Songs you can't hear without crying

[Psmith]

It has always made  me feel sad even more so now he has died.
Wonderful Life by Colin(Black)Vearncombe.

And Puff the Magic Dragon.

[Avril Lavigne]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-js5-BevvGM

I played this in the evening once I'd pulled myself together from being told in the morning that I'd lost a very close friend due to what can most politely be described as a monumental fuckup by the staff at the hospital where he was recovering.

[pupshaw]

Fruit Tree - Nick Drake

Great call

Also, A Dream Goes On Forever by Todd

[buzby]

Elbow - Scattered Black & Whites (from their debut album, which came out just after my mum died). Brings back memories of my my mum and dad (particularly the references to old photos, as that was one of dad's hobbies), but unlike Mr. Garvey I can no longer go back to shelter at my childhood home.
Buck Owens - Together Again. One of my dad's favourite records, he played it a lot after my mum died. I played it to him while he was semi-conscious on his deathbed.  The title is inscribed on their headstone.
Massive Attack - Protection. Reminds me far too much of when my ex (who was only a friend at the time) was going through a black period in her life and I was doing my best to help.
New Order - In A Lonely Place. Basically a suicide note in audio form. I can't listen at all to the Joy Division demo of it with Ian singing. recorded 4 days before he hung himself.

[Brundle-Fly]

Fruit Tree - Nick Drake

I've said it before on CaB but this version of River Man by The Swingle Singers? Pass me an absorbant duvet.

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

[Brundle-Fly]

]Buck Owens -

Cheers for sharing those, Buzby. Some lovely tunes. 

Thanks to Rob Zombie, this Buck Owens classic gives me a rabbit punch to the kidneys some years on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThQ3G6b7d-U

[Brundle-Fly]

Oh, and while we are on this acapella tip?

XTC- Wrapped In Grey Choral versh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdE8-pQKYRQ

[pupshaw]

Songs can make you cry with joy too...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBtlDIVwmj8

Syreeta - Universal Sound Of The World

[a duncandisorderly]

The Osmonds by Denim, and specifically the line: "In the seventies I was just a kid, still knew what it was all about. I soaked it all in now it's all dripping out." Because I was and it is.

I'm on a denim album. not that one though.

[a duncandisorderly]

Susanne Sundfør's "Fade Away"

any of this soundtrack, but the main song for sure:

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

[SpiderChrist]

One of My Turns - Pink Floyd
"I have grown older, and
You have grown colder, and
Nothing is very much fun anymore."

Clouds Across The Moon - The RAH Band
"Ok. Thank you very much...
I'll...I'll try again next year..."

Those two immediately spring to mind, but there are times when I'll be singing along in the car to something or other fairly incongruous and the next thing you know I'm blubbing like an idiot. Professional help is being should be sought.

[SpiderChrist]

Oh yeah - Ghetto Child by The Detroit Spinners. The way he sings:

"Still I'll never know why a child is blamed,
Ridiculed and shamed,
We're all the same"

just floors me every fucking time.

[massive bereavement]

A crappy mid-1980's pop hit that I'm too embarrassed to say what it is, but it reminds of the time I fell in love with my first girlfriend. Easily the most attractive person I've ever been out with and I've never really been able to connect with anybody in quite the same way since. I'm in absolute bits when I hear it, really painful to listen to. It didn't make the top 10, so doesn't get played that often.

Also Patti Smith "Elergie", just the vocal bit that isn't lyrics.

[Jockice]

I'm on a denim album. not that one though.

Are you one of the new potatoes?

[ajsmith2]

The Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler.

[a duncandisorderly]

Are you one of the new potatoes?

supplied mellotron, played synthesizer in the rain. apparently. they asked me to play bass too, but I discovered that they planned to wipe norman watt roy to make room; I deferred to his greatness & pleaded (successfully) for the blockhead's contribution to stand.

[gmoney]

When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease by Roy Harper.

[gmoney]

OH, and In the Bleak Midwinter makes me well up for some reason. It happened in North Street in Chichester once when a brass band was playing it live. I had to duck into WH Smiths and compose myself.

[SteveDave]

I was about to call you a bunch of old fannies but then "Blackstar" by Dave Bowie came on and I couldn't see my keyboard anymore. I am instantly zapped to the morning his death was announced and trying to listen to the whole LP on my way to work. Guh.

[checkoutgirl]

I was listening to some Love the other day, I'd had a few. I was in floods of tears. Very embarrassing.

[checkoutgirl]

Which I think is a fair enough reason, to be honest.

It's one of the few logical reasons anyway.

[madhair60]

"Pale Green Things" by The Mountain Goats

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

Duk Koo Kim and Have You Forgotten? by Sun Kil Moon/Red House Painters

I have to be melancholy drunk for them to moisten my eyes though.



Henryck Gorecki- Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Just the most emotionally wrenching piece of music I've heard.

[royce coolidge]

Catch the wind by Donovan.Quite melancholy anyway,then played at a good mates far too premature funeral. Gulp.

[Captain Z]

Bright Eyes by Simon or Garfunkel (Watership Down scarred me for life, the cunts)

That's the girlfriend's one.
Gets her every time.
And she's never seen Watership Down.

Americans are weird...

I can only ever hear this version, and thus crying with laughter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuD27eISu7s

[yesitsme]

...And Puff the Magic Dragon.

Exactly what I was going to say.

I can't stand it when cunts start banging on about how it's about 'y'know...the drugz'.  No it fuckin' isn't.  It's clear what it's about.  It's a story and if you can't follow it then you need to perhaps stop doing drugs that stop you getting past the first word in things.

Plus I've seen a couple of smart arse comedians take their fractured take on it by 'What's a dragon supposed to do with string and sealing wax..eh eh?  Am I right...?'  You can jog on too.

My mum and auntie used to sing it to me when I was young to make me cry.  I can remember them laughing now.  'kinell eh?

I can't remember where I heard it, it might have been on Tony Blackburn's Pops for Tiny Tots but the version was so mournful and sung with such heart that even now running through it I can feel myself getting all melancholy. 

Tony Blackburn's Pops for Tiny Tots - up there with the best.

Another one is 'As We Go Now'.  Don't know if you've heard it but it's a folk song about moving on, the end of an era, which memories will stay with us and how we'll be remembered.

They sing it at the P7 leaving mass at our school. The first time I'd heard it was when eldest left primary school. Fucking hell, I'm filling up now.

The P7s all light a candle and the P6s come in in procession, take the candle and leave.

You've not seen tears like it.  I was ok at the time but that night talking to my mum on the phone I had to say 'I've got to go.'  I could barely speak.  I had to go out in to the garden and compose myself.'

There's a girl in here who you can make burst in to tears by singing that too.

Little 'uns got the lead role in the Christmas Play.  It's hilarious.  There are a few girls in her class who go to acting and dancing and are basically performing chimps for their parents and their noses are well out of joint - which is what it's all about.  Anyway she's got to sing Let it Go and something from The Greatest Showman - I was nearly greeting the other night when she was practicing in the house, what will I be like on the night?

Any tips?  Is there an opposite to an onion I can squirt in my eyes before going in?

I think I'm getting softer as I get older.

ps.  My dad is a rough arsed builder from Salford.  Turns to a quivering wreck when Dumbo's mum puts her trunk through the bars of her cage and sings to the wee man.

[a duncandisorderly]

ooh... just remembered this. fuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4ZipKdI1sY

[purlieu]

Henryck Gorecki- Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Just the most emotionally wrenching piece of music I've heard.

Ever seen the film that was done for it? I'd never actually seen concentration camp footage until that, with the climax of the first movement set to shots of mass graves being filled. One of the most hopeless, bleak and soul-crushing things I've ever witnessed, was in floods of tears.

[gilbertharding]

Perhaps not quite right for this thread, because I can hear them without bursting into tears - but here's a couple or three which have definitely caused the old waterworks to malfunction (I mean they made me cry at least once):

Who Knows Where the Time Goes - Sandy Denny. Fairly standard, I'd have thought - but it's quite useful if you ever want to provoke the feeling of regretting all the things you never did, and know you'll now never do.

Shangri La - the Kinks. Bit more complicated, but somehow the sadness of a man who settled down resonated a bit too strongly with me one morning and I found myself sobbing in the car on the way to work.

Every Little Thing - the Beatles. Probably my favourite Beatles tune, which I heard first when I was bought For Sale the summer after John Lennon died. Nothing much to do with the lyrics, more the way the harmonies of voice and music soar in the chorus kind of... touched me. It reminded me of loss, at an age when I didn't really have a clue about what loss was. Found it quite addictive, somehow. Obviously there is the juxtaposition of the thrilling, up-beat lyric and tempo, and the melancholic sound in the chords... Years later I played it to my first girlfriend (the 'dynamite sack artist' I have mentioned before), who was supposedly very in tune with all things artistic, and was appalled to hear her opinion that it was misogynistic. It fucking well isn't.

[Dead Soon]

This one's brand new to me - Simple Minds and Glittering Prize.

Horrendous falling out with a beloved friend a few weeks back; lots of lamenting, biting, ruefulness pervading over the following days. Then, after spending a night on the sofa at my mate's after a melancholic drinking session, woke up with that song playing in my head, tormenting me ALA Groundhog Day. I was in a catatonic state, gazing at the ceiling, feeling too sick and numb to move, dearly missing my friend who didn't want to know me anymore. Feeling core-deep regret at what had happened to us and that this shouldn't have been.

Now I can cry with joyous emotion, because she's back. We made up on a chance meeting on a night out. Incredibly emotional. We'll never be parted again. Like a glittering prize. But I cry just listening to it in my head. I hope I never chance upon it on Radio 2 or the like.