When it’s Cold, I’d like to Die by Moby
and
Marian by The Sisters of Mercy
I used to like both songs.
Both are about cold and drowning.
I can’t seem to delete them from my iPod yet, but I have to skip them.
Practically all of Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut.
In particular:
[ul][li]The Gunner’s Dream. When Waters’ voice melds seamlessly with the saxophone - “you take her frail old hand…and hold on to the DREEEAAAAM” - it’s just pure brilliance.[/li][li]The Fletcher Memorial Home. The guitar solo, after “Boom boom, bang bang, lie down, you’re dead”. Gilmour makes that thing cry.[/li][li]The Final Cut. [/li][li]When The Tigers Broke Free (on remastered album, from The Wall film). “And that’s how the High Command TOOK MY DADDY FROM ME!” Argh, the anger that bleeds through gets me every time. [/li][/ul]
Ohhhhhhh I’ll play!
These are eye-stinging throat-grabbers. I have listened to most, cried through all at one time or another, but to satisfy the OP, yes, I have had to avoid them on occasion when I wasn’t up to handling exquisitely sad/beautiful:
First off; songs about ‘you were the best’:
In My Life - Beatles
A Song For You - Leon Russell
Love songs:
Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O’Connor
I Would Die For You - Jann Arden
Landslide - Stevie Nicks. Don’t know why but the lines
Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
'Cause I’ve built my life around you get me every time.
‘Friend’ songs about people who aren’t just friends:
Ode To A Friend - Jann Arden
Hello Again - Neil Diamond
Just plain lovely songs:
many of Bruce Cockburn, but one of the firstest and bestest (tears pouring down my face at his recent concert here)
All The Diamonds - truly one of the best lyricists ever
- Like a pearl in sea of liquid jade
His ship comes shining
Like a crystal swan in a sky of suns
His ship comes shining.
Amazing Grace when the bagpipes join the orchestra - sniffffff
There’s a whole raft of classical pieces that will dampen the lashes (yes, I AM a mushball), including Eric Satie’s Swan but I’ll go with The Flower Song from Lakme as well and add Webber’s Pie Jesu
Ouch. Just found a couple versions of the latter on YouTube - I still like Sara Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston best but Emily Gray does a fine job. Four (generic tissue name)s later, I’m not able to preview any more.
(There, OP, hope that meets your specs)
Got to go find some comedy to watch now. And buy more (generic tissue name)s.
BTW Hi. Newbie here.
Excellent choice! “You’ll die in Kenora, Billy; you, Jim, in Winnipeg…” takes on a whole new meaning by the end of the song. Chillingly moving, I think.
Another Tanglefoot fan though…good to know!
Anyway, I’ll nominate:
– Collin Raye’s “Love, Me” (“If you get there before I do, don’t give up on me…”)
– Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “This Shirt” (“Had it now for more damn years than I can count anyway.”)
– Michelle Wright’s “He Would Be Sixteen” (“Does he drive a car by now? Has he been in love?”)
I second Hogwash on the Final Cut songs. Except, the lines that really get me is in ‘When the tigers broke free’:
‘and the Anzio bridgehead was held for the prize, of a few hundred ordinary lives’ …
I think the evil of war is perfectly captured in those words. We made it, and just a few hundred ordinary people died… It gets me every time.
Anyways. I’d like to add the theme from ‘Paris, Texas’ by Ry Cooder - the ultimate Alone In All The World tune.
[highbrow] Piano Sonata No 2 in B Flat Minor, by Chopin [/highbrow] - used in state funerals all over the world, it’s still the saddest piece of music I’ve ever encountered.
If all these songs are being skipped - there’s an awful lot of music not being played! Maybe some smart record exec should write them down - put out a blank cd with these titles on the sleeve and make a mint!
MiM
OMG. I already couldn’t think about ‘Fire and Rain,’ by itself or with its connection to the movie, Running on Empty, without tearing up, EVERY TIME!
And now, after learning about this previously unknown to me aspect of it, a new level of meaning and poignancy is added to how much it the song moves me.
Another song that always pierces some shivery, melancholy place inside me is Lisa Stansfield’s ‘All Woman.’
The lyrics are so-so (and the video is good, but in another, simply well-made way); it’s the pace of the song and the way the violins pull my emotions all over the place EVERY TIME I hear them!
Oh, speaking of Leon Russell, I must also add “This Masquerade” (also performed by George Benson).
Sort of embarrassing, since the song is clearly meant to evoke tears: Sherrie Austin - Streets of Heaven. About a woman talking to God while waiting for her child to die.
These songs just kill me:
Amazing Grace (context: My mother’s name was Grace and it was played at her funeral.)
Love Me Tender (also played at Mom’s funeral)
Danny Boy (it made my grandpa cry, too)
Puff the Magic Dragon (there’s something just incredibly sad about the line: “Dragons live forever, but not so little boys . . .”)
When She Loved Me from Toy Story 2.
I’m sorry, I have something in my eye . . .
Kinky Friedman’s Ride Em Jewboy is deply moving. A cowboy’s song about the Holocaust.
I’m a middle class English chap and don’t do that crying thing, if I did:
In My Life Beatles/Lennon (yet again)
A Minutes Noise for John by Mitch Benn, written for the topical Radio 4 comedy program The Now Show the week John Peel died. (I can’t find the lyrics on line can anyone do better) For those of you who don’t know who he was and why he is missed by so many of us have a look at this old thread (I wonder if Mitch nicked his idea off owlstretchingtime).
A minute’s contemplative silence would be wrong
Let’s have a minute’s noise for John.
Here you go. Wish I could find the audio. It’s a regular cacophony of heartbreak.
I haven’t heard that recording. But it reminds me; I used to play guitar and sing at an open mic in town every Wednesday, and the Wednesday after George died I sang that song (fairly poorly) in tribute.
At any rate, I agree with many of the suggestions listed so far, but I’m not going to waste bandwidth with "me too"s.
I’m going to add a few here that haven’t been mentioned.
Bruce Springsteen has written, IMHO, some of the saddest and most moving lyrics of anyone. A few examples that always get to me:
Racing in the Streets
Some guys they just give up living
And start dying little by little, piece by piece
Some guys come home from work and wash up
And go racin’ in the street…
<snip>
…But now there’s wrinkles around my baby’s eyes
And she cries herself to sleep at night
When I come home the house is dark
She sighs “Baby did you make it all right”
She sits on the porch of her daddy’s house
But all her pretty dreams are torn
She stares off alone into the night
With the eyes of one who hates for just being born
For all the shut down strangers and hot rod angels
Rumbling through this promised land
Tonight my baby and me we’re gonna ride to the sea
And wash these sins off our hands
Used Cars
*Now, my ma, she fingers her wedding band
And watches the salesman stare at my old man’s hands
He’s tellin’ us all 'bout the break he’d give us if he could, but he just can’t
Well if I could, I swear I know just what I’d do
Now, mister, the day the lottery I win I ain’t ever gonna ride in no used car again*
Other songs of his that always get me include Highway Patrolman, Reason to Believe, Atlantic City, Downbound Train, One Step Up… there are probably others, but that’s what comes to mind.
Also, Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors is a terriblly moving song. Her voice is so powerful and expressive.
The Kid, recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary touches a nerve with me.
And, although I don’t know why, Heroes by David Bowie just puts me in some sort of mood.
I like songs that make me cry, so I’ve got several:
Seconded
30KFT, Assemblage 23 - This one never fails.
Oh Life (There Must Be More) - Alan Parsons
**Vincent ** - Don McLean
Others
**Might As Well Be On Mars ** - Alice Cooper (particularly the line: “Wish that I could fly/If I could I’d come down to you/Maybe I should try…”)
**Hello ** - Evanescence (I originally thought it was about insanity, but seems it’s about the singer’s younger sister, who died in the singer’s presence as a child–I think she drowned)
**High Hopes ** - Pink Floyd (I love this song. It makes me feel all sad and melancholy every time I listen to it, and I just love it)
**Unchained Melody ** - Roy Orbison
**Skellig ** - Loreena McKennitt
**Run For the Roses ** - Dan Fogelberg (I won’t listen to this one anymore, at least not when anybody’s around. I have no idea why it makes me blubber so, since I’m not particularly a horse fan, but hey, what can I do?)
**And So It Goes ** - Billy Joel
The Cheese Factor
**Roses for Mama ** - C. W. McCall (another one I won’t listen to with anybody else around)
**When October Goes ** - Barry Manilow (Yeah, I know. But it’s a lovely song, extremely melancholy)
**It Was a Very Good Year ** - ? (Frank Sinatra?) (I always associate this one and When October Goes. Another melancholy song.)
And Stolen Car:
She asked if I remembered the letters I wrote
When our love was young and we were bold
She said last night she read those letters
And they made her feel a hundred years old
Thanks, I’ve got something in my eye now 
Let’s have a minute’s racket
though he isn’t coming coming back it
Seems we understand the need
to play something loud and at the wrong speed.
Cos a minute’s silence wouldn’t show him how we feel,
Let’s have a minute’s noise for Peel
Hmm, that was silly. I pasted those without reviewing and I believe the original was “when our love was young and bold”. Apparently the quoted part was from a newer version on “Tracks”.
From The River:
“Is a dream a lie when it don’t come true, or is is something worse?”
It was my .sig file for a while, after we got my son Dweezil’s autism diagnosis.
Seconded! This song reminds me that my son is a really great person at heart. His issues make it hard for him to show it sometimes, is all.
As a Dad, I am incapable of listening to Tears in Heaven without crying myself. Makes is dangerous to listen to while driving.
And Thunder Road:
*The screen door slams
Mary’s dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that’s me and I want you only*
And speaking of Roy Orbison, his original version of Blue Bayou belongs on this list. Chills.