Tear Jerker / Andrew Bird

• "Masterfade" from The Mysterious Production of Eggs is filled with a sort of childlike sadness. The song itself resembles a children's folk tune, with its lighthearted whistling and counting of various flora and fauna, but the lyrics painfully contrast that by describing some far less innocent themes: not being able to break away from technology even when you're out enjoying nature, and being dragged around in a dying relationship.
• Although "The Naming of Things"' lyrics aren't too out of the ordinary, mostly inspired by random childhood memories of Bird's, the song sounds lonely and sad.
• "MX Missiles" begins with a mournful, minute-long whistling solo and eventually becomes a very elegiac ballad. It was written about Andrew's former high school classmates, specifically star athletes and "popular kids," started committing "bizarre, almost ritualistic suicides." The lyrics evoke an intimate small-town feel with their mention of mom-and-pop hardware stores and 4th of July parades, and the narration is deeply sympathetic even though the subjects of the song are people he barely knew ("life-sized paper dolls").
  "You were in the ground in late November
  When the leaves and earth were damp
  Did you think they would remember
  How you almost made state champ?"
• Armchair Apocrypha may be Bird's overall saddest album, with a distinctive nighttime feel to it. Specifically, every song on Side B feels poignant in some way.
  • "Armchairs" is the seven-minute centerpiece of the album. Throughout the lyrics, there are clear themes of longing for someone from your past and wishing you could reconnect with them, but knowing that's impossible. The beginning of the final verse says it all, and this may be the most direct his lyrics have ever gotten:
  "You didn't write, you didn't call,
  It didn't cross your mind at all,
  And through the waves, the waves of A.M. squall,
  You couldn't feel anything at all."
  • The late-album cut "Cataracts" is similarly bleak. The lyrics may be confusing at best, but the music, vocals, and harmonies are sparse and potently heartbreaking. Even the whistle solo, a component of Bird's songs that usually feels lighthearted, is aching.
  • "Spare-Ohs" concerns an incident that occurred on Andrew’s farm in rural Illinois, where his 26 chickens were killed by raccoons and their remaining feathers were used by finches and sparrows to make nests. The final verse in particular has a yearning quality to it.
• "Souverian" from Noble Beast is just as long, and nearly as sad, as "Armchairs." Like most of the other songs on the album it inhabits, the lyrics are borderline nonsensical, but much like "Armchairs," there is an overarching theme of pining for a lost lover.
  "Birds will sing
  Still my lover won't return to me
  You promise spring
  Still my lover won't return to me"
• "Anonanimal" doesn’t sound particularly sad, at least at the beginning, but it could be interpreted as a song about feeling out of place compared to others and pretending to be someone you’re not.