Songs that make you want to cry

Lately I've been on this huge sad song kick, so!

Songs that make you want to cry!

A lot of songs by the Pillows have that effect on me. You?

James Blunt when he isn't doing something semi happy-ish (that was strangely structured). No Bravery and Cry just really hits a soft spot for me.

Oh yeah, and Damien Rice. Especially 9 Crimes.

edited 8th May '12 11:56:41 AM by Gamebreaking

Roy Orbison, gentlemen. Roy Orbison.

Depressive power metal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO4e4nCYBEo

Christina Perri's The Lonely. Oh dear Lord. The rest of the album does NOTHING to prepare you for this song!

Seriously. A lot of the lyrics reminded me of someone very important to me who helped me get through one of the toughest periods of my life and get on the right path, and some of the fear, anxiety, and sadness I felt when she had to leave.

As for other songs:

• Katawa Shoujo OST - "Painful History"
• Grover Washington - "Moonstreams" and almost any song that samples it(particularly "Caved In" by Atmosphere and "Slippin'" by DMX). Creates an overpowering feeling of desolation.
• DJ Shadow - "Midnight In A Perfect World"

Pretty sure I brought this up in a similar thread long ago, but:

The words are apparently taken verbatim from a human interest news article, which apparently "ruins" it for some people, but I think it may even make the song sadder.

edited 8th May '12 5:44:43 PM by MikeK

This one:

I also wrote a review of it here.

Cloud's theme and Aeris' theme. Seriously.

God, this song is beautiful.

I've got a lot I could contribute to this thread, and there are a lot of songs that can seem sad in a certain light or mood.

For now, here's this

edited 15th May '12 1:59:32 PM by Ryuhza

The last time I heard the Raybon Brothers' cover of "Butterfly Kisses", I bawled like a baby...dunno what was going on, but that hit just the right chord with me. The original doesn't do anything for me at all, but there's just something about the way Marty sings it in this version.

"Cats in the Cradle" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" will get me choked up as well if I haven't heard them in a long time, especially this version of the latter.

any Magnetic Fields song

Anything by Hammock, or Jordan Rudess's solo piano material. All kinds of emotion.

I've got to hand it to you JHM, Vito's Ordination Song did me in pretty good...

I haven't listened to any Sufjan Steven's before, is more of his stuff like that?

Jesu at their most depressive. Glorious song.

Oh, goodness, this song:

Yes, the first few lines are hilarious, but that coda.

It's the last song on the album Greetings from Michigan—a beautifully understated album, and unbelievably sad. I'd start there.

Willbyr — It's Marty freaking Raybon. He can sing anything and make it sound awesome. I agree, his version is by far the best.

Bob Carlisle's phrasing is too Don Williams-esque sappy for me, and Jeff Carson didn't even try to put any emotion into the song.

Tooi Kono Machi de -

http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/ccsakura/ccstkmd.htm

That song makes me fucking burble every time I hear it. Which is highly embarrassing if it happens to play on my bluetooth headphones from my nokia, and I am out in public. Bear in mind I am six foot odd in my boots, balding and Scottish. And male.

/makes plans to hunt down and tickle the OP if I ever get the job of world dictator.

edited 19th May '12 12:05:27 PM by TamH70

Here's another:

While any version of this song is depressing, this is perhaps the most harrowing version that I can think of. The lyrics are thus:

Whilst I thought I was climbing
I found myself descending
Having lost my way let me go up
Having lost my way let me go down
I have no other work to do
It would have been better
Not to be the mother
It is sorrowful
When a son goes away
Let alone
And when he dies
I watched quietly
When the grave was being dug
Knowing that he won't come back
And I shall not be here
For much longer
Even if I become
Like a king or like the wind
Never will death
Stay away
But when he called me from above
Neither voice nor word to say yes
We just quietly say yes to him
It is a debt
Which must be paid
Here is your flesh
Take it from me
It seems to me
That you can't destroy it
Having spent the day with pain
Am I going to spend the night with pain?
This living to eat
Is so tiring for me
I am feeling cold inside
Let me go on seeking fire
Even death is better
Than this useless life
The mast of a ship
A nakedness
The leader of whores
Sheds the female breast
He tramples down
The vast furnace
Godlike and piercing
Binding and bitter
And cleaving asunder
Bones bound together
And paleness breaking
And rending
Abiding in a place
Tending into nothingness
Dampness tending onto corruption
And merchants in trembling
Dragged down into horror
Terrible and whirling
The dust in the palm
Sublime circumcision
Solitude and desolation
A goatherd unto lost
All destruction
Grinding thin powder
Withering and fading
The reaping-hook of dullness
Earth thrown up
All fresh turned
The mountains are cast out
Lions trembling with fury
Thy braking in my barrenness
The destroyer of days
The silent lion
We know him fury
The death of flesh
He moves with a creeping motion
They destroy by the sky flame
Of their smoky breath
The pain-bringers
They shriek with a
Long
Drawn
Cry

edited 19th May '12 2:28:44 PM by JHM

This song and this version in particular. It just broke me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQAf6MQj1kE

Foo Fighters - Best of You. An AMV version that kicks the original video in the nuts, knees it in the face on the way down and stamps on its throat as it lies twitching. And walks away without ever glancing back.

It doesn't exactly make me cry, but to my ears, there's something deeply melancholy about nearly everything the Beach Boys have ever done. Their songs tend not to sound like young men singing about having fun ... more like older men remembering something unrecoverable—nostalgia in the original, most precise sense of the word.

The visual I always flash on whenever I hear stuff like "Don't Worry Baby" is a used-up, middle-aged drunk in a bar, mentally reliving a time in his life that he'll never have back ... that maybe he himself destroyed.

Well, the only song that's ever made me cry is William Elliot Whitmore's version of Bury Me Not On The Lone Prarie, but I find Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know to be kind of a downer. Catchy though.

Yikes! I forgot about this song:

The “three-hanky 1930s film” lyrics are bad enough, but couple them with Steve Broughton’s tear-choked vocals an arrangement (B.J. Cole pedal steel guitar, phase-shifted angelic vocal choirs, a melodramatic violin solo) specially designed to wring the tune of every last drop of pathos, it becomes almost lethal!