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Songs you can't hear without crying

Started by canadagoose, November 03, 2018, 10:03:00 PM

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non capisco

At the moment it's pretty much everything since my mum's memory and spacial awareness have fairly sharply gone for a burton recently and we're all sort of in limbo until she has a brain scan this month to try and find out what's up. Practically everything's making me sob at the moment. Played some Otis Redding at work today after everyone had gone home and 'Try A Little Tenderness' just ruined me out of the blue, I had to go and force some equilibrium on myself in the stationary cupboard. Oh gawd, that sounds like some kind of ersatz Will Self phrase for having a wank. I wasn't, I repeat wasn't wanking in the stationary cupboard again.

I'm a right fucking barrel of laughs at the moment. It'll be all right, though. Well, it'll be whatever it is.


gilbertharding

Sorry to hear that Non Capisco poster.

daf

Shall I wheel out my Heal the Pain post again? Oh, go on then . . .

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Sue : your next record, daf?

daf : Yes, this one means a lot to me Sue.

On a college trip down to "The Big Smoke", I managed to shake off the group I was with, and stealthily made my way to the 'Super-Massive Brown-Hole' of sin : The Legendary Soho! 

I spent a blissful afternoon there, browsing and sluicing like a junior Lah-de-dah Gunner Graham on leave, wading knee-deep through Paul Raymond's finest in the basement bookshops, and other, (hem-hem), "delights" . . . until I eventually awoke from my priapic reverie, and was suddenly gripped by a nauseous wave of horror, shame and remorse the like of which I'd never experienced before or since.

The scales fell from my eyes just as I was stepping through the hallowed portals of HMV - the sun was low in the sky - "Magic Hour" - and shafts of gold seemed to pick out sparkling motes of dust around me as if frozen in amber.

At that exact moment, the song we're about to hear started up over store's sound system:
Everything slowed right down - It was just me . . . the golden glow . . . and George.

He somehow knew, and was singing to me - offering soothing balm and forgiveness to my tormented soul; reducing me to a soggy mess just off the Laserdiscs isle . . (sniff) . . can I borrow a tissue please, Sue?

Sue : Aw, diddums you big weirdo! Anyway, here it is - Heal the Pain

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I bought the tape there and then, through bleary eyes, with what little money I had left after being fleeced at the world's seediest peepshow (like watching babestation from inside a postbox).

27 years later, I've never been back. HMV is gone, and I'm not sure if that version of Soho even exists anymore.

But I've still got that tape to remind me.

grassbath

The 'best opening credits' thread in Deeper into Movies has reminded me, via the opening titles of Superman (1978), that I'm easily choked up by a triumphant, stirring theme from a film I enjoyed or rewatched a lot as a kid. If I were to psychoanalyse myself, I think it's an innocence/experience thing; mourning a time of unambiguous morality, where goodness and kindness are uncomplicated things or are heroically pitted against evil. The music in the battle scenes in Return of the King did it for me when I watched it for the first time in many years; when asked by my housemates why I was welling up I wanted to sob, like a massive fanny, 'they're all just trying so hard!'




colacentral

Quote from: Z on November 04, 2018, 09:25:43 PM
Gold Day by Sparklehorse and Carissa by Sun Kil Moon are probably the two standouts for me.

Carissa is fairly obvious but I'm not that sure why Gold Day of all the Sparklehorse songs is such an out and out tearjerker for me.

I lost my tortoise for a few days and was convinced I'd never see him again, and that song reminds me of him. Happy ending as he came back but I think I'd have to avoid listening to that song for the rest of time if it got to the point where I had to assume he was dead.

I remember listening to "Monkey Gone to Heaven" the day a dog died and it got to me. That made me cry for a year or two because of that association.

Lordofthefiles

<<<Message from The Future>>>

The bootleg version of "Ain't That Enough" from Gerry Love's last gig with Teenage Fanclub.


yesitsme

How about a song sung by a felt critter with someone's hand up it's jacksie.

Especially The Muppets, they've got some real tear jerkers.

Jerzy Bondov

If I think too hard about I Can't Give Everything Away, that's me done. The New Career harmonica, the synths, the sax, the lyrics, his singing. Fuck. You can hear him leaving the planet. What a beautiful song.

Also when my son was born and I was waiting on the ward, the woman in the next bed was watching Moana so all the songs from that make me cry.

QDRPHNC

The most recent thing which came close was Amen Dunes' cover of Song to the Siren. I thought nothing would beat the This Mortal Coil version, but in my opinion, he's done it.

Vic Chesnutt can hit me hard. I find his most affecting songs contain one line which - combined with his delivery - give so much depth to very few words. In Dying Young, for example (a song about a man in hospital dying young), the line: "He dreamed about an angel / And he thought about a gun" has much in it to unpack. But it's all in the delivery. His finest moment for me is the song West of Rome, from the album of the same name. It describes a mundane day in the life of an everyman. Inspecting himself in the mirror, jerking off, "calling up his sister / he tells her their life would make / one whale of a movie". How we mythologize our mundane existences.

Townes Van Zandt, Lover's Lullably. Just, staggeringly beautiful. An ode to love the morning after a fight, a relationship transitioning out of the honeymoon stage into something wider and deeper. 'Dreams that have flown down the hall / Tears that were sown on despair / Summer turned fall / It don't matter at all / When I wake / And find you lying there."

Feist, The Park. No idea why, it just does.

Smashing Pumpkins, an obscurity called Glynis. "So have we stumbled from grace / Are we being punished with fate? / My god is subtle and great". Nice thought to end with.

Glebe

Quote from: non capisco on November 07, 2018, 12:53:28 AMAt the moment it's pretty much everything since my mum's memory and spacial awareness have fairly sharply gone for a burton recently and we're all sort of in limbo until she has a brain scan this month to try and find out what's up. Practically everything's making me sob at the moment. Played some Otis Redding at work today after everyone had gone home and 'Try A Little Tenderness' just ruined me out of the blue, I had to go and force some equilibrium on myself in the stationary cupboard. Oh gawd, that sounds like some kind of ersatz Will Self phrase for having a wank. I wasn't, I repeat wasn't wanking in the stationary cupboard again.

I'm a right fucking barrel of laughs at the moment. It'll be all right, though. Well, it'll be whatever it is.

Love and hugs, Capisco.

TheMonk

Something about "What A Fool Believes" by the Doobie Brothers gets me.
There's no other song like it and I think every other Doobie Brothers song is rubbish.

Can We Still Be Friends by Todd Rundgren has a weird melancholy to it that gets me in the mood for a sob too.

Philadelphia by Neil Young is a lovely little tearjerker. Far superior to the Springsteen one from that soundtrack.

Lost Oliver

To Ramona by Dylan - immediately fell in love with this. Really strikes a chord and I don't know if anything comes close to the words in this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADHPd9dNimY

Daydreaming by Radiohead - dismissed it as naff initially but the more I listened the more I understood what the song was about. The ending is fucking beautiful. I think it taps into another reality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTAU7lLDZYU

pupshaw

A bit of a strange one, but I was listening to Kraftwerk Europe Endless the other day, and as the intro went into the bouncy budda-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum bit I was washed over with a joy then a sadness at how horrible things are going now compared to the optimistic outlook I had when that song was new to me.

a duncandisorderly


alan nagsworth

Quote from: QDRPHNC on November 09, 2018, 12:54:45 AM
The most recent thing which came close was Amen Dunes' cover of Song to the Siren. I thought nothing would beat the This Mortal Coil version, but in my opinion, he's done it.

Fucking hell. I absolutely adore Amen Dunes and I have never heard this, thanks so much. You're right, it probably is the best version. There's something about McMahon's voice that completely pulls me away from whatever I'm doing and captivates me. It compliments his nostalgic storytelling lyricism so well. I think as an artist he's quite overlooked, too, especially since this year's "Freedom" was an utterly brilliant album.

I guess it would be cheap to compare him to David Gray, even though I like Gray's music but AD is far superior. His previous stuff like the albums "Love" and "Through Donkey Jaw" have some serious Bob Dylan/Velvet Underground vibes too.

a duncandisorderly


For me it's The Kinks 'Come Dancing' mainly because it's impossible for me not to think of the tragic story behind it, where Ray's older sister (who the song appears to memorialise) ended up dying from a heart attack on a dance floor when Ray was a child. With that in mind, I find it impossible to maintain dry eyes during the last verse, in which Ray conjures up a fictional version of the humdrum, normal later years of family life that his sister would never see:

QuoteNow I'm grown up and playing in a band
And there's a car park where the pally used to stand
My sister's married and she lives on an estate
Her daughters go out, now it's her turn to wait
She knows they get away with things she never could
But if I asked her I wonder if she would
Come dancing

"But if I asked her I wonder if she would" is so quietly devastating.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Monsieur Verdoux on November 10, 2018, 01:02:40 PM
For me it's The Kinks 'Come Dancing' mainly because it's impossible for me not to think of the tragic story behind it, where Ray's older sister (who the song appears to memorialise) ended up dying from a heart attack on a dance floor when Ray was a child. With that in mind, I find it impossible to maintain dry eyes during the last verse, in which Ray conjures up a fictional version of the humdrum, normal later years of family life that his sister would never see:

"But if I asked her I wonder if she would" is so quietly devastating.

oh. yes, that does change things rather... I had no idea.

non capisco

Quote from: Monsieur Verdoux on November 10, 2018, 01:02:40 PM
For me it's The Kinks 'Come Dancing' mainly because it's impossible for me not to think of the tragic story behind it, where Ray's older sister (who the song appears to memorialise) ended up dying from a heart attack on a dance floor when Ray was a child. With that in mind, I find it impossible to maintain dry eyes during the last verse, in which Ray conjures up a fictional version of the humdrum, normal later years of family life that his sister would never see:

"But if I asked her I wonder if she would" is so quietly devastating.

Flipping heck.

royce coolidge

Old friends by Simon and Garfunkel
Tank Park Salute by Billy Bragg

MuteBanana

Tracy Chapman - The Promise

The Bangles - Eternal Flame


yesitsme

Yeag, Come Dancing good call.

How about Watching Scotty Grow?  Utter schmaltz from start to finish.  I never liked 'Honey' - same song but backwards but WSG really turns on the water works.

There's a young lad in here called Scott and I sing it to him and even though I'm taking the piss I still find myself welling up.

Plus it's used in The Simpsons - first time when Homer and Bart are building their go-kart and then, brilliantly in the Robot Wars one where Homer's getting marmalised by the the other robots.

Bobby Goldsboro - you cunt.

SpiderChrist

Played The Green Fields Of France by The Men They Couldn't Hang on Sunday. Decided to try and sing along. Whoops. The verse that starts "did you leave a young wife or sweetheart behind..." fucking hell mate.

I Can't Give Everything Away, Lazarus, and Black Star all set me off, too. Bowie you bastard. Slowly losing my Dad to cancer at the moment, so maybe I'm more prone to this sort of thing. "Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside".

Listening to Morrissey's bloody awful cover of Back On The Chain Gang reminded me of the Pretenders original, and just having that going round my head was *almost* enough to get me greetin' like a fucking big Mary Anne. "I found a picture of you, those were the happiest days of my life".

(edited for splellign)

Black Ship

Pulp - Live Bed Show, especially the extended live version, also the live version of FEELING CALLED LOVE from 2000/1.
Evenstar from LOTR:TTT Soundtrack. Sad, floaty female vocals get me choked up all the time. Similarly "For Whom the Bell Tolls" from Donnie Darko
You want it Darker, by Leonard Cohen.
Allegri's miserie and most if not all of Faure's requiem. I sang the latter twice, once as a Soprano, once as an alto and I never forgot it.
Song to The Siren - the This Mortal Coil version.

jobotic

So many songs make me cry, mainly for a time when I was actually bloody miserable but had a glimpse of bliss. Melodramatic twat.

Right now I'm welling up to Goodbye Precious Mountain by Quickspace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F95iqrC5txk

jobotic


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: jobotic on November 15, 2018, 12:53:03 AM
Now this. I'm going to bed.

Th Faith Healers - Reptile Smile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bViyXxU0d2U

good shout. I'll leave their version of 'mother sky' though.

Attila

#87
'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' -- doesn't matter who. The Judy Garland and the Israel Kamakawiwoʻole versions are the hardest on me.

Way back when I was a tiny tiny Attila, and had no idea what utter shit my family could be and before my mum went off the deep end with depression and religion and that, I was a right ol' mama's bunny. Every night before I went to sleep, she'd cuddle with me in an old rocking chair (which my no-tosser brother now owns) and sing nursery rhymes and lullabies -- she's go through the rhymes about girls, the ones about boys, boys & girls together, animals, then the closing numbers were Rainbow and Good Night Sweetheart.*

It's doing my head in just typing that, which is silly, I know, but it's still a powerful memory, 50 odd years after the last time she did so (apparently it was a thing from the time I was brought home til I was 3 going-on 4 and started school, so it's wired into my psyche, the dimmed lighting, the closeness, the rocking, &c). I've never had that sense of comfort from anyone since.

My mom used to sing a lot around the house when I was a kid, stuff from the 30s and 40s musicals and music she grew up with


*This one -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWexuHVh9W8  [Christ, I teared up just checking that it was the right version, and not the Spaniels do-wop song).

eta = Spaniels, not Spangles, ffs

Attila

Quote from: Monsieur Verdoux on November 10, 2018, 01:02:40 PM
For me it's The Kinks 'Come Dancing' mainly because it's impossible for me not to think of the tragic story behind it, where Ray's older sister (who the song appears to memorialise) ended up dying from a heart attack on a dance floor when Ray was a child. With that in mind, I find it impossible to maintain dry eyes during the last verse, in which Ray conjures up a fictional version of the humdrum, normal later years of family life that his sister would never see:

"But if I asked her I wonder if she would" is so quietly devastating.

I saw a version of the stage show up in London a few years back, where it was sort of half a performance or songs and half acted out -- Ray showed up without warning to play the role of the narrator. He wandered around the actors/characters on stage as the older version of the boy in the song, commenting on the action -- none of them could see him, of course, being in the past *except* at one moment when the main sister character is fretting over whether she looked beautiful enough for her date -- they made direct eye contact as he quietly replied, 'You are.'

But what really set off the sniffles and open sobbing (including amongst the actors -- the fellow playing the dad went completely to pieces) was Ray saying quietly at the end the sister's fate.

He's spoken before that she'd bought him his first guitar and sat down with him at the piano to teach him a few chords -- she was accomplished, but of course he was a total beginner -- she played some little song that she'd made up on the spot, and he has said that he's spent the last 60 years trying to remember what it was.

Not only did she go out dancing against doctor's orders and die on the dancefloor, but it was that same day -- as he puts it 'Her life ended the day my life began.'

[In the play, he's combined sisters -- there is Rene who died on the dancefloor, but also his sister Peg -- she was not only crippled from a car accident, but had been shunned by non-family for having a child out of wedlock with an African man].

If it helps to cheer you up: when he did his big show in London for the 50th anniversary of You Really Got Me, one of his sisters was in the audience, and he dedicated Come Dancing to her -- while the band played, they swung a spotlight round on her, and she was beaming broadly and dancing in her seat as a 90 year old woman could. The look on her face was terrific -- loads of diehard fans there in various visage of adoration, but her expression was pure, 'Go on then, that's my little brother up there!'

[apologies for the hijack -- I've written a book on the Kinks and spent the past few decades cheek by jowl with work on them :)  )

hedgehog90

Quote from: Attila on November 15, 2018, 08:39:43 AM
I saw a version of the stage show up in London a few years back, where it was sort of half a performance or songs and half acted out -- Ray showed up without warning to play the role of the narrator. He wandered around the actors/characters on stage as the older version of the boy in the song, commenting on the action -- none of them could see him, of course, being in the past *except* at one moment when the main sister character is fretting over whether she looked beautiful enough for her date -- they made direct eye contact as he quietly replied, 'You are.'

'You are' is enough to make me well-up.
I don't know know how it played out on stage but you make it sound devastatingly poignant.