Be Home For Christmas…
The Open Fields Of Grace, specially written for Jackie Evancho and on her album Awakening, to be released in the next few days.
You won’t find it anywhere on youtube, but I think Priscilla Herdman does the best version of that song. And her song “The Water Lily” is achingly beautiful, too.
This verse gets me too. Grandma wanted this song at her funeral, and by the time this verse came up I was a blubbering mess. Almost made up for the rest of the service which made me steaming mad because my uncle and his wife somehow managed to make it all about them. But that’s a rant for another day.
Another song that just messes me up:
Heard it in the grocery store the other day and I thought I was going to have to leave.
Simply listening to most songs won’t make me cry, but I’m a (semi-pro) singer: most songs I love I also sing along to, in the car if nowhere else, and there are definitely a few that always get to me when I sing them.
Like “Scarecrow,” by Melissa Etheridge. It’s a tribute to Matthew Shepherd, the young gay man who was beaten, tortured, and left to die while tied to a post in 1998. I do ok until the bridge: “I can forgive…but I will not forget.” I’d love to cover this song live someday, but it’s been almost 16 years and I still can’t sing through it without starting to cry!
And “The Leader of the Band,” by Dan Fogelberg. My father is a musician, too, and even though we had a rough relationship for a while I can’t ever get past “Papa, I don’t think I said ‘I love you’ near enough.”