Songs that make you cry.
 

The chorus of the third part of the Texas Trilogy, "Bosque County Romance," covered by Lyle Lovett.



I have to take a break from it or doesn't affect me, but I just forgot about it for a year and came back to it, and I had to keep it down so my roommate wouldn't wonder what's wrong. Part of it is just the chord progression, but I think the running theme of "nothing is going to get any better" adds to it.

How about y'all?

I don't think a song has ever made me cry on its own, but the only song that comes to mind, and which has moved me in its own way is Debussy's String Quartet, specifically the third movement.

Like many artists my man Stevie Ray Vaughn had battled drugs and drink long and hard but not long before the helicopter crash which took him from this world he'd finally beat those demons and cleaned up. The first two verses of Life By The Drop, recorded shortly before his death but released afterward, are about that battle and the third is about the new hope that was dawning in his life as he was rediscovering what it was like to be truly awake to the world.

It's that third verse which nails me. Dude's voice was so full and raw and perfect for those down and dirty Texas blues he loved to sing and on Life By The Drop he sounds so powerfully human. And so alive.

I also need a break from it or I get desensitized but "Putting The Damage On" by Tori Amos gets me. The beginning of it is very Tori (as in Gertrude stein-y, randomness that may or may not make sense to you) but this part always get me:
There's a light in you platoon
I never seen a light move
Like yours can do to me
So now I'm wishing
For my best impression
of my best Angie Dickinson
But now I've got to worry
Cause boy you still look pretty
To me
When you're putting the damage on

Ugh. I think I just depressed myself lol

Almost anything sung on American Idol. I look at all those people in the audience, fall into dispair, and tear up. Then I turn off the fuckin' television and go have some fun, preferably while listening to something like this:

‘Hurt’ sung by Johnny Cash; never fails to get me.

Johnny Cash Hurt - YouTube

You look so fine by Garbage. I have to be in a particular mood, but having said that, if I'm not in that mood when I start hearing the song, I usually am by the time it ends.

Garbage - You Look So Fine (Live) - YouTube

Duran Duran 'Ordinary World'

it's so powerful I can't even link it.

This is one of many Elliott Smith songs that really do it for me, but A Fond Farewell is actually a pretty happy song—it's about his willingness to stop hurting himself with his addictions (at his lowest point in his life, Smith was consuming $1500 worth of heroin a day.) It makes me tear up because it came out a year after he died of apparent suicide. Such turmoil. RIP.

A Fond Farewell - Elliott Smith - YouTube