Has a Song Ever Made You Cry?

I tear up every time I hear Warren Zevons "Keep me in your heart for awhile"

A great classical or jazz piece will occasionally do that to me, something so perfectly beautiful that it's best listened to with tears streaming down your face.

For me it only happens the first time I hear it, when its beauty surprises me and is overwhelming. I still remember the first time I heard Thelonius do 'Round Midnight. I was driving on the freeway but had to pull over to listen to it right. I must have looked like a madman with my feet up on the dash gazing up at the stars through the sunroof and crying to the loudest jazz my car could produce.

yeap "fields of gold." i used to sing it to my dog kodi after she came down with cancer and she smiled at me whenever i sang it and it made me cry

When a certain person who I am very close to became sick again, Soul Asylum's Runaway Train did it.

And all of Noddy's songs. While I was putting together her topic I could barely see.

Last night in chapel Hill a girl who had just broken up with her boyfriend burst out crying as I was singing "Heart Of The Matter".....and not because I was singing it so badly before someone says so,,,,

I cry at Callas doing Gluck's Alcestre, and sometimes, Orphee et Euridice, who knows why.

I also get weepy with the disc, Mi innamoravo di tutto by Fabrizio de Andre, though not always.

When my fiancee passed away I couldn't heard a Beatles song without crying. And the song "In My Life" would make me break down totally. That was our song.

Honey by Bobby Goldsboro. Reminds me of my mother.

Certain songs do bring memories rushing back into consciousness--some pleasant; some not so pleasant, but none that bring a memory so poignant or sad that I cry. Like Robert, there are some truly exquisite renditions that create powerful emotion in their sheer power and perfection. I have an eclectic taste in music so the genre is not much of an issue. I can easily be moved to tears by a great movie scene, and generally the sound track is a component of that.

Jason M. Carroll - Alyssa Lies

Nothing is sadder than the innocent being abused. The part where he sings "she lies with Jesus" is quite emotional for me (not in a religious way, but symbolically).

There's a few Kate Bush songs that can make me cry. Her voice gets me.

and Fast Car by Tracy Chapman.

That's a great song.
K
O

Tracy has a repertoire of make ya tear up songs...

Here's one that recently made me cry. It's a specific interpretation of Samba Triste (Sad Samba) by Baden Powell. Powell wrote it but I was first introduced to it in a lower-tempo interpretation by another guitar great Charlie Byrd (with Stan Getz on Jazz Samba).

I'd loved that laidback version and later found Baden playing it himself at the same tempo, still liked it. But this hyper, frenetic interpretation makes me completely lose it. You may have to know it well in its original tempo to appreciate it (see link above) but it's one of my top 10 songs of all time in this interpretation and I've been listening to it in a loop yet again today.

I haven't clicked on that yet, Robert, but I know I'll like it even before the click.

I just remembered that I used to cry over Leonard Cohen's Songs album. Have the cd now, haven't played it since I moved. Will have to check if it still gets me going.

I'm an easy cryer - both Msolga and I cried over an elephant photo I posted on the grit and grimace thread. But crying triggered by music is - to me - a kind of joy, even if sometimes a sad joy.

I didn't cry, but it's now in my Favorites.

The last time it happened, I was listening to Phil Ochs' album, Tape From California. Can't recall which song it was.

It was in the early eighties, I was driving my car listening to the radio, on my way to a party meeting. Suddenly, a song I never heard before was aired.

It is called "Como torturar un gato" (How to torture a cat), by Spanish singer Victor Manuel. and describes how its paw nails are cut and its whiskers are plucked... describing in reality how our human inner weapons, our capacities, our passion, our lushiousness are taken away from us by family and convention.
I arrived to my destination covered with tears. The cat was me.

I've never been able to hear the song again.


Only today, while posting this, I've found the lyrics:

One must get the cat by its tail,
pluck his whiskers, which are his tact;
repeat to him a hundred times he's a jerk
and create in him the dumbass complex...
...

...

...And if there's no interest in torturing him,
you despise him a month, from three to four,
repeating to him phrases such as
"it's a bad enough disgrace to be a cat".

This is crazy but the song I can't even think about (making me tear up right now just thinking about it) is a really happy song -- "Mr. Blue Sky" by ELO.

From the day he was born I sang that song to Mo.

After his parents deserted him and he had been living with me and Mr. B for about a month, his bio-dad came and got him and disappeared.

We didn't know where Mo was or what was happening or if we'd ever see him again.

One day at work, in the middle of a photo session that song came up on the tape loop thingy and I fell completely apart. I cried like I have never cried before.... or since.

It took about two weeks before bio-dad got fed up with the demands of parenting and called up to come get Mo.

But I still can't hear that song.