The one that gets me every time is Dan Fogleburg’s “Leader of the Band”. Guess it depends on your relationship with your father…but it gets to me every time.
And not quite a gut punch, but Harry Chapin’s “Taxi” tends to get to me for some time after listening to it.
+1 for the Boz Scaggs version. Rita Coolidge sounds like a robot to me – hits all the notes correctly, but no emotion. It’s especially evident when you compare her with Scaggs in this song.
One I can’t explain is the Animals’ House of the Rising Sun. I just have to stop and listen whenever I hear it being played.
any of the songs I sang when I was considered, but not truly, absent. everything stolen , even singing
Nuts, ran out of time to add this:
One I can explain is Janis Ian’s At Seventeen, because I had a close childhood friend who was a big fish in a small pond – super popular in high school, got by on his charm, didn’t study, didn’t think more than a few hours ahead, lost several jobs for goofing off while on the clock, and eventually blew his brains out.
“Their small-town eyes will gape at you
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received, at seventeen.”
Songs about God never really did anything for me, since I’m an atheist and all, but the Kurt Weill song “Lost in the Stars” sort of makes me feel something deeper than I usually do.
It sort of makes me understand, on an emotional level, what believing in God probably does for some people, keeping the despair and emptiness at bay.
That one used to really get to me when I was younger. I felt like it was describing my teenage years, which I guess was the whole point.
My daughter cannot listen to Lovesong by the The Cure. The thing is, it’s not even a sad song.
Actually, I must agree at this point. I went back and checked them out because of this thread. Boz’s version still has it; Rita’s was fine, but no leakage on my part ;). Boz, man, what a weird great voice. His vibrato when he holds his notes is wonderful - he is an excellent technical singer. But the character of his voice is unique - he sounds like a caramel ;), warm rich and sweet.
Nice. I’ll add “Who by Fire?,” by Leonard Cohen.
“Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin is also wistful. The transition from the major-key bridge back to the melancholy-chords at the guitar solo gives me a little gut-punch each time.
That song was in heavy rotation around my senior year of high school, and my best friend was in love with it. I never really paid attention to the lyrics until years later, but it hits hard now.
My own personal contribution is Mess by Ben Folds Five. It’s a song where he’s lamenting his actions in a past relationship (“all the untested virtue of things I said I’d never do…least of all to you. I know he’s kind and true. I know that he is good to you…he’ll never care for you more than I do”)
Then, out of nowhere, there’s this gutpunch:
“I want to be for her what I could never be for you”
It’s like Ben wrote that song out of the shit crawling around my brain.
Rush has smart and insightful lyrics but they are probably not known for emotional songs.
I was sent home from Germany when my Father died. I was in my old room at my mother’s house listening to Rush on my headphones when Time Stand Still came on. I was 21 and it may be the moment I grew up. Time moving too fast, losing people, friends drifting apart, loss, death. All became very real to me.
Summer’s going fast
Nights growing colder
Children growing up
Old friends growing older
Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away
The innocence slips away
A one on the same theme of teenage years that gets me is Big Star’s “Thirteen.” It’s just the perfect encapsulation of early love and that transition from childhood innocence into adolescence.
Desperados Waiting For a Train sung by Jerry Jeff Walker. I tear up because it reminds me of my Dad, even before he passed away in October 2016.
<snip>
One day I looked up and he’s pushin’ eighty
And there’s brown tobacco stains all down his chin
To me he’s one of the heroes of this country
So why’s he all dressed up like them old men
<snip>
I’ve always loved the song “Wherever You Will Go” by The Calling. When I was listening to it after my son died, I happened to really pay attention to the lyrics and I just started bawling.
There are certain lines that really get to me:
And maybe, I’ll find out
A way to make it back someday
To watch you, to guide you through the darkest of your days
and:
I know now, just quite how
My life and love might still go on
In your heart, in your mind, I’ll stay with you for all of time
I can barely read the screen as I type this, my eyes are so filled with tears.
‘Boston’ by DC local 90s heroes Emmet Swimming. The second verse hammers me, both for my own childhood and my kids, now.
“Split up when I was nine
Divvied up the furniture
Went back in the house one last time
Just to walk around, around
What could they say?
“It’s not your fault
It’ll be OK”
All my toys were scattered around, around”
I started a thread a couple of years ago after I started sobbing when “Wildfire” came on the radio. That was unexpected.
My usual ones are less surprising. “Time in a Bottle” is extremely linked to both my dad and my first husband. Steve was listening to it after my father died and I lost it. He was really apologetic and so sad that he had made me sad, so now they are both bound up in that song.
And Eva Cassidy’s version of “Fields of Gold” just crushes me.
Another vote for, “When She Loved Me,” from Toy Story 2.
Thanks to that boat movie a few years back, every time I hear a string rendition of, “Nearer My God To Thee,” I reach for the Kleenex.
Oooo, yes. I would add The Ballad of El Goodo to that. The lyrics are about someone whose trying to do Good but feels attacked from all sides, but “There ain’t no one gon’ turn me 'round” - it’s like Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” but with even more pathos and struggle.
There are a couple of religious songs that make me tear up (“Here I Am, Lord,” is the biggie because I have a very strong association between it and an aunt’s death), but I don’t go to mass so I never hear them.
Yeah, what is it about that song? It was the first one I thought of when I saw the thread title.
I went through a bad breakup in the early 90s. While I was sitting around wallowing in misery, I played the Scaggs version a zillion times. I’m not sure why either.