Songs That Make You Cry -

[Asuka]

Do you guys have a song that has, for some reason, always made you cry (or at least tear up) whenever you listen to it?

I have one that I have a long history with. Collective Soul is not in my Top 10 bands, but they are pretty damn good and I never figured out that they were a Christian band until a few years ago. Even with the religious label, they made some pretty damn good alternative songs and one of them is "Needs". It has been debated what the song is exactly about, but lead singer Ed Roland seems to support that its a guy who is in denial of his girlfriend breaking up with them and you can see his emotional trauma throughout the song. At the end of the song, it seems like its a positive uplifting message but really its him pleading that he needs her and that he is stressed that she's the only one he'll ever need. I've heard this song years ago and the first time I heard it I balled my eyes out and it's really due to the lyrics and beautiful composition. It's such a depressing song, but it's performed great especially live.

 

[IHeardThatCurtis]

A little backstory to my relationship with this song,When i was in my 2 year of college in the first program that i took (I am taking a second program right now), I was failing my first program because of a mandatory math class that i was failing because i am not very good at it.

I fail the class and essentially the program,My mother was yelling at me and i felt like shit wanting to kill myself.I planned out how i was going to kill myself by slicing my throat open with a razor blade.I wanted a song to be played while i died (Stupid i know i was not thinking straight),I play this song cutting a bit of my neck but then i suddenly stopped listening to the lyrics.

"If you throw away your life—if you throw away your life,If you throw away your life, the world will never be the same" Hearing this part of the song really hit man hard to think about the people who would be sad if i died.

So everytime i hear this song i think back to that moment and i will always tear up or cry outright when i listen to this song.

 

[R.A.E.L.]

This always struck me as a prelude to the singer's death, and I end up in tears every time.

 

[AnOminous]

This. Because because.

 

[CephalopodEnthusiast]

I love songs by the Carpenters. They're beautiful in their simplicity.

This one always gets me.

 

[Ravelord]

This song always gets me. The story of MGS3 is too pathetic (as in it's original meaning, which was this (meaning 1-2).

EDIT: For non-videogame sad songs, I would go with The Trial - Pink Floyd. It's the feeling of being broken on the inside that always gets me.

 

[Asuka]

I just thought up of Rickie Lee Jones too, I caught wind of it from watching the House S1E2 episode about the lacrosse player. The ending scene was so sad when you saw House try to relive his lacrosse days, but now you only see the shell of an athlete (or rather man) he used to be. The song alone makes me tear up a lot.

 

[clowney]

I don't know why it makes me cry. I guess it make me think about my parents.

 

[Bogs]

Because it was exactly what I wanted (and quite possibly needed) to say to her. But by then it was too late.

 

[timecop]

 

[Really makes you thunk]

Last song Freddie Mercury recorded. He died before it was finished, thus why Brian May takes over the vocals for the last verse.
Even with this aside, there's something so haunting about this track.

And speaking of things recorded just before the singer's death...

 

[Magnum Dong]

Most versions of this song make me a little misty-eyed but this one gets to me the most. It's not even like a nostalgia thing for me, just a well-composed song that hits me in places.

 

[Bluebird]

Lyrics arent too important to me, its mostly how beautiful the music is.

 

[The Dude]

Green Fields of France, by Dropkick Murphys.

I'm kind of a sensitive guy. The lyrics "And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind? In some loyal hear is your memory enshrined? And though you died in 1916, to that loyal heart you're forever 19." in particular. My good friend from high school lost her husband in Afghanistan when his Chinook helicopter was shot down. Every time I hear those lyrics I think of my friend, I think of her husband who died for his country, and I think of their two little girls who will grow up knowing their father was a hero, who died trying to save his comrades, but will never know him personally. And it makes me cry. Every damn time.

 

[Caddchef]

There's a hidden track in the 2002 Open Heart Zoo album by Martin Grech that is called simply ILL sung from the perspective of a person fighting (and losing) against terminal illness.

Probably the most depressing song i've ever heard and i'm a massive Radiohead fan, hard to find online but it's hidden at the end of the last song on the track list; "Death of a Loved one" and starts at 17:00.

 

[Kikomi]

i'm gonna bump this thread up because it's a good thread and i have some contributions.
this one makes me really emotional for some reason. the mountain goats have a way of doing that to me, i guess:

this one is short and kind of gets to me if i'm having a bad day:

and this one destroys me, it's about bipolar disorder:

 

[Positron]

I don't know my grandfather at all, but still.

 

[Bogs]

Strange how no Smiths/Morrissey have been posted yet, although their songs are tragedy for tragedy's sake

 

[r00]

This song makes me feel so transcendentally happy it makes me want to cry. Especially when it comes back in after the bridge at about 4:14.. It's like the soundtrack to a magical adventure that I want to go on.

Also this:

and pretty much anything by Daniel Johnston. Its the most heartbreakingly futile music ever made. He'll never be the beatles, he'll never get the girl and he'll never not be absolutely batshit mental, but you can tell from listening that there's nothing in the world that he wants more, so he tries and tries. That's just so tragic to me.


EDIT:

How could I forget this?

Skip james was one of the original legendary blues recording artists of the late 30s (sort of Robert Johnson levels of importance. Easily as unique and influential). He fell off the radar for a few decades and was rediscovered by a bunch of hippies in the 60s. While he was a hell raising, womanising, hard partying badass in his youth, he was later found living in abject poverty in a rural area, working as a preacher. He had terrible health problems (terrible as in losing his entire dick and balls to cancer) and towards the very end of his life some hippies paid for him to do another recording. It is one of the most hauntingly beautiful blues albums ever made. Sickbed blues was one of his final recordings, when he was in really bad shape and ready to die.
Whether you see the "friends" he used to have "that wished that he was dead" as the people from his past who left him when he faded into obscurity, or the cancerous dick and balls that were almost certainly rotted away from a lifetime of whoring, its a fucking tragic song.

 

[SP 199]