Entertainment For Lively Minds
Uh-oh, I've got something in my eye... Gather!
Posting about brass bands and choirs on songs leads me naturally to ponder songs that can induce a lachrimose state. I'm sure this topic has been done before, so my angle is about breaking down in public, or one's attempts to avoid doing so. Let me speak from experience: I'm a big fan of the wonderful Dutch chanteuse Mathilde Santing, an artiste mostly known (if she's known at all) for interpreting others' songs rather than writing her own, apart from some early and slightly underwhelming efforts. However, when she finally got it together on her album To Others To One, she came up with a song of exquisite poignancy, Too Big For Me. Once, while listening randomly on a bus, this song came on, and I was literally having to bite my lip to hold it together. You may ask why fight it...
Sadly, I can't find the whole song on youtube, but even a 30 second snippet here stirred something in me.
Come on folks, let's hear which songs go straight to your tear ducts!
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Oh, all the time
I think lachrymosity an affliction which comes with advancing years. Most recently for me - Magazine playing 'Shot By Both Sides' on Tuesday. (Sorry to bring them up yet again!). Gabrielle singing 'Rise' has a pretty reliable effect.
Puff the Magic Dragon
It's sad, especially for Dads
Oh Boy!
If Puff The Magic Dragon gets to you, you might need a family pack of Kleenex to get through Jane Siberry's Oh My My. This extraordinary song, which is about 20 minutes long, is nothing less than a spiritual journey set to music. The cumulative effect is almost overwhelming, and this is another song which has almost caused me an embarrassing moment on the bus. Anyway, Mr Crow, the point is it even includes chunks of Puff The Magic Dragon! Not a dry eye in the house.
Puff winds me every time
I was round a mates playing a friendly game of cards a few years ago and Puff The Magic Dragon came on the communcal stereo. Hadn't heard it for ages but once the line 'dragons live forever but not so little boys' was unleashed I started blubbing like a baby.
Unfortunatly I was surrounded by stonehearted student types who found it most amusing and surmised that, I too, could be called a puff.
a recent one is Chris Difford's 'Battersea Boys' - so if you see a grown man weeping at the Luminaire next month then that might be me.
I usually find a pre-requisite is men bearing pipes
Like this:
Driving home
one night (last year, I think) I heard an unidentified Irish woman on Mike Harding's Radio 2 folk show sing RT's From Galway To Graceland.
If anyone can tell me who it was I'd be forever grateful, as it was one of the most moving renditions of anything I've ever heard. Tears were streaming down my face to the point where I wondered if I'd have to pull over.
Truly wonderful...
NB Fan though I am, I've never heard Mr Thompson's version. It doesn't appear on Spotify - should I seek it out elsewhere?
Galway To Graceland...
The version you heard was probably by Eleanor Shanley from her Desert Heart album. You can hear a snippet of it here
http://www.eleanorshanley.com/bio.html
and go to media on menu on left hand side
to see if it's the one you heard, although I do recall hearing it played on Mike Hardings show.
As far as RT's version, it's on his 3cd 'Watching The Dark' set and is well worth getting the whole set if you can. It also has a sublime 9min version of 'Can't Win' and some good Fairport stuff as well.
Eleanor Shanley, I'll wager
I have it on the i-pod, allegedly from the LP Celtic Chillout, of which I deny all knowledge. From on of my cover version stake-outs, I'll wager, tapping in the authors name and lying in wait for passers by.
The only RT version I have is on a Hannibal 3 cd retrospective Watching the Dark.
Richard and Retro,
thank you both. That's the one. (Although with a certain sense of relief I find I'm a little less emotional this evening. Hate getting the keyboard wet.)
Thompson information gratefully received, too.
Must be something about the Irish
Kilkelly, by Mick Moloney, Jimmy Keane and Robbie O'Connell, which can be found on the 'Bringing It All Back Home' compilation, gets me every time.
Apparently based upon letters sent from an Irish father to one of the sons who emigrated to America, each verse a separate letter approximately 10 years apart. Ends with a final letter from the brother, telling him that his father has died.
Soppy as hell, but it...it....excuse me a minute....
La Bush often gets me right in the ducts
Could be any of her slower numbers at the right/wrong moment on the M40, but particularly This Woman's Work or Moments of Pleasure.
Going back as sung by Dusty
never fails to have the orbs welling up. Something to do with the skipping ropes and trains I suspect.
Into My Arms
- Nick Cave
I'm sorry...
...Danny Boy sung by Harry Belafonte. Seriously!
Johnny Cash's version has that effect on me.
At a previous job, one of the guys was playing "The Man Comes Around" in the office one afternoon. When this came on, I had to bite my lip for about three minutes, after which I got up, announced I was going downstairs for a smoke, and went around the back of the building for a bit of a blub.
Said it before
but it's Winter by Tori Amos, her dad & daughter song
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear
Listening to it now, care of Spotify. Just excuse me a minute, got to say goodnight to my daughter. She's 24 but this song feels as though it was written for and about her.
Have you tried "The Fog" by Kate Bush...?
Similar sentiment, with Pa Bush briefly on vocals
Ellis Unit One...
...by Steve Earle. I don't know whether it's his voice, or the subject matter, but... (sniff)...
On the instructions of Retropath,
I'm here to nominate David Ford's Song for the Road. His songs What Would You Have Me Do? and A Long Time Ago have me close to tears, I mean, give me unseasonal hayfever as well.
Thanks Joe
I'm touched. Here's the version, I think, you referred me to, across the way yonder:
Blubby hell
It worked again.......
Dimming Of The Day
by Richard & Linda. Especially when she did it live.
Darlin' Be Home Soon by The Lovin' Spoonful
Prettiest Eyes by The Beautiful South
Both Sides Now by Judy Collins
Melanie's version of Mr Tambourine Man
Amazing Grace by The Pipes and Drums and Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
I could go on, but I'm drowning in a river of tears
Rory's In Heaven
By Christy Moore. Written for Rory Gallagher, on the 'Graffiti Tongue' album.
Very affecting little lullaby to the late great man.
Whilst we're doing laments and lullabies
Kate Rusby, "Who'll sing me lullabies", following the death of Davy Steele, a marvellous scots singer and musician, erstwhile of Ceolbeg (recommended) amongst other bands.
Actually, many of Kates songs can make me blub, at least 2 or 3 an LP.
I was in floods
when I saw this at the local fleapit. Randy Newman sure can writes em. His solo instrumental version is aces too
The first song I can ever remember...
... making me cry was Dire Strait's "Brothers In Arms".
The last song to make me blub (and feel full of joy, oddly enough) was Ray Lamontagne's "You Are The Best Thing".
Warren Zevon
'Keep me in your Heart' (I'm filling up).
Pogues
Fairytale of New York. The bit where Shane sings about keeping her dreams with his own and (and this bit gets me every time) the sings that he can't make it on his own, that he's built his dreams around hers.
Floods of tears every time.
Blimey - you must be damp...
over the Christmas period
Yep
and familiarity doesn't lessen the effect. Shane can write a lyric can't he?
Has to be Kate
A Coral Room
Mná na hÉireann
Under the Ivy
And that sublime moment three minutes into Deeper Understanding, where the Trio Bulgarka's vocals break through the music. Gets me everytime.