Lorelei by the Pogues. I couldn’t find an original video. Just listen to the music. It brings tears to glass eyes.
“Lullaby for a Stormy Night” by Vienna Teng
“When She Loved Me” by Sarah McLachlan
“Te Quiero” by Hombres G - my ex used to own the CD, and it made me cry, back when we were together. Now I just find it painful. Still beautiful, but painful all the same.
“Love, Me” - I forget who sings it, but it reminds me of a couple I was related to, who died a year or so apart. I found this song beautiful long before I met these people, who I considered surrogate grandparents.
“I Hope You Dance” by Trisha Yearwood (?) - it came out when my niece was little, and it reminds me of her because she loves to dance.
Another vote for “Don’t Give Up.” Also “Hallelujah,” but the original by Leonard Cohen, and his “Take This Waltz,” which is based on a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca, if I’m not mistaken.
I think I can help you with that. Mattea tells a really funny story about that song.
She was singing it at a state fair and got to the crucial last verse and those touching words:
"He held her hand and stroked her head, and in a fragile voice, she said . . . "
. . . and as if on cue, the loudspeaker squawked out: Edna Murphy, come to the swine barn!
Lee Ann Womack
Love, Me is Collin Raye (just FYI, great song)
Everytime I hear “Amazing Grace” played on bag pipes, I cry. Over a decade ago a friend died in a fire. He was a friend, a comrade, a brother. A firefighter. A hero… And about 6 years ago a friend of mine’s son died in a car accident, hit head on by a drunk. I was the paramedic on the call. And I couldn’t save him. He was a firefighter too. He received fireman’s funeral. His father was there in his dress uniform, a Fire Chief’s uniform with tears streaming down his face as the bag pipes emitted “Amazing Grace.” I couldn’t be near the rest of the crowd at the graveside. I was so…
Yeah…
Anyway…
Billy Myers - Kiss The Rain
Fisher - I Will Love You
The Shins - New Slang
Coldplay - Fix You
Dido - Don’t Leave Home
“Pancho and Lefty,” performed by Emmylou Harris. It brings tears to my eyes when she sings it; doesn’t do much when sung by anyone else, including Townes.
“Wild Mountain Thyme” does the job when anyone sings it, although the version with Dick Gaughan, the McGarrigles, and Emmylou (again) that’s on youtube is probably the best I’ve ever heard.
And finally, “Long, Long Time” by Linda Ronstadt.
Seconded
Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten is stunning too. How you can hold someone’s rapt attention and evoke such emotion with a piece that is so minimal I have no idea but somehow it works. Plus the final bell: every time I listen I try to hear when it is struck, but I never can 
I’ve mentioned her version of Fields of Gold in other threads, and it fits here too.
Also, several Leonard Cohen songs. I’ll go with Suzanne right now.
This is a good thread. I know I have more. If I can think of them before the thread dies I’ll post them.
It’s only in recent years that I’ve been able to sing “Prison Triogy” by Joan Baez all the way through without bawling. Similarly her cover of Janis Ian’s “Jesse”.
Talon Karrde writes:
> I’ve mentioned her version of Fields of Gold in other threads, and it fits here too.
I think her version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” is painfully beautiful too, since it shows the tension between longing for a better world and an underlying feeling that one might never find that better world,
It’s rather schmaltzy, but when I’m in the right mood Chris de Burgh’s “In a Country Churchyard” totally does it for me.
*In a country churchyard there’s a preacher with his people,
Gathered all around to join a man and woman.
Spring is here and turtledoves are singing from the steeple;
Bees are in the flowers growing in the graveyard,
And over the hill,
Where the river meets the mill,
A lovely girl is coming down to give her hand upon her wedding day.
[…]
Many years have fallen on that golden country morning;
Graveyard’s overgrown, the church lies in ruins,
Ivy on the walls and ravens wheeling round above me
As I made my way towards the last remaining headstone.
I fell to my knees,
Read the lines beneath the leaves,
And suddenly it seemed to me I heard the words like singing in the trees…*
Sigh.
The Pogues - And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Elvis Costello - Allison
The Flaming Lips - Do You Realize?
Lou Reed - Perfect Day (acoustic version, off the expanded Transformer album)
Absolutely.
(It was used in the West Wing when a character died.)
Although Lucky One by Alison Krauss is just beautiful, it makes me cry because I remember my beloved parents.
On it’s own, Warren Zevon’s Please Stay is pretty overdone and maudlin.
Knowing that the singer is aware he’s going to die very soon and is singing about his fear of being alone when it happens, however, turns it into something extremely sad and powerful, at least to me.
Same goes for his Keep Me in Your Heart for a While
ForumBot writes:
> The Pogues - And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Interesting. Do you consider the Pogues’ version of the song to be the best one?
The Ashokan Farewell . It breaks me up every single time I hear it. And since Himself is learning to play it, that means I’m in tears at least twice each evening.
It just wrenches.
Dante’s Prayer by Loreena McKennitt does it for me.
I also have an orchestral version of Pachelbel’s Canon in D that provokes the most profound and unexplainable feelings.
RR
Thanks, threnodyangelfire. I had never seen the video until your post prompted me to look it up.
I had never considered the song from a geriatric superhero point of view. For me it’s the doing your best in the face of indifferance theme.
I don’t think the old man is so poor. (Though I realize you didn’t mean ‘pathetic’ as I thought at first glance.) He’s doing his best to do right with a worn out body and in the end he prevails.
snif choke