There’s nothing like a piece of music to provoke a rush of emotion and a tearful response. Scientists will tell us that it’s linked to the release of dopamine, a sense of awe, or a triggering of strong memories and connection to past experiences. In my case it can be all of the above, and there’s nothing like a wailing guitar solo to bring it on. The last time I cried at a song was on hearing Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Farewell Party’ from The Philadelphia Sessions on Tracks II (see the Favourites of 2025 thread). Springsteen has form here. ‘I Wish I Were Blind’, ‘Long Walk Home’, ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’, ‘Downbound Train’, ‘Stray Bullet’ and many others have all been known to reduce me to a blubbering wreck for a variety of reasons. In his tenderer moments Bruce is a past master at tugging at the heartstrings with both music and lyrics. ‘Farewell Party’ scores on both counts in a completely irrational way.
Women’s voices often do the trick. Far too many to mention, but try listening to Margo Cilker’s ‘Wine in the World’ without feeling something pricking the back of your eyelids. But it’s those wailing guitar solos that get me every time. It’s been played to death and has become so unfashionable that it’s fashionable again, but Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar solo during ‘Go Your Own Way’ builds to a crescendo of noise that catches me unawares time after time, even when I steel myself not to let it happen. (Live versions on The Dance and Live in Boston especially). It’s only a song after all.
So come on, you’re amongst friends. Which songs have the power to reduce you to a blubbering wreck, and why? Time to unburden yourself.
I rarely get emotional for any song/movie/book etc, but saying that I was watching the Live Aid 40th programs the other day and the video soundtracked to The Cars / Drive that Bowie introduced had me.
Since Live Aid 40 years ago, I still cannot listen to that song without the images of the video coming to mind. It was that powerful (and it was a song that I really liked before Live Aid).
We had the Live Aid documentary on iPlayer the other night, while I was doing the ironing. I burst into tears when I heard Michael Buerk say “Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plane outside Korem…”
I didn’t even need to look at the telly, or the Cars music, to set me off.
I haven’t seen that new report for over 40 years, but it is still there in the back of my mind.
For me, it’s when he says “…a biblical famine, now, in the 20th century”. So powerful and resonant.
I listened to the the History of Rock in 500 Songs episode on Fairport. In the second episode he focuses mainly on RT and Sandy. I’ve known her story for years of course, but it always gets to me. Friday night, late on in the garden with most of a bottle of rosé gone, played “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”.
Dusty, our garden.
The tribute to Sandy at Cropredy one year of Flowers of the Forest played on bagpipes got me in tears.
A piper had played ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ at Sandy’s funeral.
I was at the 30th anniversary and they played a tape of Sandy “which we’re pretty sure none of you will have heard before”. It was heartbreakingly lovely, acapella IIRC, and most of the field were in flood.
The Flowers of the Forest on the pipes will do it for me, irrespective of any connection with Sandy Denny. A lone piper at Ypres, for example…
The ceilidh scene from Local Hero, where the band play Mist Covered Mountains of Home as a waltz, will also do it. That’s a more romantic association – I checked it on YouTube to ensure I got the title correct, played it, and I’m weeping as I type – it’s been a bad day, mind.
TMI, I think.
I shed a tear in the Queen’s funeral when the piper started up, and I’m no monarchist. And again watching The Crown when she agreed which tune she wanted with her piper.
I lasted exactly 44 seconds watching this. So back to the OP, it’s this one.
Ah Fitter, I love both of those tunes.
Flowers of The Forest was played when I was about to walk down the aisle with my daughter at her recent wedding – emotional.
Mist Covered Mountains is beautiful.
I hope today is a better day, fits.
Cheers, Tiggs
Lots of music makes me cry, often unexpectedly – sometimes a chord change, sometimes a swell of strings and sometimes a lyric.
Last one I can recall was when I was driving home from work recently and Neil’s ‘Natural Beauty’ was playing and the lines
I heard a perfect echo die
Into a anomynous wall of digital sound
Somewhere deep inside of my soul
set me off for some reason. Don’t know why…
Another one might be Mick Hanley’s song for his parents who had died a year before – before his first child was born and before he had some chart success in the US with Hal Ketchum’s cover of ‘Past The Point Of Rescue’
I feel I Should be calling You
It’s one whole year now since you left
And still the feeling of bereft
Hits me hard out of the blue
And I feel I should be calling you
With all this good news on my plate
Seems it came a year too late
It brought a smile surprised me too
And i feel i should be calling you.
The baby came and i was there
She has all her limbs but not a hair
Excuse me while i doff my hat
But i think i had a hand in that
On mondays she’s got her mother’s eyes
On tuesdays it’s a compromise
On wednesdays she’s like you know who
And i feel i should be calling you.
Bridge
I feel i should be calling you, sometimes the telephone is in my hand
Then i realise anew that there’s no-one there at all, no footstep in the hall
It’s a silence that’s so hard to understand
The song went racing up the charts
Now that would have gladdened both your hearts
Up the long can, garvey’s range
Something concrete for a change
So we threw a party and we hit the juice
You know the form the least excuse
It’s sitting now at number two
And i feel i should be calling you.
I meet your friends on mulgrave street
They move along on weary feet
They knew you so they know me too
And i feel i should be calling you.
Rodney Crowell
God I’m Missing You
I think quietly reflective is about as much reaction as a song will ever get from me, and that’s my usual state anyway. Sentimentality in films though … the end of Paddington 2 wrecks me every time.
Great idea for a thread @Boneshaker
The last I can remember is an acoustic version of Running/Planning by CMAT that she did on the Adam Buxton podcast. Not sure why it got me, but it really landed that day!
The one that gets me every time is Kilkelly by The Clancy Brothers. Never fails!
I’m fast becoming a huge fan of CMAT. She has a way of being disarmingly honest about herself, which rings true for me and I guess a lot of others. This song gets me because she obviously does mean it, and sincerity in people can really set me off with crying.
Plus the whole thing about the line under the news as a way of communicating her anxiety… I love that.
Wholly agree with this – i am fast becoming a fan too & it is this sincerity (with a sly wink on the side) which is landing so well.
Three come to mind :
‘Now and Then’ by The Beatles
‘Northern Sky’ by Nick Drake
‘Where Are We Now’ by David Bowie
And while it means slightly more to my wife than me, Twang’s choice of ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’ is another one. We had to pull over in the car the other day when it came on.
Now and Then is a good choice. The video does it for me too.
Someone above said chord changes, and that is so true. Or just a specific note, even.
Here is a typical example. At 4.37 there is a key change, and what was, until then, a pleasant enough jig becomes positively transcendental.
Most of my examples are similarly instrumental and usually Scottish. Bagpipes are good at triggering, as are other pipes, uillean, Northumbrian and small.
Vocally it tends to be specific singers: Sandy Denny, Kate Ruby, Nanci Griffith, Dave Gahan (in Soulsavers mode) for 4.
I think the last person to raise a tear was live, but I forget who or when, as it isn’t at all unusual.
There’s a few…Roberta Flack singing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” Paul Simon’s “Father And Daughter,” (came out when my own daughter was young and she used to smile and give me a hug when it came on) Paul Weller’s “Why Walk When You Can Run” ( ditto same reasons re my daughter but for my son who was also very young) and The Beautiful South’s “Prettiest Eyes.” Mainly for the Mrs and the passing of time generally, that one.
Am I ashamed or embarrassed at any of these? Nah not in the slightest…I have turned into a right sentimental old fool since the kids came along.
Me too. In fact, I think I distrust anyone who doesn’t become a sentimental old fool after becoming a parent. Pretty much anything can set me off. I can’t listen to “Slipping Through My Fingers” by ABBA in public.
Likewise – see below! That song is a killer.
Put me down for Father & Daughter as well.
Yes! I was telling a childless friend that I was unable to finish a rerun of the Jamie Bulger story in the paper because I got so upset by it. She got quite cross and said why do people with kids think they have some sort of heightened awareness on these things? I can only say pre-kids when it happened I was horrified but somewhat detached – after, I barely slept that night.
Jesus yes, I’d forgotten that one. I don’t really even do Abba but that one always sets me off.
Last night, funnily enough, at Wilton’s Music Hall. Basil Brush finished with a slow and very sentimental old time ballad ( I don’t know the title) . An elegy to a time passed in every respect.
Not his old classic “I’ve got tears in my ears from lying on my back while I cry over you…”
I only discovered recently that it’s a real song. I assumed he’d made it up.
He has an extensive repertoire of covers, including this, captured ( not by me, I was at the front) earlier this week.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1B78TV33bB/
Not cry, but sigh away a heavy lump in the throat.
‘Watch Me Gone’ by Mark Knopfler. A lyric about a young man determined to leave and make something of himself. It brought to mind how I felt, when I packed a bag and left home with hardly a bean. My God, the blind innocence and daftness of young men. How young I was.
‘Watch me go, babe. Watch me gone…’
God, how long have you got.
Most recently? My youngest is a few days away from finishing Primary School and last night was his school play. As is tradition at the school, and I’m sure many others, the performance ended with a rendition of the song “Six” from the musical of the same name, with the lyrics adapted for the occasion.
Watching him and his mates, most of whom have half lived in our house these last few years, singing “we’re year six for five more minutes” I have to admit that I just absolutely went. They’ll still be kids a while longer, but we’re coming to the end of a chapter, and it’s a chapter I’ve loved. Five more minutes – oof.
Beyond that, there are about a million songs that make me cry, and about a million different reasons for the tears.
There’s the crescendo in Queen’s Under Pressure (“give love, give love, give love”), which makes me think of John Cusack’s hitman in the immortal Grosse Point Blank, staring at the baby at his high school reunion, the penny dropping as to what life’s actually all about. Wondering how you get from there to here.
There’s King Of Rome, which prompts tears of gratitude at whatever good fortune I’ve had in my life.
There’s The Cure’s Alone, which sets me off because it makes me think about ageing and loss, and that brick wall we’re all inexorably headed towards.
There’s Slipping Through My Fingers by ABBA, which is so obvious in its manipulation, but which I find it physically difficult to listen to because it puts its finger so squarely on the seemingly endless loss that is part and parcel of raising a child.
Winter by Tori Amos, which provides the teenage corollary to the above, the same tale told from the perspective of the kid who’s already slipped between the fingers.
Nightswimming by REM, which captures so perfectly that quality of youthfulness – that quality we need to lose to realise we ever had it at all.
The River, by Bruce Springsteen, which tells the story of teen pregnancy so beautifully, and brings back all sorts of feelings and memories I’d probably be better off forgetting.
This Woman’s Work, by Kate Bush, which starts out with that beautiful, crystalline coo of sadness and builds to a great cathartic crescendo, and which in between is the sound of every private, tearful moment you’ll ever have.
Goodbye England (Covered In Snow) by Laura Marling, which reminds me of being stood at the back door of my parents’ house one Christmas evening, holding my eldest as a baby and watching the snow fall in the darkness, the rest of the house fast asleep. The sheer beauty of that great lost moment.
Rise To Me by The Decemberists, that tragic middle verse, which makes me think of my best mate and his profoundly autistic son, and of all the quiet struggle that has entailed.
Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, because I remember holding my kids as babies and singing it to them.
Philadelphia by Neil Young, which I can’t listen to very often because it still upsets me too much to do so.
The Night We Met by Lord Huron, because god what a sad little song about lost love that is.
There are about a million others. Songs make me cry all the time; usually because songs do such a wonderful, bittersweet job of marking out the passage of time.
This Woman’s Work, OMG, yes. In conjunction with the childbirth scene in “She’s Having A Baby”.
Grab some tissues…….
The River could easily have been on my list of Springsteen tearjerkers, but I thought it was getting a bit long.
If I might add a couple – Ryan Adams’s ‘The Shadowlands’ because it is linked to the difficult end of a relationship, Emmylou Harris’s ‘Bang the Drum Slowly’ because it came out at the time my Dad died, and ‘Goin’ Back’ featuring Jakob Dylan and Beck from the Echo in the Canyon soundtrack because it’s such a bloody gloriously sad musing on the passing of time.
There are just so many.
End Of The World Party by The Dawn Chorus. I think it’s Paul’s trumpet that starts me going.
If they play this at Saturday night’s reunion gig, I’ll be gone for. Mind you, half their set will likely set me off…
I can remember exactly, though it’s a few years ago now. I got the phone call telling me my mother had died. I sat for a while alone in the house, trying to get drunk on whisky, listening to songs that were sad or that we’d a talked about or just listened to together. I think I was willing myself to cry, just to start “the grieving process” off properly (although Alzheimers had given us all a running start on that).
Eventually “Closing Time” by Tom Waits did the trick, and it was weird because it had no real associations for me before that. I don’t go back to listen to it willingly now.
Thank you @Boneshaker for starting this thread and thanks everyone else for allowing me the chance to share that.
I’ve just remembered that I’ve been hit more recently actually. “The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash” by LYR hit me hard when I first heard it, and will no doubt trigger me for same reasons as above every time I hear it.
It was about a week after my mother had died, I was on my way home in the car on my own cleaning out her small flat in Dublin. The car radio was on and a song came on that I had never heard up to that point, so it had no association for me whatsoever. It was ‘Southern Sun’ by Australian band Boy And Bear. Something about the transition from verse to chorus, when the slide guitar lifts the vocals up brought out all the emotion that had been held in check for the previous week, and I had to pull over for ten minutes. I still like to listen to that song every so often…
Most recently the thread on Bonnie Raitt live prompted me to play this, pricking of the eyes starts more or less with the first note. In fact it’s one of those songs – Cloudbusting another – where just thinking about it prompts eye pricking.
I agree that women’s voices (for men) can get the waterworks going perhaps more easily. Is it true the other way round? On male voices, Springsteen has at his best the same ability as in this epic: hot rod racing never sounded so sad:
See also: The Price You Pay and particularly One Step Up. Sad Bruce is so much better than Shouty Bruce.
Neil Tennant also can reach out and pull a few heartstrings – as on Rent, It’s Alright and perhaps the PSB’s best ever song, Being Boring. Even a late period track like Pop Kids is pretty affecting. No-one does the passage of time and regret as well as he does.
Absolutely. “Your Funny Uncle” springs to mind
I was sitting next to my dad in his house a few years ago, listening to one of my playlist’s while he was watching the horse racing. Tragedy by Thomas Wayne came on and half way through the song I looked at my dad and he’d fallen asleep. The lyric “you’ve gone from me” and “won’t come back” made me feel uneasy. I tapped his arm and he woke up and smiled at me before falling asleep again. He died two years ago and I play the song when I’m in a meloncholy mood. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye.
A moving song isn’t necessarily my favourite song. These Are The Days Of Our Lives by Queen and Happy New Year by Abba really bring out the emotions, more so with passing of time. Some songs seem to get better in that way. Others mean less.
My tear ducts are triggered by just about anything, many times every day. I’m just as often triggered by happy things as by sad, because those will set off my “Oh no; it won’t last forever-melancholia”, apparently!
Reading, watching even the dumbest show or film, listening to music (male or female, or even a bird if the moment’s right – or an instrumental – I’m not fussy), talking about certain things, and thinking is enough if I happen to think of a trigger subject (or if I happen to think about one of those things I read, watched, heard or talked about).
I don’t have to like the thing that triggers me either. A bad song will make me bawl as much as a favourite one, if the words or the notes or the memories are there. I’m the target customer for those big boxes of tissues, which I always have a couple of at home and buy every week.
So in the last couple of days, adding tracks to a Spotify playlist for my dad’s memorial service has been challenging – but actually not much worse than a normal day for me!
(Writing the poem for said service however…that left me severely dehydrated…)
It feels pointless to try to give specific examples, sometimes it’s just one word that does it for me, and explaining why that word in that particular song is a trigger would take too long – and the songs are too many to mention. Sometimes I’m laughing and crying at the same time, because I can see how absurd it is that I’m crying to a certain song (and perhaps dancing to it at the same time).
As a Scotsman it’s Flower of Scotland at Murrayfield when the pipes go silent at the end of the first verse and 68000 sing the second verse unaccompanied
Also the Italian rugby team singing their national anthem.
And the South African anthem
The English national anthem makes me weep in an entirely different way.
The South African is surely up on the podium with France and (sadly) Russia for the top 3 national anthems.
England doesn’t have a national anthem. God Save The King is the UK’s national anthem. When England win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, Jerusalem is played. I wish they would play this for the football, rugby and cricket teams. It would be a vast improvement on the dirge that is GSTK.
Sorry but as a proud Welshman I don’t believe any other nation’s people sing their anthem with quite the same fevour as we do. This video is from some time ago now and we are floundering as a rugby team at the moment but you can bet that despite our problems on the pitch Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau is never sung with less passion.
Yes it invariably makes me well up. In a good way.
Of course – my apologies. I should definitely have included the Welsh Anthem
I’ve been lucky enough to visit the Principality and the hairs were well and truly standing on end.
No need to apologise. The language may be a barrier for some but the heartfelt passion tends to easily push that to one side.
Hey we won our last game! Not going to argue with you about the power and emotion of our anthem.
The Irish have a fair crack.
‘I Love You Because’ by Jim Reeves. My Dad used to sing it to my Mum to make her laugh. I bought it on a compilation cd and ended up in tears, which I never expected. It brought back some lovely memories, but I haven’t played it since.
Well, that made me smile. It also made me think of the Half Man Half Biscuit song “I Love You Because You Look Like Jim Reeves”.
I love HMHB and did chuckle to myself when I first heard that one.
Also on the sporting front, Hibs fans singing Sunshine on Leith after they won the 2016 Cup Final at Hampden park gets me every time I watch it (and I’m not a Hibs fan) . You can see it on YouTube.
Oh god, yes!
I have a particular angle on this. When I am learning a song, I will often get to a line that makes my voice crack; I well up rather than flood with tears, but it’s visible. I have to keep practising the song until I can get safely through that line. But the point is, I learn that this line, this idea, is the nub of the song, around which all else revolves. It means I’ve connected with it and it will be worth singing.
As I say, there’s usually one line. There might be an obvious reason, but not always. Ever the geographer, I get triggered by placenames (Hello, The Slow Train!) or a longing for place. When it came to learning the twenty-eight lines of Ewan MacColl’s The Joy of Living, there were twenty-one lines I had to work through the blubbing, but boy was it worth it, and my audience has also told me that.
But there’s a very clear answer to the question in the OP. I keep meaning to get round to post about this. I didn’t want it to end up marking an anniversary, but that is fast approaching, on Monday. Many of you will recall my post last July after someone jumped in front of my train. So, there I was a couple of week’s later at Cambridge Folk Festival, with @Retropath at my side watching Karine Polwart. Well, she certainly has a way with a lyric. She started a new song and I knew straight away exactly what it was all about (for me, at least) long before she got to the line ‘Did you hear the brakes sing as you stepped on the line?’ I turned to Retro at the end and announced ‘Well, I’m going to have to learn that one, aren’t I?’ So I did, and finally got to sing it at the club a couple of weeks back. No welling up in performance, but it can still catch me out when I practice on my own.
In a cold sweat just remembering….
No song has ever made mre cry.
Life events have. My brother-in-law died at 58 in a motorcycle accident that was not his fault. and the other motorcyclist was over the drink drive limit. I cried with my sister then.
I will turn sixty next month but both my parents, especially my mother, are in good health both ahed 86.
No idea when such a song will come along for me.
I never shared music with my oarents as they were never interested init.
A Little Bit of Everything by Dawes. Every time.
And I can’t imagine anyone getting through this without a bit of a wobble.
What a lovely thread. There really are so many that set me off. Billy Bragg Tank Park salute always reminds me of my dad. Kristy Macoll SoHo square for no particular reason other than it is lovely and Catch by the Cure. Because of its wistful melancholy.
What really gets me every time is however not a song but a piece of classical music so I hope you will indulge me.
My mum used the first payment from her student grant (teacher training) to buy me a clarinet because she wanted me to have the chance to play a musical instrument, something she never did. I took it up and loved it and have played ever since.
A few years ago I got the chance to play 1st clarinet in Rachmaninov’s second symphony and both my parents came to hear. It was one of the highlights of my life.
Roll on to 2020 and sadly my dad went into a nursing home, contacted Covid and died. As was the way then there was no funeral but I had a recording of me playing the solo in the second movement and that was played in an empty crematorium as he disappeared from the world.
I can guarantee that every time I hear the first bars I dissolve. I do also feel incredibly connected to my dad though and for that I am eternally grateful.
Lovely post. SH. This forum is such a good place.
Oh my goodness, yes, Tank Park Salute, my poor old Dad is currently very unwell in hospital and hearing that song will just break me.
Literally just back in from watching/hearing/experiencing a weeper: Ross Wilson (Blue Rose Code) singing the song, Sadie, about his mother. She was a heroin addict and their relationship wasn’t great, but he sings it with such infectious empathy, it becomes a contagious blubfest. Solo, no band, it was even more poignant.
There’s some symmetry here. His set at Cambridge last year, before I’d even got to Karine at Sidmouth, and this song, was the first musical thing that hit me after the suicide.
Possibly not the intention of the OP, but it was this, just the other day. Self-taught lad from Liverpool, never had a piano lesson in his life. Not a dry eye in the house.
His own composition too.
I’m predictable if nothing else and by the time we get to the line “But what can I say. Rules must be obeyed” I’m blarting like a baby.
Today on a plane. Whispering Love by Beth Gibbons. Devastatingly good
The Eidelweiss scene in the Sound of Music. Oh boy.
CARNAGE by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis – I used to sing it to my mother when I used to push her around Lennoxtown pond in her wheelchair.
“And it’s only love
With a little bit of rain
And I hope to see you again”
Ah, I can visualise this. That’s both poignant and lovely.
Poor woman couldn’t escape my singing.
I confess that I am an emotional cove. I am easily moved to tears and have often found myself caught out at inappropriate times and places. Taking that into account the list of what doesn’t turn me into a wet eyed snot factory would be shorter. I weep when reading or looking at paintings. I weep when watching the tv. I’ve wept in cinemas. I’ve wept at concerts. I’ve wept on beaches and atop high places. I’ve even wept whilst sitting in a tree on one memorable occasion. However the one piece of music that is nailed on guaranteed to open the floodgates isn’t a song it’s an entire album. Joni Mitchell’s Blue. It’s gets me Every. Single. Time. It always has. I have no explanation for it. It’s not particularly associated with a particular person or event in my life but from the opening bars to the last note I’m fit for fuc* all.
Oh yes. Tracey Thorn does a lovely version of River on her Christmas album which always gets me.
River and Little Green get me every time.
Oh “Little Green” – me too.
I’ve seen the legend that is Simple Kid perform this twice over the last few years. It’s got me in the tear ducts both times. He’s very good live.
The scene in Casablanca where the orchestra plays ‘La Marseillaise’ to drown out the Nazis and their drinking song. Always gets me because ‘La Marseillaise’ is so stirring. Much more so than our dirge-like National Anthem.
Ah, the Cantona song. Formidable!
This is a great thread. Crying is good for the soul.
I’ve got another one: The Power of Love by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. A truly beautiful song about hanging on to love in the face of loss – a gorgeous, syrupy rage against the dying of the light.
For years it did absolutely nothing for me; it’s so ubiquitous that you can’t really hear it properly. And then one day I did hear it properly, and now it chokes me up every single time.
Fabulous song – especially the Blank & Jones reconstruction that has 5 minutes of piano / orchestra as an opening….
Remember this is a reconstruction – they were given the master tapes, so all these elements are in the original recording.
Well, I cried during the opening instrumental 😭
That is brilliant and I’d never heard it before; thanks for sharing.
The whole album is superb. If you need “help” with a copy, just ping me.
I absolutely love this! I have been trying to find a copy but have so far been successful. Could you offer me any “help”?
PM sent
My choices are usually:
Genesis – Jorma Kaukonen
Something Like You – Michael Head and the Strands
It’s Over – Aimee Mann
So Many Roads (Live at Soldier Field) – Grateful Dead
Although many songs make me quite emotional because of an association with a particular memory they rarely make me actually cry.
What does make me cry however, much to the amusement of my wife and kids, is when a song (or a bit of a song) is simply so fantastically good.
Some that spring to mind – Easter Theatre by XTC – (which nobody in my family or friend group would have ever heard); the opening drum beat to Superstition (although familiarity has blunted this effect somewhat); Ernie Isley’s guitar entry on “That Lady”; “Whole of the Moon” particularly “came like a comet” bit – and the key “gear change” in “Going Underground”.
A blubbing echo over here, whenever you are listening to Easter Theatre.
Easter Theatre is a truly fabulous emotional song, as are Harvest Festival and I Can’t Own Her, also from Apple Venus. God what an album…
If I hear I’m Alive, by the Hooters, the room gets a bit dusty. Its simple message of being absolutely “in the moment” and being grateful for that, wrapped in a lovely little tune. It’s hugely uplifting and emotional. They invariably open with it at their gigs, and it’s perfect.
I saw Tim Minchin in Sheffield last night and White Wine in the Sun, popular though it is, does similar. Again, a simple message of love and family. As I can’t see my Dad anymore, it hits there especially.
I once saw Kate Rusby play My Young Man as an encore, just her and a brass quartet. You could’ve heard a pin drop, and I was (unexpectedly) in floods.
Was just about to post this very song!! (The Kate Rusty one)
Richard Hawley – Last Orders. It’s an instrumental that closes Coles Corner.
Rainbirds at the end of Swordfishtrombones has a similar effect.
I tried to tell the story of “Big Joe and Phantom 309” the other day and couldn’t get through it. Wine was involved.
This cuts to the quick in a way that the original just doesn’t – it exposes all the vulnerability and loneliness in the lyrics. It aches with sadness.
So much music makes me cry these days – in fact pretty much anything sad or that strikes a nostalgic chord will set me off. The song that comes to immediately to mind today is Tom Waits Kentucky Avenue – which has done the trick ever since I bought the album back in the late 70s. The combination of the beautiful strings against the growling voice; the poetic lyric and the devastating twist at the end. It’s a killer
Ah yes Tom. Christmas Card from a Hooker gets me every time – that last verse. The track Blue Valentine accompanied some angst BITD -“the tattooed broken promise I have to hide beneath my sleeve”. “Soldier’s things”. “Nobody”.
Billy Bragg – Good Days and Bad Days.
Think it caught me at just the wrong moment
In reference to ABBA: the first broadcast of their ‘comeback’ song I Still Have Faith In You, when Anni-Frid sings those initial lines in her newly age-worn and gloriously tender lower register…believe me, dear reader, I was in absolute bits.
Difficult to find a song that doesn’t make me cry these days.
Loving this thread and it reminded me somewhat of this song from Arab Strap
No Man Is Poor Who Has Friends, at Saturday night’s The Dawn Chorus gig, with one arm round my son’s shoulders and the other round those of a mother of a TDC member.
This one brought a tear to my eye this evening. Sounds genuine. And he has a beautiful ‘lived-in” voice that carries a lot of emotion…
Just in from seeing Home Service they finished with Battle of the Somme there was a definite prickling of the eyes.
Snow Falls does it for me, if they still do it.
Indeed they do, Bob Fox starts it off with the version used in War Horse then the whole band play the Lark Rise version.
Booger, as I discover they played in Burton on Wednesday, 15 minutes up the A38 from me.
We are up in Northumberland for a ‘bit of a do’ and as they were appearing in Alnwick it seemed a good idea.