“So Much in Love” makes me cry too–only it’s happy tears.
Shirly - I believe the song you are talking about, No Man’s Land, is by Peter, Paul, and Mary, that’s a wonderful song.
Others for me, most mentioned, i believe:
Adagio for Strings - Samuel Barber
Tears In Heaven
Winter
What a Wonderful World
I think that many of these songs are most meaningful to us when a significant memory is attached to them, for example i remember some of my best friends with these song. Funerals are also mentioned a lot
Say Goodbye by Cheap Trick The words are sad in this one, but it’s the way Robin Zander sings it I think that really makes you feel bad for the guy. sniff, sniff
Sarah MacLachlan’s “I Will Remember You” and the song about “in the arms of the angel fly away from here”. Also a song by Gary Allan titled “Greenfields”
Sometimes Lord I wish you were still mine
And I go back in time and you’re laying by my side
And love was real and I could taste it on these lips of mine
In green fields backed by blue skies
Just as blue as your two true blue eyes
And I wonder, do you feel the way I feel
When you see green fields
I see cotton-candy clouds up in heaven
I close my eyes and gently drift away
And I’m loving you and holding on forever
There in your arms where I used to lay…
All of them remind me of (be prepared to think I’m a loser) a race car driver I never met but had a crush on for two years, Greg Moore, who died last year when he was 24. He was Canadian, which doesn’t really have a bearing on this except maybe subliminally with the whole green fields thing (since that’s pretty much my mental image of most of british columbia). On his memorial page somebody had posted some of the lyrics to the Angel song and also the line “weep not for the memories” so now whenever I hear Sarah McLachlan’s songs I cry. I’m less certain about the link to the Gary Allan song, but all I have to do is hear the piano intro and I’ll start bawling.
I used to cry when I heard Mark Wills singing “Wish You Were Here” but I don’t anymore because it’s been overplayed. Same with Garth Brooks’ “Beaches of Cheyenne”
“California Dreamin” usually gets me. “Going to the Chapel” as well. Most of the others I can’t remember, though there’s one instrumental piece from “Dragon” that’s also played (at least in the ads) in “The Patriot” that gets me b/c of the whole Bruce Lee dying thing.
“California Dreamin” . . . when I got that song on my PC back in March or April, I had downloaded a version of the song and started to listen to it while it was downloading. I can remember crying so hard while I listened to it and each time it got a bit farther but never seemed to finish that I couldn’t see the computer screen clearly enough to know that the song had failed to transfer completely. It also makes me sad b/c I heard it at least three times going back from visiting UVA and I was in a very unhappy place during that whole trip.
I always cry when the duet “A Little Fall of Rain” comes on my Les Miserables tape. Hidden unrequited love finally let out only when the woman who loves is dying in the her love’s arms accompanied by a gentle flute. I’m getting teary just thinking about it.
Falcon got there first with the Clapton song “Tears in Heaven” Wasn’t that the one he composed after his son died? I cry for that one because it was sung at the memorial service for the Murragh Federal Building victims, particularly the children. I remember the one young mother who lost two children, bent over with her face practically in her lap. Now I have tears just thinking about it.
A number of the songs mentioned give me a lump in my throat.
Just As I Am, Without One Plea (aka I Come, I Come). Played at my father’s funeral, I cry like a baby whenever I hear it. I can never remember the title, and so when I searched for it, I came across The Navy Hymn. The last stanza had me crying and thinking about those Russian submariners - I fervently hope they are rescued:
Lord God, our power evermore,
Whose arm doth reach the ocean floor,
Dive with our men beneath the sea,
Traverse the depths protectively.
O hear us when we pray, and keep
Them safe from peril in the deep.
Puff the Magic Dragon. Every time.
That song makes my mother cry; her father passed away when whe was a teen. So by empathic default, I get depressed when I hear it.
Also, if we’re going the musical route, I always cry at “A Little Fall of Rain” in Les Mis.
And, there is a song in the movie Thelma and Louise, “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” that gets me every time.
I forgot earlier to include “Green Green Grass of Home.” As I heard the lyric at the end, “…bury me 'neath the Green Green Grass of Home” I broke down. 
I was sitting in a car waiting for a carpenter (German-born and looking down his nose at Americans) and he ridiculed me for reacting that way to anything modern or popular (he had a taste for the classics).
Definitely Puff the Magic Dragon.
Also, although I love to sing and have been told I have a pretty good voice, I simply cannot sing at funerals. I just invest too much emotion in music. Don’t know how others in the congregation manage it.
ajschn -
Having sung at 3, all for people I knew well - you shut off a part of your mind. At least I do. I can usually get through the song itself okay, and then I start sobbing.
Of course, that doesn’t always work. I can remember vividly singing in Wren Chapel at William & Mary for my friend who committed suicide with tears streaming down my face. In those cases…you just muddle through. sigh
I very rarely actually shed tears during a song, but all these have made me either get emotional or tear up.
“Don’t Take the Girl”- Tim McGraw
“Crash”- Dave Mathews Band
“Not Enough Love In the World”- Don Henley
“Fathers Eyes”- Amy Grant. A very old song of hers. I think it came out in 1981, when she still sang Christian music.
“Father of Mine”- Everclear
“The Living Years”- Mike & the Mechanics
Those last two could be about my own life, to a point.
A lot of mine have been mentioned, but I’ll add “Empty Garden” by Elton John. His feeling of loss at John Lennon’s death is powerful.
‘Story of My Life’, Social Distortion.
John Lennon
The Song Remembers When - Trisha Yearwood
The Sad Cafe - The Eagles
You Don’t Even Know Who I Am - Patty Loveless
Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough - Patty Smyth, with Don Henley
“I don’t wanna lose you
But I don’t wanna use you
Just to have somebody by my side
I don’t wanna hate you
I don’t wanna take you
But I don’t wanna be the one to cry”
<sniff> Dammit, I’m crying now.
Gosh, it’s been awhile since I saw this thread.
I’m Leavin’ on a Jet Plane
500 miles
both by Peter, Paul, and Mary
Blowin’ in the Wind
actually by Bob Dylan, but P,P,&M’s version is more tear-jerking.
Did I mention Tears of a Clown by
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles?
Well, I might sound weird because it seems like a few of these songs shouldn’t do anything, but for me they do.
Note: Strangely, most of these songs are by my favorite band, Pink Floyd. Must be something about the way they sound.
Mother by: Pink Floyd
High Hopes by: Pink Floyd
Marooned by: Pink Floyd (This is probably the best instrumental that PF has ever done, though.)
Last Kiss by: Pearl Jam
Close My Eyes Forever by: Ozzy Osbourne & Lita Ford
The World Is Not Enough by: Garbage
Bent by: Matchbox 20
Can’t think of anymore for right now. Bye!
Although it embarasses me to mention something as popular and commercial as an Eagles song, the tagline of “Take It to the Limit” was what got me out of bed BP (Before Prozac).