Luther Vandross - “Dance With My Father”
Cowboy Junkies - “Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)”
The Sundays - “Wild Horses”
The The - “Love is Stronger Than Death”
Peter Gabriel - “The Book of Love”
Johnny Cash - “Hurt”
The Smiths - “Never Had No One Ever”
plus
Live versions of The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” and Radiohead’s “Creep”.
I’ll see your Amy Grant and raise you Fly by Celine Dion. Especially after the story of her dedicating that song to her niece who died at a young age…that one gets me every time.
Most Patsy Cline and Nine Inch Nails songs. Hey, if Patsy Cline were still alive and closer to Trent Reznor’s age, I wonder if Trent and Patsy would be buds?
“All Good Gifts”, from the Godspell (a musical) soundtrack. And I’m an atheist!
Also, “Volveras”, by Ricky Martin, of all people. And I’m heterosexual!
(Sorry about the double post. Two songs in two different languages, okay?)
Hi everyone! I’m the OP.
My question was which songs ***do you skip ** * *as they are unbearably moving, as opposed to which songs make you cry; the former category being a tearjerking league above the latter. My dad’s dying - hence the two specific songs in the OP.
I’m not doubting that many have answered with skipee’s, but some have answered with cryee’s.
I’ve enjoyed reading them all tho’ (and downloading not a few…)
MiM
I usually have to skip The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics.
And, in quite another direction, Oh Life (There Must Be More) on the Alan Parsons album Try Anything Once, about an unnamed woman committing suicide:
“Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” - the Smiths
“He Was a Friend of Mine” – as performed by Willie for Brokeback Mountain
“Father of Mine” and “Wonderful” – Everclear
“How’s It Gonna Be” – Third Eye Blind
“Romeo and Juliet” – as performed by the Indigo Girls
I focus on the ones that make me cry.
I forgot about this one! It’s enough to make you open a vein.
I forgot about this one, too. Jesus…I own all these weepy fucking songs. Sometimes I’ll just listen to them all afternoon. Playing them over and over like some kind of crazy person.
I don’t skip sad songs. Evah.
That one is just about too sad to listen to. So is Eric Bogle’s No Man’s Land (The Green Fields of France). The final “again and again and again and again” really puts a serious dent in my day.
Also, Mary by Patty Griffin:
“Jesus says “Mother, I couldn’t stay another day longer.”
Flys right by and leaves a kiss upon her face.
While the angels are singing his praises in a blaze of glory,
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place”
Since JJ pulled out The Smiths and Sundays, I will add “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” and “Here’s Where the Story Ends” (hell, just about everything on the Reading, Writing… album- must be the voice). Whatever happened to her anyway?
Also “Fade Into You” Mazzy Star.
It’s not a song, per se, but there is a piece on Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack to The Thin Red Line (“Light”) that I can listen to only in the right setting, because otherwise it, uhhh…kills me dead. (That’s the best way to put it. :)) It’s a very quiet piece, but it’s so grave and piercingly sad that I feel like I have to honor it by listening to it only when I’m alone and when I can focus my attention entirely on the music, and even then it’s very painful (but so beautiful, the masochism pays off).
I’ll third the unbearably moving qualities of “Be Not Afraid” – when I was a kid, I used to dread looking up at the hymnal board at church for fear of seeing the number for this hymn, as it always made my mother cry, and now it makes me cry. As does “How Can I Keep From Singing?” (though I love that hymn and gladly sing it even with a lump in my throat).
There’s a version of Hank Williams’s “Weary Blues From Waitin’” on the “complete” 10-disc set that was done not long before he died that’s just heartbreaking. It’s pretty lo-fi, and it’s just him and and his guitar. He was still desperately in love with Audrey, but had married somebody else. He was a superstar who couldn’t stand to be in his own skin. He was on a backbreaking tour schedule…and he was on the very verge of his death from alcohol, painkillers, and chloral hydrate. He was twenty nine years old, and looked like he was 60. He’s singing it, and you KNOW it’s about how badly he wants Audrey, but how much he wants to leave her behind, and he hits the second verse:
“Through tears I watch young lovers
As they go strolling by
Oh, all the things that might have been
God forgive me if I cry”
…and there’s this little stumble in his voice right as he gets to “cry,” and it’s just devastating. It’s like he’s reached the end of his rope, and he just can’t do it anymore. The resignation and despair in his voice are tangible.
Yesterday by The Beatles.
Beautiful song but always makes me very sad.
“Long May You Run” – Neil Young
I’m not a country music fan, but my mother was and I listened to more than my share of it as a kid. Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty did a song called “Country Bumpkin” that makes me cry every time I hear it.
I am surprised no one has mentioned Teddy Bear by Red Sovine
Declan
