After a few "liveners"

ahem I'm ok - there's just something in my eye

by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. And Hurt by Johnny Cash.

On Twitter has just made me cry about this very subject.

*Blubs*

The Band: It Makes No Difference. Rick Danko's voice suits the sentiment of the song perfectly

EDIT: What a GREAT little fill from Robbie at 2:02!

I don't really know why, except that it reminds me so powerfully of being very young and very in love. Being in love at that age - I was seventeen when it first happened to me - is qualitatively different from being in love as an adult, and totally different from love that has had years and years to grow and mature and settle, but it's still love, and it has that weird desperate intensity that you never really get again. The memory of it pretty much the only thing about my teenage years for which I'm a little wistful.

This song sort of rewinds me by sixteen years.

Takes me back to the time my mother was dying, for some (subliminal?) reason.

"Catapult" - REM: I can't understand why this works, but it does. Maybe it reminds me too much of the fact of being seventeen when I first heard it? Maybe the keening quality of Stipe's singing. Maybe also the snatched sense of regret in the words: "Did we miss anything?" etc.

"Sorry Somehow" - Husker Du
"2541" - Grant Hart
- just the overwhelming passion and pain in Grant's vocals on both songs.

There'll be others. Sigh.

And these get me every time

After James played Out To Get You at Brixton Academy in April 2007. A combination of the lyrics, the occasion and the person I'd always shared it with previously.

I know I'm a terribly crybaby and one, moreover, who's already had a turn, but It's A Motherfucker by Eels KILLS me.

Or almost anything with John´s voice. I dont know why, he just gets me. Visiting Strawberry Field the first time, standing by the gate, was quite an experience too.

Stimpy already posted The Band´s It Makes No Difference. "Now there's no love/ As true as the love/ That dies untold".

There are literally hundreds. And hundreds more that at different times or in different places will get me.

I am an absolute cry-baby. I cry several times a week at sad things I read in the newspaper, sad things on the TV, sad thoughts. In fact, I'm a bit of a mess, aren't I?

One that gets me everytime, wherever I am or whatever mood I'm in is Give It Up by Talk Talk. It kills me.

I could list loads, but it's a lovely sunny day, so won't as it would be nice to remain cheerful rather than end up blubbing helplessly at my desk.

by the Flaming Lips, and Kermit the Frog singing the Rainbow Connection.

The Nina Simone version, I only need to even think about it and I get teary. I just think it's the saddest thing I've ever heard.

has already started to quiver as I play this. When I was told that my nan had passed away I was listening to this song from Stanley Road. This has the phenomenal vocals of Jhelisa and Carleen Anderson too.

Back when we were Beautiful.

Maybe corny country schmaltz to some but for these ears - it's heartbreaking

I'm not sure a song has ever made me cry. There are plenty that fill me with emotion but actually cause tears; I don't think there are any.

They are "Been So Long" by Nina Nastasia and more recently "Hollow Point" by Chris Woods.

I wish I could share the Nastasia one with you, but it appears to be unavailable on Spotty or YouTube (other than being murdered by others). I'll just say that I always think I'll get through it, but the last line kills me every time.

"We carried you, in our arms..."

'Scuse me. I have something in my eye...

This is mine. The feeling of having it all and then losing it. Stubbornly refusing to admit that you need anyone to make you feel happier. It's all in the final verse.

"Well I see that
The world is upside down
My pockets were filled up with gold.
Now the clouds have covered o'er
And the wind is blowing cold
I don't need anybody
Because I learned to be alone"

That, coupled with Tom's howling vocals turning into a desperate wail never fails to make me well up.

... and then the big band ending - we'll just brush that moment of fragility aside and carry on as if nothing happened, yeah? *wipes tear away*

to Tank Park Salute and Family Life, both of which can make me go, I would nominate:

Wake Up In New York - Craig Armstrong & Evan Dando

Fairytale Of New York - Pogues. The bit when she says he took her dreams from her and he responds that he built his dreams around hers. Blub central.

Don't think a song has ever made me cry but certainly made me feel sad or full of melancholy for a time now gone.

Do remember bursting into tears though when I saw Bowie on the serious moonlight tour. I had loved his music for so long and finally, after my last day at school at 16, I headed off on the coach to Rotterdam well I broke away from the people I was with and as soon as he came on and sang cracked actor I blubbed like a little girl.

... make me sob like a child?

*cries for lost childhood*

but because they're so startlingly brilliant:

Springsteen, always makes me well up as does "My Hometown". Always makes me think of my dear, departed dad and the great times we had, and all the times we wasted fighting with each other.

Singing about his dad.

It never fails to get to me. Hell, even the band are crying!

Reminds me of old friends

This clip from Jim Henson's funeral always leaves me rather emotional, in a broken down but uplifted kind of way.

Born Free gets me every time, when Elsa turns up with her two cubs -though have graduated from howling when I were a nipper to merely blubbing now.

As time goes by.

Side Of The Road, by Lucinda Williams. Every time.

I always loved this song of Laura Nyro's (To A Child). When I became a father, though, I really got it. I've just listened to it, through rapidly moistening eyes. Right, I've got ten minutes to collect myself before I go and pick up my daughter from school...

some are gig related

Brian Wilson - well the Surf's Up section of 'Smile' at world premiere
Neil Young - 'Ambulance Blues' 2nd row at Hammy O. You can hear me hand a friend a hanky on my recording
Spiritualized -Ladies and Gentlemn We Are Floating In Space (the Acoustic Mainlines version) (I genuinely want this played when I pop off)

(shit vid - great sound)

Mercury Rev - 'The Dark is Rising'
Bowie - Word On A Wing
PJ Harvey and John Parish - Cracks In the Canvas
Billy Bragg - Tank Park Salute

Though it doesn't make me cry (see comment earlier), Joe Brown's version of "See You In My Dreams" at the Concert For George is heartbreaking.

I would post a vid but YouTube appears to have blocked the content :(

Villagers:

Kate Bush:

[she's making me shed a tear as I write this]

http://www.mojvideo.com/video-joe-brown-i-ll-see-you-in-my-dreams-2002/6...

Its when his son Dhanni puts his head on Clapton's shoulder that gets me

Oh I forgot this

the added symolism of her pregnancy was not lost on the audience

This one from Nothing But The Truth always makes me blub.

"There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes..." devastating.

Ben Folds 'The Luckiest'

a pretty love song until the last verse floors you

"Next door there's an old man who lived to his nineties
And one day passed away in his sleep
And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days
And passed away

I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong"

Strange ain't the word, Ben

Randy Newmans sterling work on Toy Story has me in floods almost every time. I have no idea why You Got A Friend In Me sets me off, it just does.

When She Loved Me, is the one, bloody hell I'm tearing up already

further to the Randy Newman/Toy Story blubfest, here's the late Charlie Louvin singing Buzz's lament.

(try to ignore the ropey Backing vocals)

On a personal note, I was once wandering around HMV in Croydon when Nanci Griffith's 'Late Night Grande Hotel' came on. There's this one lyric - 'Living alone is all I've ever done well', well if that catches you on a bad day (accompianied by it's chord change and swelling strings, and being in Croydon)...
I had to hide in the World Cinema section until I'd recovered.

The Monkees - Listen To The Band.

Martin delivers it, the song always puts me back in the early 70s in my grandad's greenhouse

There are quite a few but none more than McCartney's Here Today, especially this version

...and it's this one...

Gets me every time.

Golden Slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
For I will sing a lullaby

*Sniff*

every time.

Gilbert O'Sullivan "Alone Again Naturally"

Especially Disney schmaltz, but 'When You Wish Upon A Star' (from 'Pinocchio') by Cliff Edwards made me bawl helplessly as a child, and can still do so today.

The futility of the situation for a start, but anyone who has ever lost someone will understand the emotion behind the line;

"I've never seen such a darkness as deep
As the one when I clicked off the light"

with a lovely sad song about the Blitz from his wonderful 1987 solo album Before Your Time.

It was written by the great Welsh songwriter Huw Williams

And here's Fairport proper from the album Red and Gold with another Huw Williams weepie, Summer Before The War.

and appropriate for today too. Forgot this when I posted earlier.

A song written by Scottish-born Australian singer Eric Bogle.

The version I first heard and sobbed to was June Tabor's. That's excellent too. The Pogues made a bloody good job of it as well.

Particularly poignant given that the last surviving combatants of WW1 are now no longer with us but the wars still continue.

Billy Bragg's "Tank Park Salute" is rightly up there on many posts; those who have heard his interview with Simon Mayo and Bob Wilson will not forget it.

Here's the wonderful Sam Baker; on the album version of this song, Jessi Colter sings with him. It is beautiful.

And you can't beat this, either...

I haven't bought the album yet, but if there's anything better than this on it then I'll need new ducts.

This song got me out of a hole - a very deep black hole

I remember buying it when my eldest was a toddler, and knowing in the blink of an eye he would be all grown up.
I vowed to myself to make the most of all the time as he and his little brother were growing up and fortunately I have spent so much time with them. Youngest is 18 next month and eldest 21 in July. I have brought them up on my own for the last ten years and they were joint Best Man at my Wedding last December.....my hay fever seems to be returning,sniff.

A combination of the lyric, the brass band and the beautiful delivery.

And if it's not Kate, it's Janis with surely the most miserable song ever written. Although most of the others on that album were pretty miserable as well- I love it!

Has me in a whole mess every time. There's a version (on Hatful Of Hollow, I think) which has a heartbreakingly beautiful piano part for extra blarting-value. EDIT: It's that "I dreamt about you last night" bit.

Also, 'Stuck On An Island' by Liz Phair, inexplicably has me in floods. I have no idea why.

Billy Bragg's "Tank Park Salute" is intensely moving, as others have already pointed out.

As is Townes van Zandt's "Waiting Around to Die", expecially in the excerpt from the "Heartworn Highways" video, where the old chap sitting on the stoop watching starts blubbing.

But there's only one song that's ever actually made me cry, and it is this:

David Ackles: "Waiting for the Moving Van"

In This Heart - Seonaid O'Connor
Fruit Tree - Nick Drake
Cannonball - Damien Rice
Hurt In Your Heart - John Martyn
Father To Son - Peter Gabriel
Over The Rainbow - Judy Garland
Slip Sliding Away - Paul Simon
Two Little Boys - Rolf Harris ( I know!! )
Puff The Magic Dragon - destroys me so it does.

singing along to my iPod. The two songs always get to me. One is "Johnny Come Lately" by Steve Earle:

"I'm standing on a runway in San Diego
Nobody here, guess nobody knows
'Bout a place called Vietnam"

works so effectivley when it's placed in contrast to his Grand-daddy's experience after WW2.

The other is "Fields of Anfield Road" by the Liverpool Collective.

I feel the same about many of those already mentioned, particularly Tank Park Salute, but this gets me every time.

Another choker, for me at least.

I made two recommendations (Kate Rusby and Janis Ian) in one post. They then disappeared and became two separate posts by Jonnyartist. Then I got one back. Then both. Now I've been ascribed Eric Clapton. It's all very confusing.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark might seem a strange choice, but my sister kept repeatedly playing 'Souvenir' during the week our father lay in hospital in a coma following a massive stroke. He didn't make it and the tune still upsets me now.

As a self confessed solipsist, the songs that make me cry are the ones that I imagine being played at my own funeral.

I'd like people to contemplate SWITCHING OFF by ELBOW

and the curtains closing to IF I SHOULD FALL BEHIND by Springsteen

... my relatives will be relieved. My cousin had FIGHT FOR YOUR LOVE by Cheryl Cole.

@dirk_malcolm

Understandably, many songs about war experiences crop up here. I would add The Colour of the Earth from Harvey's recent album (the one album I have listened to continuously this year). The clip below includes an unexpected a cappella version.

Levi Stubbs' Tears can do it for me

But then so is my three year old. This makes me think of him every time. And one day it'll be about him, too.

But then she has been know to cry at my own songs. And as recently as last week she cried at me singing a Neil Young song! Still, this Freddy Fender record is an exquisite tearjerker.

Songs don't make me cry on their own, it's about the moment.

With that in mind;

When my 18 year old daughter decided on the Uni she was going to (100 miles away) we both roared buckets to
Who knows where the time goes-Fairport Convention

Emotional blackmail worked (and the CONDEM's policies) and she decided to study within daily travelling distance. Still immensly proud that an 18 year old likes Fairport, Nick Drake etc in this day and age.

Moment with 3 sons all asleep

Father to Son-Phil Collins (expects usual Collins based japery!)

by Joni Mithcell always works for me. It's about the daughter she gave up for adoption.

Bit Terry Wogan but reminds me of my dad. And frustratingly not available on i tunes

Elbow's Lippy Kids get me as well but this kid from the Decemberist's finishes me off...

Rolf Harris and "Two little Boys". Hasn't failed to bring a tear ever since i first heard it.
"Did you think I would leave you dying....."

Loads of the above,

Iris DeMent's voice gets me every time on this:

& June Tabor's version of this:

Hackensack from Fountains of Wayne, that uncaring bitch.

When I hear anything by Scouting For Girls it make me want to cry.