I was in a little cafe that was playing background music. Then the song “Your Wildest Dreams” came on and I could scarcely keep my composure. It triggered some combination of half-forgotten memories, nostalgia, and deja vu. And I don’t even like the Moody Blues!
Has anyone else ever been startled by their emotional response to a song, especially by an artist they don’t like?
Maybe not unexpectedly, but Clarence Carter’s “Patches” always makes me tear up a bit.
My mom died in early February. A couple of weeks later I was puttering around the kitchen and had Lucinda Williams’ “Blessed” album playing. When the song “Copenhagen” came on, which is about her finding out that a close friend of hers had died, I pretty much lost it.
I’m going to shift this over to Cafe Society from IMHO. Thread relocated.
Carrie Underwood Jesus Take the Wheel
I always break down at this part. There’s a point in everyone’s life that they realize this world is far too complicated to handle on our own. We aren’t in charge and we can’t control every situation. We all need support to get through life.
Songs about impossible love. I’ve been with my wife for 26 years, and obviously these sort of situations can’t happen to me, but one listen to either of these songs and I’m all, “Oh my god, what if we’d never met!? What if we were different species!?”
Tom Waits’ Fish & Bird, about a bird and a whale that fall in love, but can never be together. The last line slays me every single time.
Andrew Bird’s The Sifters
[heaving sobs]
The 70’s smash hit We’re All Alone, either version, Boz Scaggs or Yvonne Elliman. I have no idea why.
Not unexpectedly, but To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra always gets me right in the feels. For personal reasons, but also because it’s a really beautiful song.
Everclear’s Wonderful. Hits a little too close to my childhood.
I missed Dr. Horrible when it was on the web so the first time I saw it was a few months later on the big screen as an adjunct to CSTS with a bunch of Browncoats. The finale, “Everything You Ever” Now the nightmare’s real
Now Dr. Horrible is here
To make you quake with fear
To make the whole world kneel
(Everything you ever…)
And I won’t feel
A thing
Interesting timing on this thread, as I was thinking about starting one just like it.
I’m a steely-eyed kinda guy, so there’s maybe 8-10 songs in the whole world that make me feel like there’s something stuck in my eye – and in most of those cases, I can easily identify exactly why that is. Porcupine Tree’s “Even Less”, for example, gets under my skin because it reminds me of a very specific person.
Recently, I started listening to a prog-metal band called Redemption, and for some odd reason their song “Love Kills Us All/Life in One Day” always catches me by the throat, but I can’t figure out why. (The songwriter did have some experiences that match recent events of my own, but at the time of this song, he hadn’t experiences those events yet. Or maybe that’s exactly it?) Sometimes it’s just the way the musical chords themselves are presented; I’ve been known to get choked up sometimes by instrumentals.
I rarely hear it but when I do, oh my, Billy Vera’s song At This Moment.
“Still the One” by Orleans used to hit me so hard that I had to leave the room while it played.
It was “our song,” and just too painful when my marriage broke up.
Now it’s no problem, because I realize it’s about my second marriage.
I suppose it’s not terribly surprising–it is a sad song, after all–but I have never been able to listen to “When She Loved Me,” from Toy Story 3, since my mother passed away. Even thinking about the lyrics gets me all weepy.
Unfortunately I first discovered this while driving on Interstate 75 on the way to Disney World. Had to pull off onto the shoulder while I composed myself.
“Teardrop” by Massive Attack always makes me moody, reflective, etc. I barely understand a word of it, but there’s just something about Beth Fraser’s vocals and the song’s ambiance that makes me revert deeply inward. I don’t have it connected to a specific event in my life, so far as I can tell.
“Soon” by My Bloody Valentine is another abstract one along the lines of “Teardop” where it’s all about the impression of the song, and I literally have no idea what any of the words to “Soon” are. But the song can make me cry and feel euphoric all at the same time. Then again, pretty much any song off that album makes me dive deep inside myself.
“Tonight, Tonight” and “1979” by the Smashing Pumpkins, too, but that’s more for a throwback to a specific time and place mentally and emotionally. So, nostalgia, really. (ETA: Upon re-read, that sounds a bit dismissive. I don’t mean it to sound so. It’s just that Smashing Pumpkins is much more tied into a time and place than the two other artists for me. So there’s a more immediate explanation to why it affects me so, beyond just the music itself, although I find the music itself extremely evocative, too.)
Right after my Daddy died I heard Grace Potter sing ‘Stars’, just nearly kills me everytime I hear it.
The lil’wrekker showed it to her Choir director. They sang it at their final concert, last spring. She had a 2 line solo part. I thought I was gonna have to leave the hall, I was sobbing uncontrollably.
Rita Coolidge not Yvonne. In some areas, crafty radio DJs mixed both versions together.
:smack: argh!! Yes Rita Coolidge. Thank you.
This very rarely happens to me, and when it does, it’s usually because it’s an exceptionally well done performance. i.e. tears of joy from the beauty of it, not the lyrics.
For example, a guy on the Voice did a cover to “In the Arms of Angel” a while back and I cried. Not because if the lyrics (I’m a Sarah McLachlan fan and have heard the song dozens of times), but because of the beauty of his performance.
However, I had the recent experience of some country guy on a late night show singing about his dead dad. It made me cry, and my dad’s not dead, yet very old. I cursed the guy out under my breath as being being emotionally manipulative.
I’ve cried to Stairway to Heaven before.
As a young child, I found “Oh My Darling, Clementine” absolutely unbearable. I would scream for that song to be stopped. Maybe I was being overly sensitive, but the thought of a little girl drowning and lost forever is beyond effed up to be singing to young child.