songs that make you cry

Sorry to be predictable but any early-to-mid Tom Waits stuff like San Diego Serenade, On The Nickel, A Soldiers Things, etc.

And "Sometimes It Snows In April" by Prince.

And "Life Goes On" by Tupac. Deep.

Tom Waits' "Cold Cold Ground", among many others of his...now that one really does make me quite the sad-sack.

Fuck no. I never cry.

Alt ans: "Visions of Johanna"

many more, I'm sure.

Note: these songs never really made me cry but sure have a good potential of being able to do so!

And I remember when you made me feel so good
Just to be near you
Oh, you've let me down so much I fear you

'Don't be Denied' has a similar plaintive whine.

Anything by This Mortal Coil would surely make even the hardest blokes sniffle.

I've been known to shed a tear whenever I hear a Starsailor record, too. Vile.

Recently: Iron & Wine, "Bird Stealing Bread"

and lots of Neil

Someone else mentioned Duranduran so I figured, hey fuck it, why not be honest for once?

Van Der Graaf Generator - "Afterwards"
The Byrds - "The Bells of Rhymney"
The Byrds - "Goin' Back"
The Byrds - "One Hundred Years From Now"
Gram Parsons - "She"
Beach Boys - listened to it drunk one night and cried at some point, can't really recall where.
Saw Blunstone and Argent last year and cried when they did "This Will Be Our Year".

(ok maybe just a little bit to Bob Dylan - Most Of The Time)

Others:
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - Beach Boys
"This Guy's in Love With You" - Herb Alpert and Tijuana Brass
"Stand By Me" - Ben E. King
"Midnight Train to Georgia" - Gladys Knight and the Pips (I can't believe no one's said this yet)
"And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" - The Pogues
"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" - The Beatles
"I Feel For You" - Chaka Khan (out of happiness)
"Girl from the North Country" - Bob Dylan
"Reason to Believe" - Bruce Springsteen
"Whispering Pines" - The Band
"Car / Girl Stand Still" - Catherine Wheel
"Down Colorful Hill" - Red House Painters
"Medication" - Damien Jurado
"Condor Ave." - Elliot Smith
"You Don't Know What Love Is" - Billie Holiday
"But Not For Me" - Chat Baker (again, out of happiness)

I cry a lot, I guess.

The Beatles - "For No One"

The Rolling Stones - "Mother's Little Helper"

Led Zeppelin - "That's the Way"

Radiohead - "Let Down"

Slint - "Good Morning Captain"

Spice Girls - "Viva Forever" video

REM - "Green Grow the Rushes" (though I think there were a lot of extra-
musical reasons involved in the last two cases)

Joy Division - "Insight", "New Dawn Fades"

Concrete Blonde - "Joey"

"You Are My Sunshine"

The Velvet Underground - "Pale Blue Eyes" (I haven't listened to this in years largely for this reason. It might not have the same effect now.)

Morrissey - "Late Night, Maudlin Street"

Patti Smith Group - "We Three"

I have really vague general memories of weepiness during In Utero, Nirvana Unplugged, and Under the Pink but can't put my finger on any particular song or anything really at this point. I spent a good portion of that year in tears though so there was probably lots of stuff.

But what about if it's not the goal? I do not think that I would cry at something that was just plain schmaltzy. If it can make me cry, I assume there's some high level of quality involved.

Yeah that kind of stuff just gets me, regardless of their "intention".

Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
First time I listened to it I was lying in bad with the flu at 3 in the morning. It's just TOO lovely, and made the feel even worse than I did at the time, which was pretty bad!

Most of Abba Gold:
Dont' ask me why, but a few years ago I wept constantly to most of Gold. I think it was a bit too joyous for my own good . . .Waterloo and Dancing Queen being the most guilty ones, but everything else effected me far too much.

It's Too Late - The Streets
Sunday morning and this went on. I hadn't really listened to the album before, but this made me weep like a baby. "Nothing has significance/ and nothing else has relevence/ 'cause all I can see is her elagence" manages to be understated AND over-the-top at the same time, and gives me shivers even now.

Shining Light- Ash
The chorus "A full on chemical rection/ like dark divine intervention/ You are a shinig light" still does it for me - shocking I know, but what am I to do, it's still as lovely as lovely can be!

Who Knows Where the Time Goes? - Fairport Convention
It's at the start of the third verse where Sandy Denny sound REALLY English ("And I am not alone/ while my love is near me") that gets me. It's the way she pronounces "alone" I think . . . how strange am I?

I think it's the presence of unadulterated lovliness that does it. Before it came on constant rotation EVERYWHERE, Natural Blues made me feel a bit weepy. And I was watching a double bill on Sky Movies yesterday of Sound of Music and My Fair Lady . . . exactly the same thing happened. I found a tear running down my cheek during Do Ri Me, Favourite Things and Wouldn't be Lovely, among others! Oh, AND 16 going on 17, AND Street where you live etc etc etc.

How right you are. I turn into such a "chick" when I hear this song.

"Letdown" by Radiohead. Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. This song almost makes me wish I was a weepy, over-emotional teenager again. Fuck emo; this is where it's at.

"Waking Up Beside You" by Stabbing Westward. I will not entertain criticism here. This song is just too damn sad.

Another song I heard at the weekend which always brought a lump to my throat was Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'The Power of Love'. Gorgeous

Yaz(oo)'s "Only You" used to have that effect, but now it's just cute...

And whoever was right about Wheatus - it's..... poignant.

Joni Mitchell - Amelia
Dylan - Girl from the North Country

Big crybaby me.

but still i got a black heart

"Musette and Drums" -- Cocteau Twins. Why? It's not like the words mean anything. But when I first heard it, I was shattered. It can still do it occasionally, too.

"Good Woman" -- Cat Power. So fucking magnanimous and kind. And those kids, even Vedder. A mess, but a gorgeous one.

"The Partisan -- Leonard Cohen. So lonely (and I'm not talking about the police), so hollow and lost.

(god, look at my choices).

Some, I cry on the inside, in the same way I get inner goosebumps occasionally. Like these:

"Metal Heart" -- Cat Power
"Have You Forgotten" -- Red House Painters
"The Plan" -- Low
"Point of Disgust" -- Low
"In Metal" -- Low
"Atmosphere" -- Joy Division
"Decades" -- Joy Division
"Faith" -- The Cure (most of that album, actually)
"Sanvean" -- Lisa Gerrard
"Yele" -- Wyclef Jean (!)
"I Will" -- Radiohead
"Wolf at the Door" -- Radiohead
(plus most of Amnesiac and half of Kid A, really)
(lots of Dylan and Tom Waits)
(some Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, Nina Nastasia)

This could go on for a long time, so I'll stop there.

And there's a band called Sin Ropas that I've been listening to lately, and their "Syrup Coat" reduces me to tears on a regular basis.

(Somebody stop me.)

off hand.

REM's "Nightswimming". It makes me feel like a love-struck teenager on a gorgeous summer night. It makes me feel like there's something right with the world.

Serart's "Love is the Peace". This one is really all Arto Tunc Boyaciyan. I was not expecting anything nearly this gorgeous on this album. Absurdly powerful for something so sonically subdued. It took me out of my 'self' for the duration in a way I was very surprised and moved by.

antiphon by charles atlas for a number of reasons, the first time I heard them play it live, it was so heartbreakingly pretty, and so perfectly composed (they're friends), the room fell so silent, and I felt so good for them, as thought they had written the perfect lullaby. and then they let me name it.

HAhhahahahahahaha

and, many eons ago:

Night Shift - Commodores

there's more, I think.

james- out to get you
cat power- good woman
cat power- color and the kids
portishead- roads
johnny cash f/ fiona apple- bridge over troubled water
mary timony- aging astronauts
sebadoh- willing to wait
flaming lips- waiting for a superman
low- will the night
low- point of disgust
low- two step
granddady- miner at the dial-a-view/so you reach to the skies

more i cant remember

All of Blood On The Tracks.

'Slippin' by DMX

'Toilet Tisha' by Outkast (the part where her mum starts screaming).

I'm Not Crazy - Versus

oh yes.

but i'm without this song now, as I've only ever had it on mp3 and i've switched computers. can't ever seem to find it on slsk! (and the song's just called "Crazy" btw)

Radiohead- Exit Music For A Film
REM- Perfect Circle
Cody Chesnutt- Deliberation, Enough Of Nothing
Maggie's Dream- Why Do We Sigh As We Sing
Clash- Complete Control (this 'un makes me FEEL alive)
Replacements- Unsatisfied, Answering Machine
Tito & Hector- anything by these two makes me weep for humanity

And many, many more...

"No Regrets" by Tom Rush
"Little Green" by Joni Mitchell
"Wild Billy's Circus Story" by Bruce Springsteen
"Season's in the Sun" by Terry Jacks
"Is that all there is?" by Peggy Lee

BUT THE PRIZE GOES TO

"Alone again, naturally" by Gilbert O'Sullivan

Previously in tears/close to tears, to:
Roy Harper - 'When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease' (one of my favourite songs bar none; my whole being was transfixed when I saw him play this live last month... and it was followed by 'Me and My Woman', which ain't bad either! ;-))
Tom Waits - 'Innocent When You Dream'/'I'm Still Here'
Fats Waller - 'Two Sleepy People'
Rose Royce - 'You're on my mind' (esp. in the context of the film "Car Wash")
Big Star - 'Nightime'/'Take Care'...
Gilbert O'Sullivan - 'Alone Again (Naturally)' ('the only man she had ever loved had been taken...')
The Beatles - 'Julia', 'Do You Want to Know a Secret?' 'Ask Me Why' - those "Please Please Me" songs ring a nostalgic core in me; some of the first music I get into.
Abba - 'The Day Before You Came'/'Dancing Queen' - two opposite sides of melancholy... 'Dancing Queen' is partly nostalgic for me and so tearfully joyous, and the other, well, need I explain?
Debbie Reynolds - 'Tammy'
Rolf Harris - 'Two Little Boys' - years ago you understand! Though it still can move, it really affected me more as a child.
The Wayfarers - 'Whistle Down the Wind'/R. Ronalde - 'La Monastery Creek' (a pair of instrumentals on a Hallo Children Everywhere compilation... yearning, nostalgic vibraphone on the first... a chap doing the birds on the second... very personal chord these strike)
John Fahey - much of 'Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death' album, particularly "On the Sunny Side..." and "Daisy"...
Talking of old music hall songs;
Albert Chevalier - 'The Future Mrs 'Awkins' - such a beautifully alien recording to today; made possibly 100 years ago. That odd, withered voice and long outmoded London accent; all with a wonderfully odd and moving tune.
Herb Alpert/Tijuna Brass - 'This Guy's in Love With You'
The Carpenters - 'Close to You' - in the oddest of contexts, I was reduced to watering eyes by this; it was played over the credits of an averageish student film at a student film festival last year. It had been ages since I'd heard it, but well, it hit home, esp. concerning affairs in my life at the time.
Barry White - 'Never Never Gonna Give Ya Up'
The Bonzo Dog Band - 'Ready-Mades'/'Sport'/virtually all of their last album.
The Smiths - yes, 'Asleep' and 'Please Please Please...'; the second almost more so due to that sublime wash of sound that comes in near the end. 'Asleep' has that affecting musical box at the end though as well. 'William It Was Really Nothing', as it was really the main song that got me into the Smiths, along with 'This Charming Man'. It just moves me inexplicably and crucial is that backwards guitar descending into quietitude in the fade.
Isaac Hayes - 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix'
'By a Waterfall' - that whole unspeakably beautiful Busby Berkeley sequence in "Footlight Parade". Same goes for 'Over the Rainbow' and 'Singin' in the Rain'. That song that cuts through it all at the end of "Paths of Glory". The use of that wonderful ballad in "High Noon"...
Much of the 'Singing Detective' soundtrack; not just "We'll meet again" and "Lilli Marlene", but things like the deathless xylophone solo in Henry Hall's "Teddy Boys' Picnic". Potter's positioning of the music within his drama really lends incredible poignancy to them, at many points.

Whenever I hear Roy Orbison or Daniel Johnston's voices with the right songs, there's instantly pause for emotion...

Just now, felt very wistful and reflective in a sad way on hearing Jake Thackray;s "Rain on the Mountainside" - just a pastoral melancholy and his wonderfully expressive nylon-string guitar... great teary-eyed stuff.

Tim Buckley (or This Mortal Coil) - Song to the Siren
Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees
Mojave 3 - Prayer for the Paranoid
Slowdive - Catch the Breeze
Red House Painters - (lots) Katy Song, Drop, Song for a Blue Guitar, Shadows, Mistress, Sundays & Holidays, Bubble...
Depeche Mode - A Question of Lust, But Not Tonight, Somebody
The Cure - Pictures Of You
The Smiths - Asleep, Please Please Please..., Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me
Nick Drake - Pink Moon, Fly
OMD - Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans, Was it Something I Said?
Great Lake Swimmers - Moving Pictures Silent Films
The Beatles - Yesterday
Kings of Convenience - Homesick, I Don't Know What I Can Save You From
Yazoo - Only You
Harold Budd - Balthus Bemused by Color
Palestrina Masses - (a lot of it)
Trespassers William - Vapour Trail (Ride cover)
Dead Can Dance / Lisa Gerrard - (there's a few)
Split Enz - Six Months In A Leaky Boat
Peter Gabriel - Don't Give Up
Marc Almond - These My Dreams Are Yours
Iron & Whine - The Creek Drank the Cradle album
John Denver - Calypso, Annie's Song
Duran Duran - The Chauffer

Probably more but these come to mind first...

true love waits - radiohead
by your side - cocorosie
winner's blues - sonic youth
willing to wait - lou barlow (solo version from local band feel lp)
surgery i stole - devendra banhart
les & ray - le tigre
how to disappear completely - radiohead
music appreciation - the boogiemonsters

whoah, pretty heavy on the indie tip. i barely listen to this sort of stuff so maybe these are obvious picks.

Not crying, but just bitchmade. I'm a bitch these days, straight up bitch these days. I need a vacation.

My Morning Jacket - The Way That He Sings
Sebadoh - Soul and Fire

Talk Talk - April 5th
Mark Hollis - The Colour of Spring

and Spaceship Earht by DAMIEN davis

every fucking single time.

EVERY GD TIME

If only I were joking.

Badly Drawn Boy - "You Were Right, Parts 1 & 2"
Sarah McLachlan - "Adia" (yes, really)
Jeff Buckley - "Lover, You Should've Come Over"
Beach Boys - "'Til I Die", and any number of songs from Pet Sounds
REM - "Country Feedback", and any number of songs from Automatic For The People
Stevie Wonder - "Isn't She Lovely?", and several other Songs from ...The Key Of Life
The Softies - "Hello, Rain" (playing right into Rose Melberg's emo-drenched hands)

Also: I blubbered mightily, and continued with multiple replays, to Kanye West's "Celebration" the other day, upon graduating from college after eleven years of false starts and fucking around. So that was probably entirely situational.

Yes!

While we're at it, Anthony Phillips (their first guitarist) also has a score of lump-in-the-throat tunes in his solo work. Seek out: "Seven Long Years", "God If I Saw Her Now", "Collections", "Unheard Cry"...

I'm gonna have to check to see if the points when I feel myself welling up correspond to a falsetto jump. Also, boys' vs. girls' emotional response?

Something Corporate - 'Konstantine'
Iron & Wine - 'The Trapeze Swinger'
Bayside - 'Winter' (About their drummer who recently passed away)
Something Corporate - 'Globes And Maps' and 'Walking By'
Five For Fighting - 'Superman'
Coldplay - 'The Scientist' (I know for a fact that this was just because of something that happened to me personally, although the video is really sad, and it is generally a sad song)
Goo Goo Dolls - 'Iris'
Death Cab For Cutie - 'I Will Follow You Into The Dark' and 'What Sarah Said' (Especially when he sings "Love is watching someone die... So who's gonna watch you die?")
Colin Hay - 'I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You'

Kate Bush - "This Women's Work". High on the weep-o-meter - especially if you hear it while watching "She's Having a Baby".

Jane Olivor - "Song for my Father". Sweet Lord, please make it stop! :-)

Jane Siberry - "Calling All Angels". Mainly the chorus.

Sara Groves - "Fly" or "You Cannot Love Your Love", take your pick.

Yep, they all have a similar feel to them - guess they all hit the same buttons...

Dylan - You Belong to me (On Natural Born Killers soundtrack, and I'm not sure where else)
Also, Bob Dylan's Dream (On Freewheelin) is the saddest song about growing up I've ever heard

Elliot Smith - Somebody That I Used to Know

Smashing Pumpkins - Glynis (Anybody else?? From 'No Alternative' Comp)

Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel ("I can't keep track of each fallen rock..."). Also: Democracy from "The Future" (Sail on, sail on, Oh mighty ship of steel). Even if the lyrics are cynical, the melody makes me swell with some vague hope for, well, the future i guess, and whatever vestiges of purity are left of the *idea* of america.

Dinosaur Jr - Seemed like the thing to do (maybe not CRYING here, but still...)

I'll Second:
Thrasher - Neil Young
Time - Tom Waits

http://www.minorlooneytunes.com/pictures/marc021.jpg

This may be the first time anyone has ever described the Softies as "emo". But yeah, they are probably the band that most readily evokes tears from me. (For Maximum Weeping Efficiency, though, I will usually go with the title track from Winter Pageant.)

On a more bizarre note, I also have a hard time not crying when I hear Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl". And I have no idea why. It's not the band -- nothing else by them does it. It's not any association I have with the song -- I don't have any. I don't find the song sad. But there I sit, crying semi-uncontrollably. Fortunately, I do not listen to Bikini Kill on any kind of regular basis.

cover of Suede's "Trash" by Mt Goats

for some reason i can't put my finger on, "therese" by the bodines

I have cried at three different songs today....I think I just needed to cry.

Can't listen to Gavin Bryar's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me anymore for this reason. If I get to the Tom Waits bit I'm okay though.

Colony by Joy Division, particularly the line "the sons of broken homes who always meet here"

"A Lady of a Certain Age" / The Divine Comedy

"The Flesh Failures - Let the Sun Shine" in from Hair

Georgia Lee - Tom Waits
Many a Fine Lady - Townes van Zandt

• dennis wilson, carry me home and it's not too late
• iron & wine, bird stealing bread and weary memory
• richard hawley, the ocean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5srnNrICJo

Taylor Swift, "The Best Day." Twice in the past 18 months; no other song has done it even once. (Being a parent has a lot to do with it.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVdVTVR-j0Q

Somewhat obscure I know, but this one I can never get through with my eyes still dry - and I'm a guy....

"Long Nights" - Crack the Sky

Saddest. Song. Ever.

Especially since it's told from through the eyes of someone trying to cheer up his friend, who may or may not realize that given the situation it just can't be done.

"Cry" by The Sundays.
"Half Asleep" by the School of Seven Bells has been setting me off recently.

Okay so I'm watching the Arthur Russell documentary 'Wild Combination' and it's just come to the part where his parents and his partner are talking about AR on his deathbed. It then cuts to a tracking shot of some cornfields with Mimi Goese from Hugo Largo singing a cover of a song by Arthur called 'Time To Go Home Now', and I was *gone*. Talk about pushing buttons, but damn!

John Lennon - "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)," so long as I don't think of Mr. Holland's Opus

Joy Division - Atmosphere
Elliot Murphy - How's the Family
Patti Smith - The Jackson Song
Bruce Springsteen - The Last Carnival, Gypsy Biker, You're Missing [almost guaranteed every time!], Land of Hope & Dream

Godley and Creme's "Cry" was the last song that did this to me, stupid as it sounds.

Talk Talk- Time It's Time
Current 93- The Frolic
Robyn Hitchcock- Autumn Is Your Last Chance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MODq81_cDKI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5chQcTBZfw

"bright" "eyes" makes me cry, but for a different reason.

???

man, i love me some Bright Eyes. was listening to some live (& non-live) performances from I'm Wide Awake era earlier tonight on the YouTubes

(i'm not a bright eyes fan. but, obv.: de gustibus non est disputandum.)

Daniel, that's not a Bright Eyes tune

the name of the song is "Bright Eyes"

which i would've realized before i made my post about loving Bright Eyes if I had clicked "play" on Abbott's video

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH . . .

apologies! i can't listen to the video now. no headphones within easy reach, and i need to keep the sound low so i won't wake up my daughter.

It's the song Art Garfunkel did for Watership Down. When the band Bright Eyes first started getting big, it was an endless source of frustration. Me: "You mean the Art Garfunkel song?" Everyone in the entire world: "Whaaaa?"

lol. i'm not much of a simon & garfunkel fan, but garfunkel has a world-class, and emotionally rich, voice.

*And* it is accompanied by dying, bleeding rabbits...*sniff*

The Beatles, I'll Follow the Sun. Of all of the pretentious hurt but picking up the pieces carols that exist, this is one of the simplest, most direct, yet most sincere. The melody is almost as hummable as a children's song, which nicely parallels the childlike feelings of abandonment when we realize someone doesn't want us.

Even though "tomorrow may rain, but I'll follow the sun" is ostensibly a positive lyric, it doesn't seem like the narrator is completely sure that brighter days are coming. There's that nagging feeling of uncertainty in there as well.

Mush all of that together and you have a song that during a trying time in my life, had me sobbing to the point of having to pull over when I heard it on an oldies station on SIRIUS.

I guess I'm not really thinking about the thread question properly. There's no one song that always makes me cry, or even makes me cry like 10% of the time I hear it. It's more like you can get in certain moods where music/art can really intensify a thought you're dwelling on, and at that point, a song like The Trees is just devastating for some reason. Or, a few months ago, I caught some old school Russian ballet on public access tv and it was the most fucking beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life, it just tore me up on a sunny weekend morning that should have been nice. And then the next week I saw some more ballet on the same channel and thought booooooooooooooooooring

sometimes - mbv
here - pavement

Not really full-on "cry" per se, but these have all made me choke/tear up a little bit in the past year or two:

Four Tet, "Angel Echoes" (at recent live show)
MBV, "Soon" (also live)
School of Seven Bells... first new song they played live... wrote about this on the SVIIB thread, in fact.
John Lennon, "Stand By Me"
The xx, "Fantasy"
Taylor Swift, "Fearless"... "Love Story"... and "The Best Day" (echoing xhuxk on that last one)

biggie - juicy

Tom Waits, Martha
Sufjan Stevens, Jacksonville
The xx, Shelter
Rumo, Ladeira da Memória
The Beatles, Blackbird

Kate Bush, Hounds of Love-if i am fragile already, the whole album reduces me to tears

John Prine - Sam Stone

the part of juicy that makes me get something in my eye is always "sold out seats to hear biggie smalls speak" for some reason

Joanna Newsom - Jackrabbits

I cannot hear "The Mary Ellen Carter" by Stan Rogers without breaking down.

Taylor Swift, "The Best Day." Twice in the past 18 months; no other song has done it even once. (Being a parent has a lot to do with it.)

But now, as of last week, another song has: "Never Grow Up" by Taylor Swift.

Stan Rogers has quite a few songs that can do this. Songs from the film "Oh, What a Lovely War" tear me up pretty well, too. Mavis Staples can also bring this on.

In germany before the War - Randy Newman (from 'Little Criminals'

When you realise the "little golden girl" has been molested & murdered. Just heartbreaking.

Driving through North Philadelphia this morning, 'Too Hot' by Kool & the Gang." An absolutely crushing song for grownups.

I am totally serious when I say "Puff, the Magic Dragon."

You know, I realised the other day I can't even think about "Two Little Boys" by Rolf Harris without feeling prickly behind the eyes.

there are about 5 different ILX threads on this, so i wasn't sure which one to revive. good article here: http://thequietus.com/articles/14551-favourite-songs-that-make-you-cry-list

my personal pick goes to Stars of the Lid's Requiem for Dying Mothers Pt. 1. not to be too morbid but i have imagined what it would be like to die to that song or what it would sound like at a funeral so many times that whenever i hear it i immediately think of people i've lost. i sometimes have dreams where i die and then continue dreaming in the death state, and the song feels like that.

Halah by Mazzy Star. Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen. Pink Rabbits by the National, esp the line "so surprised you want to dance with me now / i was just getting used to living life without you around." As you turn to go by the 6ths esp "but youre the star if my life story / and i'm so sorry".

Reading through this thread and listening to some of it reminds me that I'm really intolerant of other people's self-pity and that lyrics are pretty balls, mostly.

It's only instrumentals that have ever moved me to tears, usually something like the last section of Swedenborgske Rom by Jaga Jazzist or the intro to Storm by GYSBE! if they hit me at the right moment.

The only piece of music that makes me choke up without fail is Movement V of 'Quartet for the End of Time' by Messiaen. I'm not even sure why.

"Vincent" by Don McLean does it every time.

"Hands to Heaven"

for the first 50 times, this song. every. damn. time.

http://danreeder.bandcamp.com/track/maybe

historically:

"this woman's work," kate bush
"gold dust," tori amos
"in california," joanna newsom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZZbBWmC8zM

"Moon is Sharp" - Grouper
"All Apologies" - Nirvana
"Raspberry Beret" - Prince
"Deacon Blues" - Steely Dan
"Widow's Walk" - Van Dyke Parks
"'Heroes'" - Bowie
"The Crying of Lot G" - Yo La Tengo
"Mary Star of the Sea" - Zwan
"Doggy" - Animal Collective
"Taste" (BBC 2009) - Animal Collective
"Penny Lane" - Beatles
"Here Comes the Sun" - Beatles
"I Want You" - Dylan
"In This Hole" - Cat Power
"For Martha" - Smashing Pumpkins
"The Workplace" - Jim O'Rourke
"Sawdust & Diamonds" - Joanna Newsom
"Brass in Pocket" - Pretenders
"Buzz Saw" - Xiu Xiu
"Stop Breathin" - Pavement

good times

young hearts run free

love sensation

good times

― languagelessness (mattresslessness), Wednesday, February 4, 2015 1:15 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jim O'Rourke or Chic?

james franco otm upthread about "as you turn to go"

Let It Go and Do You Want to Build a Snowman, without fail.

after the goldrush did it to me recently when i was in starbucks

Landslide, pretty much without fail

yep, that fucking "children get older I'm getting older too" line

so overplayed though. i don't rank it with her best so that too.

yeah - just hits a weird memory button for me. I'll be driving the car with kids in the backseat and start crying to "landslide", remembering my mother driving the car with kids in the backseat crying to "landslide".

"Storms" and "Beautiful Child" almost every time. And "Silver Springs" too.

i have a hard time with John Mayer's "I Don't Trust Myself with Loving You" cos I first heard it on behalf of my then girlfriend and it perfectly encapsulated why that relationship never worked. yet it also digs up a series of memories of a period of time when it was actually perfect which is probably why the song fucks with me so much.

"Landslide" is a good one.

any choral rendition of "May the Road Rise to Meet You" makes me an instant puddle too.

billy bragg - "tank park salute"

TVZ: Tecumseh Valley, Lover's Lullaby, Rex's Blues, You Are Not Needed Now, sometimes Pancho and Lefty

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" tho that's an obv voice

perhaps I should stop sobbing to music so much

*choice

Also: I blubbered mightily, and continued with multiple replays, to Kanye West's "Celebration" the other day, upon graduating from college after eleven years of false starts and fucking around. So that was probably entirely situational.

― Deric W. Haircare (Deric W. Haircare), Sunday, May 7, 2006 7:22 AM (8 years ago)

o man, Deric W. Haircare. i miss having that name around. always used to brighten my day. Deric W. Haircare. congratulations, man.

don't really give a shit about "celebration" tho.

I'm still around, contendo. Belated thanks for the super belated congrats.

Bowie's "Five Years" is doing this to me every. freaking. time I listen to it these days.

I've probably mentioned this before, but Folkal Point's cover of 'Sweet Sir Galahad' has this effect on me. oddly, Joan Baez's original doesn't move me nearly as much, even though she wrote it about her own sister (Mimi Fariña) after the death of her husband.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an6EoevSSIs

others that have done this to me: EBTG's 'The Night I Heard Caruso Sing' and (inexplicably) The Sundays' 'My Finest Hour'

"Love will leaf you back"

*leave

sure you don't mean 'lead'?

God I'm out of it today. Yes....

Cos what I wrote doesn't make sense

Certain classic rock songs that I've heard thousands of times now make me cry. Most recently, 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' Not long ago, 'You Can't Always Get What You Want,' of all things
'

bicep - glue

Hell yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ZxRs45tTg

may as well post it. great UK footage

It great, and makes me sob every time.

Melancholy bastard, me

semimental or sentimental

Sentimental, unashamedly. Windmill massive, forlorn warehouse raves near the moors around Hebden Bridge at bonkers-o'clock. This tune like no other is an invocation.

cheers mate

cheers m8 <3

O Superman

Everything I Own - Bread

Spinning Away by John Cale and Brian Eno, currently. Not entirely sure why, but the 'I have no idea exactly what I've drawn' line breaks me up. Maybe it's a distant evocation of summer?

i'll read you a story by colleen

forget about by sibylle baier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIU_XAgDlnE

Shut up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tD6FayGPyw

I said shut up, and also leave me alone. God.

'Fantastic Voyage' in particular feels so goddamn resonant right now. Like it just about wrecks me every time I hear it these days. Even just thinking about it. Ugh, shut UP.

^^Maybe remedy with "It's No Game (No. 1)"

Oh, I do, believe me.

Television Personalities - If I Could Write Poetry

I feel a bit sad just thinking about it

Was just trying to think if there are any songs that actually make me cry (as opposed to just making me very sad), and realized that the only one I could think of was "Begin Again" by Taylor Swift. Which is odd because I'm not really a Taylor Swift fan at all. But that chorus, "on a Wednesday, in a cafe" really gets to me, something about the juxtaposition of the ordinary and mundane with this unpredictable moment of coming back to life.

Mine would be "Dirty Boulevard" by Lou Reed and "The Dutchman" by Michael Smith.

Shipbuilding is pretty gut-wrenching

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b01r0g4h

Just realized there's at least one other song on my list: Neko Case's "Thrice All American," the last verse in particular. There are much sadder songs that don't make me cry, but this one just hits the right mental nerve somehow.

Well I don't make it home much, I sadly neglect you
But that's how you like it, away from the world.
God bless California, make way for the Wal-Mart
I hope they don't find you, Tacoma.

O Superman, so totally OTM

Kinks, "Some Mother's Son" made me well up yesterday.

The Unthanks' "Fareweel Regality" gets me every fucking time.

Fairytale of New York. Especially if I'm whiskey'd up.

Once, driving home from a get-together with friends, "Brandy" came on the radio. Pushed some buttons and I got really worked up, blinky-eyed and biting my lip. I can't say what it was exactly and while I still like the song it has never moved me that much again.

But Fairytale of New York gets to me on the regular. The bit where they say "you took my dreams from me...." So busted, so sad, so good.

i went to see an interview with julie gold at the library, and geez, the story she told about writing "from a distance," then her performance, made me well up. it would make anybody well up. maybe start at around 24 minutes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPBDsu1BAzc

Still hasn't put this on an album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrodis8sX-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tLbSIwPqu0

The only piece of music that makes me choke up without fail is Movement V of 'Quartet for the End of Time' by Messiaen.
― ultros ultros-ghali, Wednesday, March 12, 2014

OTM. This was the first thing that came to my mind. And I'm nodding furiously at "Goin' Back", "This Guy's In Love With You" and "Landslide" etc, too. (Pretty much any recordings.) I feel like I could list a zillion things -- music with at least some potential to make me weep is the only music I can be bothered with a lot of the time!

[XP: oh god, that entire album!]

I know I have posted it on a similar thread, but my God, "Alicia Ross" by Kathleen Edwards...

The Unthanks' "Fareweel Regality" gets me every fucking time.

Fareweel Regality destroys me but the live version of King of Rome is somehow even more moving.

Here's The Tender Coming too, oh my stars...

'Gan To The Kye' always gets me

And of course, 'Mount The Air' ;_;

"The Court of the Crimson King" smashes me every time I hear it. The grandiosity of the theme always makes my eyes wet...

"Across the Universe" is another one. Despite its prevalence.

Actually 'Awaken' by Yes makes me well up, the 'workings of man' section, the second time around especially after which the choirs kick in and it all gets very rapturous.

Ironically, the best version is not by Yes but by Todmobile with Anderson on vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGGieKxqGSw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8USe97jWW4
Or even this version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns69UOy7eJs

The Todmorden/Anderson performance of Awaken is like the pinnacle of prog or something, yeah

'Together We Are Beautiful' gives me the pinpricks. It's supposed to be this super-romantic song but there's an ever-so-slightly minor twinge in it that sets me off, as though Fern Kinney is 'protesting too much' about how perfectly in love they are. It brings the bittersweet notion that while everything smells like roses on the surface, the possibility of things falling apart at some future point is very real and the singer is naively in denial about it..

xxxp yeah everyone hates on Across The Universe but it fills me with melancholy

Not a song and a complete cliché, to boot, but the fourth and final movement of Mahler's 9th Symphony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkChdHBuoiQ&t=3237s

YT time stamps are not ILX-friendly, alas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkChdHBuoiQ

(It starts around 53:57.)

Half Asleep by School of Seven Bells, gets me by the second line. Cannot explain it, I've never analysed the lyrics to see if *omg it me* and I have no great love for anything else by them.

Richard Dawson - Jogging. There's a precise part of that song where the song starts building and he sings 'There's no such thing as a quick fix'.
It's the double-meaning behind that line: He can't fix his personal demons just by jogging, but at the same time there's no quick fix for the problems faced in the world

why did i put 'do you remember walter' on just now ffs

oh, because it's one of the best songs ever written? sure, but

Schubert - Nacht und Traume (probably without vocals)
June Tabor - And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Nick Drake - All My Trials
Daniel Johnston - I Had A Dream
Epic Soundtracks - Sad Song
Richard And Linda Thompson - For Shame Of Doing Wrong

A recent recording of Alfred Schnittke's 3rd Violin Concerto, with Vadim Gluzman, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and James Gaffigan, prompted me to revisit the piece for the first time in years. I can't bear to listen to it very often because of the excruciating affect it inflicts. The music itself is in pain, each note played a pure exposure of nerves, from the tremolo-laden violin solo that kicks off the work in medias res to the final chorale-like 'Andante', which achieves release – as always in Schnittke – through exhaustion and extinction.

This is a different recording, featuring the concerto's dedicatee, Oleg Kagan, a mere year before his death from cancer, further exacerbating the piece's obvious pathos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhwItJPUz6A

So yeah, not a song, but it tears me up every time.

That Paul Buchanan song about the cars in the garden always gets to me.

Flaming Lips - Race for the Prize

The ”I miss my grandmother” part at the end of Dry Cleaning’s “Goodnight”.

Oh, and Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem

Thanks Pom, I’ve been on a big Schnittke jag the last year. I also have kind of a thing for communist era color tv footage so it scratches two itches.

My pleasure – and apologies for the risk of weeping involved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt1C00e__5c

St Petersburg Chamber Choir, Nikolai Korniev - аллилуйя. се жених грядет (alleluia. behold, the bridegroom) (Anon)

from
Sacred Russian Choral Music

https://img.discogs.com/vpmFoXzYFzoE4xJyVJ8o9hkhlgw=/fit-in/600x593/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-14196628-1569681018-5180.jpeg.jpg

"Temptation" (the New Order one) pierces my armour far too often

I very rarely hear a new song that makes me cry. I think the last one might have been "Snow is Falling in Manhattan" by Purple Mountains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5V8DB_D-BU

Pedro Soler & Gaspar Claus "Encuentro en Brooklyn" ^^^