Comments on: Reason and God

By: Hugh

Hugh — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:56:35 +0000

With you on the Bach also parts of Faure and Mozart’s Requiems.

By: Jonathan Pagden

Jonathan Pagden — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:28:17 +0000

Solveig’s Song, from Peer Gynt. Listen to a vocal version and it won’t matter a bit that the words are in Norwegian, it’s my candidate for the Saddest Song Ever Written.

By: Marc

Marc — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:23:29 +0000

Interesting that you should post this, as I was just working on a silly post about “The Saddest Song Ever”. My votes for weepy songs:
1. “The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics wins hands down, I think. It actually has the power to make me cry.
2. “Tomorrow is a Long Time” – Bob Dylan. Doesn’t make me cry, but still very sad.
3. Same for Sufjan Stevens’ “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” Deeply moving song.
As far as uplifting songs go:
1. For some reason, Jackie Wilson’s “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher and Higher)” does just that: lifts me higher and higher. I sometimes feel like I’m going to burst when I hear that song, it fills me with such joy. It brings a different kind of tears.
2. “Fisherman’s Blues” – The Waterboys
3. The live version of U2’s “Bad”, as found on “Wide Awake in America”. As a young man, when I was down, I would lay on the floor in my bedroom, with my head between the stereo speakers, and turn “Bad” way up. It made everything OK.
4. The live version of “Fix You” by Coldplay (on LeftRightLeftRightLeft), when an audience of tens of thousands sings the chorus with gusto. I’m getting chills just thinking about it. Again, another sort of tears. (I’m a sucker for crowds singing joyfully in unison.)
(I would put “Graceland” in there, too, but you already mentioned it)

By: Lynfa Davies

Lynfa Davies — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:34:14 +0000

I just heard this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgvJg7D6Qck
Definitely brought a tear to my eye…

By: Tony B

Tony B — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:56:49 +0000

The choral section of the fourth movement of Beethovens Ninth Symphony. Except if I’m in the office, when I’d look a bit of a Charlie.

By: Graham

Graham — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:43:07 +0000

Feelin’ so real by Moby and I’m gonna be (500 miles) by the Proclaimers make me happy.
until the End of the world by U2 makes my eyes water (it is the story of grace that does it). ‘Turn me tender’ by Martyn Joseph came out at a painful time for me- that does it every time. Plus I met him a year ago and told him about it. Then I saw the picture to accompany the reworking of that song on ‘Evolved’ and gasped at how it linked with my situation…

By: Craig

Craig — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:12:43 +0000

By the way for Funerals / times of grieving John Bell and Graham Maules song, The Last Journey, says all i ever need to say.

By: Craig

Craig — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:04:21 +0000

Funnily enough 2 songs on the one album lay me down and lift me up everytime although this may be associational to my youth as much as anything, Van Morrison’s Evening Medidation takes me low and then cheery up stuff arrives a few tracks laters in Boffyflow and Spike. (on A Sense of Wonder). Another lay me down one from Van is his version of Motherless Child on Poetic Champions, that and Christy Moore’s Back Home in Derry. But I suspect alot of this folk melancholia has to do with me living away from Ireland.
If we’re going classical then Beethoven Kyrie from C Maj Mass Op 86 always gets to me, as does Rachmaninov Vocalise E min Op 34 and i am wont to sniffle at any part of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder.
And again for more associational reasons John Adams Because I Could not Stop for Death, will get to me, as does Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. Oh and one very melancholy album is Lisa Gerard and Patrick Cassidy Imoortal Memory.
Enough of all this, my i pod tells me i have 35.5 days of music stored on it, (so this coudl go on for some time) but I’ve never got around to making sad and happy playlists.

By: Veronica Zundel

Veronica Zundel — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:28:11 +0000

Brass bands make me cry. As do big song and dance musical numbers. I have no idea why.
What makes me dance is any early Rolling Stones, and a track called Dismal Swamp by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who describe their music as ‘progressive bluegrass’.
Oh, and ‘Hit me with your rhythm stick’ makes me wave my arms about madly (but that counts as dancing, for me).