Nice to see the Springsteen appreciation in this thread. Agree with all of 'em, and will add My Hometown. (I swear I had the exact same experience - years before the song - sitting on my father’s lap driving through town as he pointed out the shitty landmarks with the idea that he was giving me a worse world than he found.)
also: Grace by Jeff Buckley (not Hallelujah so much) Ice Cream by Sarah McLachlan Song for the Boys by Pat Metheny The Hours main theme by Philip Glass
off the top of my head
What’s The Matter Here? by 10,000 Maniacs is one that has always been impossible for me to sing along with because I’m crying so hard. Now that I have kids, it makes me cry just thinking about it.
I like “Puttin’ On The Ritz”, the version from Young Frankenstein where the monster (Peter Boyle) sings it with top hat and cane.
The monster struggles mightily to get the words out but his pal the doctor (Gene Wilder) is so supportive that it moves me every time.
I don’t know why, there’s really no adequate explanation, but the one song I can’t, can’t, can’t listen to (can’t even put it on my iPod, because the first few notes of the song will cause me to tear up, and I can’t stop it) is *Late Goodbye * by Poets of the Fall. It’s the theme from the Max Payne soundtrack, and for some reason it just makes me burst out and I end up crying almost uncontrollably.
*In our headlights, staring, bleak,
Beer cans, deer’s eyes
On the asphalt underneath, our crushed plans and my lies
Lonely street signs, powerlines
They keep on flashing, flashing by
And we keep driving into the night
It’s a late goodbye, such a late goodbye
And we keep driving into the night
It’s a late goodbye*
At the moment, I’m getting a bit soppy every time I listen to Cancer by My Chemical Romance. It’s a tune about a person dying of cancer accepting death, but that’s not really the issue as to why I get soppy. I get soppy because the hardest part about death for me is separation from those I love most, which is the message that the song slowly builds up to.
Lyrics under spoiler
[spoiler]*Turn away
If you could get me a drink, of water
'cause my lips are chapped and faded
call my aunt marie
help her gather all my things
and bury me in all my favorite colors
my sisters and my brothers still
I will not kiss you
'cause the hardest part of this
is leaving you
Now turn away
'cause i’m awful just to see
'cause all my hairs abandoned all my body
oh my agony
know that i will never marry
baby i’m just soggy from the chemo
but counting down the days to go
It just ain’t living
And I just hope you know
that if you say
goodbye today
I’d ask you to be true
'cause the hardest part of this is leaving you
'cause the hardest part of this is leaving you*[/spoiler]
Sometimes I get soppy listening to Queen’s Millionaire Waltz, because I’m soppy when it reminds me of my fiance.
**Annabelle **by Gillian Welch.
*
I had a daughter called her Annabelle
She’s the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I never had
I didn’t want to ever hear her cry
When I’m dead and buried I’ll take a hard life of tears
For every day I’ve ever known
Anna’s in the churchyard, she’s got no life at all
She’s only got these words on a stone
*
Geez, guys! Can we get back to lost love?
Did I mention “Lips of an Angel”, by Hinder?
The guy’s on the phone with his ex-girl while his new one’s in the other room.
Been there.
mangeorge
Eva Cassidy’s version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold” is something I have to skip most of the time. Maybe all of the time by now. It’s just too much for me.
The religious song that gets me is “Here I Am, Lord.” It was sung at my aunt’s funeral as they wheeled the casket in and the combination of that image and those lyrics just destroyed me.
Hmm, that would only be songs that had such awful connotations. I don’t have any, but my first wife couldn’t listen to Simon & Garfunkle’s “The Boxer’ because a date had once put it on to show his 'sensitive” side so that she’d have sex with him, and when she didn’t he raped her while it was still playing. Hardly the song’s fault.
Otherwise, for me there’s no music that qualfies as unbearable; rather it serves to make everything else a little more bearable - even if, although very, very sad music, it provides a vehicle for catharsis.
Coincidentally, I’ve been going through a bad patch lately, and recalled a song of which I only heard a few notes over 23 years ago, but never forgot. Didn’t know the title, could only guess the composer. Resolving that I should have at least one small triumph, I spent hours on Amazon tracking it down: “Where Corals Lie” from Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures
We remember what Picasso said: “Art is the lie that allows us to see the truth.” One beautiful song during a spell of ugly is sometimes all it takes.
Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner”. I’d gotten out of the Navy the previous year, and I was seriously doubting my own patriotism. I still do.
I’ve heard (read) most of the opinions and debates around the piece, but it really moved me and it still does.
It hurts. But it’s rarely heard now. I don’t think youngsters would get it.
