“Amazing Grace.” Because I’ve played it at so many damn funerals and way too many times for people I cared for.
(Though I did do one service where the dearly departed had asked that we put the lyrics to “Gilligan’s Island” to “Amazing Grace.” I did not cry that time but was quite irritated because that combination is extra ear-wormy. That was many years ago and I STILL can’t get it out of my head.)
And, of late, Oscar Levant’s hymn to love and misadventure, “Blame It On My Youth.” I cry like a fool every time I hear it, my dumbass.
Especially this part:
If you were on my mind both night and day
Blame it on my youth,
If I forgot to eat and sleep and pray
Blame it on my youth,
If I cried a little bit when first I learned the truth,
Don’t blame it on my heart,
Blame it on my youth.
Maybe I should try it with the lyrics from “Gilligan’s Island.”
Since the first time I heard it Crash and Burn by Savage Garden will make me well up as soon as the bridge hits. And recently I heard The Streets of Derry for the first time. Hit me within the first two lines.
There’s this song by Sufjan Stevens about a childhood female friend of (the narrator? Sufjan himself? I don’t know) who died of cancer. Gets me every time.
The most beautifully sad song I know is Buffalo Springfield’s (well, Neil Young’s) Expecting To Fly:
*There you stood
on the edge of your feather,
Expecting to fly.
While I laughed,
I wondered whether
I could wave goodbye,
Knowin’ that you’d gone.
By the summer it was healing,
We had said goodbye.
All the years
we’d spent with feeling
Ended with a cry,
Babe, ended with a cry,
Babe, ended with a cry.
I tried so hard to stand
As I stumbled
and fell to the ground.
So hard to laugh as I fumbled
And reached for the love I found,
Knowin’ it was gone.
If I never lived without you,
Now you know I’d die.
If I never said I loved you,
Now you know I’d try,
Babe, now you know I’d try.
Babe, now you know I’d try,
Babe.*
I listen to quite a few bands who have some really sad songs but it really depends on the mood I am in if they affect me in that way.
Currently Precious by Depeche Mode is hard for me to listen to, even though I really like the song, because of the text and knowing what Martin Gore wrote the song about.
Stay Gold by Stevie Wonder. I don’t know why I never heard this when I was younger because it was in the movie The Outsiders. It couldn’t have been more than 5 years ago when I first heard the song on a “best of” collection. I later watched the movie on one of those classic TV channels. I was in eleventh grade when the movie came out—guess I lived a sheltered life.
I sometimes get a little something in my eye for Mr. Rogers, too, because Mr. Rogers really loves you.
I also have a hard time with “Cats in the Cradle”. And I can’t listen to “Breathe Me”, which is the song they played in the last episode of Six Feet Under, because it’s just too emotional.
Then there’s a whole other genre of songs that are just miserable and depressing - I cry at “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”, but that’s because it’s an incredibly sad song!
“Into the West” by Annie Lennox - The emotional evocation of Frodo leaving his friends is very powerful. Just a perfectly beautiful, winsomely lyrical song.
“In My Daughter’s Eyes” by Martina McBride - The understated explanation of a mom’s love, hopes and dreams for her daughter make for a very powerful tune.
“Day is Done” by Peter, Paul and Mary - Just as good, just as powerful, as told from a father’s perspective.
“Heavenly Day” by Patty Griffin - A spare, heartbreakingly beautiful song about spending a perfect day with someone you love. It starts quiet and slow, but when the orchestra comes in my heart almost always leaps.
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” lyrics by Francis Scott Key - Singing it in a crowd, looking at an American flag rippling high in the wind, thinking of the challenges of the American Revolution, the Civil War and so many other times of trouble, almost invariably makes me tear up a bit.
That gets me because, altho’ his talent is immense, that it’s the only thing he has is sad beyond words.
There are a dozen Billy Joel songs that grab me, not the least because he “was born in '49” (I was born in ‘51)–he and I share a large part of our childhood times. So Russians (“how can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy”), and Downeaster Alexa (“I’ve got bills to pay and children who need clothes”) and Leningrad (“He made my daughter laugh, then we embraced”) and And So It Goes (If I lost VeryCoolSpouse I’d be lost as well. That Billy lost his love makes the song even more poignant.) and The Entertainer (because I’m also a musician, altho’ not of THAT caliber).
The biggest (I won’t repeat the reasons here–find those other, similar threads) is Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel–whom I can’t help but notice is mentioned several previous times in this thread. A towering musical talent.
“Adagio for Strings” - I first became aware of it watching the movie “Platoon” and have never heard it without feeling profound sadness.
“Eagle’s Wings” - I always enjoyed singing this hymn. Then Mom selected it for Dad’s funeral, and ever since I can’t get through the refrain. And I’m not even religious anymore.
“Adagio for Strings” - I first became aware of it watching the movie “Platoon” and have never heard it without feeling profound sadness.
“Eagle’s Wings” - I always enjoyed singing this hymn. Then Mom selected it for Dad’s funeral, and ever since I can’t get through the refrain. And I’m not even religious anymore.
“30K FT” by Assemblage 23
“Run for the Roses” by Dan Fogelberg
“And So It Goes” by Billy Joel
“Roses for Mama” by C. W. McCall (absolute and total schmaltz, but I’m incapable of listening to it without tearing up)
And yes, “Bookends”…(“How terribly strange to be seventy…”)
That one is actually Sting, from “Dream of the Blue Turtles”.
Oh, yes, agreed. Peter Gabriel is fantastic. While it doesn’t make me tear up, exactly, his “Signal To Noise” is one of the most intense songs I’ve ever heard. The end of it is, for lack of a better word, orgasmic.
Er, not so much. That post was from 2004. Her profile does show activity today, but her last post was in January 2007. So it appears that she’s lurking for now.