the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem - the Parting Glass - "All the harm I ever did, I swear it was to none but me" - welp, yep, there you go: that's the most depressingly relatable sentiment in song.
Kimya Dawson - Hold My Hand and Walk Like Thunder - The only person of color on this list and it's... the whitest black girl EVER. :/ "Hold My Hand"'s 'bout child abuse. Not hard to make that topic tear-worthy, but Kimya makes it both quietly disquieting and funny. Still, I spent a portion of yesterday standing outside an Italian restaurant shielded from the rain waiting for my mom to pick me up, listening to the "Alex" section of "Walk Like Thunder" and weeping. There was a time in my life when I was half-pissed at Kimya for dedicating so much of the song to a trans man, when, as we all know, trans men are still MEN and therefore privileged and inherently evil, right? Fuck that noise, Natalie, fuck that noise forever. Anyhow, it's just like the best song ever written by a straight person kinda about how much it sucks to be queer. I mean, there's way more to it than that, death and perseverance and all that, but that's the message I got from it yesterday, in the rain: if you're trans*, you're going to die of cancer at 33, so there's no use not trying to make as many good friends as you can. Cheery stuff, truly. Oh and then Aesop Rock says some stuff in his usual semiscrutable fashion and yeah that makes me cry, too. :/
Hedwig and the Angry Inch - the Origin of Love - Look, I get all of the things wrong with this song - the awkward rhymes ("fork stuck in a spoon," really?), the dismissal of non-binary folk, the poly-shaming, the tenuous grasp of classical mythology - and maybe it's just where I first saw the clip for "the Origin of Love" (near the end of "Yu + Me: Dream," my favorite webcomic ever) that affects the effects it has on me but dang, the entire idea of your true love having been your literal other half and them being out there somewhere looking for you: that shit chokes me up big-time, every time. I still haven't seen the entire movie, because I'm all about NOT endorsing cis men playing trans women on stage or screen (excepting I'm all for Cillian Murphy and Zac Pennington playing women, trans or cis, just because they're both too fucking pretty not to always be in drag my god) but I've heard both the original cast version and movie soundtrack oh AND the Wig in a Box tribute album, despite the presence of, ugh, Spoon and Ben Folds, because I can't possibly pass up Yoko collaborating with Yo La Tengo or Fred Schneider yelling "WHERE MY PENIS USED TO BE WHERE MY VAGINA NEVER WAS."
Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End - There are few through-lines to the songs on this list, besides the ones that are Irish, but this and "the Origin of Love" have similar themes, expressed pretty succinctly in the former's title: you may be a loveless loser but there's someone out there for you. But that's the thing: I never take that message from these songs, but rather the opposite: there's someone out there for me yeah but I MAY NEVER FIND THEM and then I'll die alone and heartbroken at 27 without a dollar to my name and I'll have to do sex work and I'll be murdered by a john and I'll get AIDS from sharing estrogen needles and and and yeah. :'( WORK THAT SEXY CATASTROPHIZING, BITCH
the Magnetic Fields - Asleep and Dreaming - It's actually kind of amazing that no other Stephin Merritt songs have ever made me weep, considering that I'm pretty much the biggest fangirl of his that exists, and his sense of the sentimental fits so well with mine - "I don't know you if you're beautiful because I love you too much" is just straight-up the single fucking SWEETEST sentiment I've ever encountered in music. It's like a fucking One Direction lyric I swear but oh my, how the tears well.
Joanna Newsom - Esme - The only song that's on this list for its sheer beauty rather than any lyrical conceit - I don't find "blackberry, rosemary, Jimmy crack corn" or "ties and rails, ties and rails" to be exactly heart-string-pulling or gut-punching, but get me in the right mood and that main swooning melody will still make me bawl - then again, so will cats. Like sometimes I just see a cat and start crying. And Moomins. :/
Planxty - the West Coast of Clare - The definitive rough break-up song? "Numb with grief" - yeah been there. "Memories I have of you won't leave me peace" - yeah that, too. Dang, song, s'like you've actually been in love and stuff.
the Pogues - A Pair of Brown Eyes - Have I mentioned that the Irish just do sadness better than any other white people? This is the only song I've ever heard that really makes war sound as bad as war surely is - as antiwar as I am, I don't actually usually give a fuck about the soldiers - they're usually, y'know, men. But Shane McGowan, the poet laureate of punk, sets a tale of lost love against the absolutely horrific backdrop of bloody battle and suddenly the sheer terrifying reality of war comes to life. And in a sick, none-more-black way, it's even kind of funny. Funny, frightening, poetic and deeply mournful - that's a combination of emotions that basically no other lyricist in rock has ever managed to tap. The Irish, man. All this and Joyce? Dang. The Irish.
Honourable Mention:
Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U - uh yeah, this was just a phase I was going through. I think I'm over it. I hope to god I'm over it.
There are actually at least two other songs that have made me cry under very specific circumstances, but I'm too embarrassed to mention them, and I'll openly admit that I cried during Meet the Robinsons. And Precious. :/
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