Songs that make me cry

"Brick" - Ben Folds Five

A simple tale of the emotional experience of two teenagers getting an abortion behind their parents backs. Folds has said it was based on his own experience with his high school girlfriend. The verses are simply told, but richly worded. "Six am, day after Christmas, I throw some clothes on in the dark, the smell of cold, car seat is freezing, the world is sleeping, I am numb." The more abstract chorus talks about the feeling of drowning, and being lost. Those kinds of feelings that can't help but connect with anybody, regardless of whether they've gone through the same experience that Folds himself did.



"Heaven Sent" - Parker Millsap

A father/son song, this one a little different though. It's the story of the gay son of a preacher father trying to come to terms with his own sexuality while also not understanding how his family won't accept him. They accepted him when they didn't know he was gay, now that he's in love and wanting to be open they won't accept him. But the son still loves the dad and wants his acceptance. The son was taught that Jesus loved him no matter what, but he sees that his dad isn't the same. "Did you love when he was just my friend?"



"Save Him" - Justin Nozuka

A powerful story of the turn that happens to a man changing from a loving boyfriend to an abusive husband and father. Nozuka himself supposedly had an abusive father so that makes sense how the emotions come through here so strongly despite it not being an autobiographical story. And the way that Nozuka structures the story, he leaves us with a melancholy feeling on the love that opened the song.



"Independence Day" - Bruce Springsteen

The king of all father/son songs in my mind (blows away Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" and "Father and Son" from Cat Stevens, in my book). It's a song of a son leaving home, having come to understand how similar and how different he and his father are and all the problems it's caused. The son is singing to the father, and the line "won't you just say goodbye, it's Independence Day" is the line that gets me most, as the son pleads with his dad to at least say goodbye to him as he leaves home.



"It's Quiet Uptown" - from the musical Hamilton

A song that maybe doesn't have the total impact without the context of how it fits in the play. Alexander Hamilton went through the nations first big political sex scandal, as his extramarital affair was made public knowledge. Then his son is murdered in a duel defending his father's honor. Hamilton had wanted to move the family to uptown NYC, to Harlem, which was out in the country at that point. Hamilton pleads with his wife Eliza to take him back while they both grieve the loss of their child. The line "he's going through the unimaginable" is the one that gets me so much. As anyone who has gone through real tragedy can attest, there just aren't words for what you're feeling sometimes. "Going through the unimaginable" is the best way to describe that feeling that I've heard.



"Sarajevo" - Watsky

The story of Admira Ismic and Bosko Brkic, a couple murdered in Sarajevo during the Bosnian Civil War in 1994. She was a Muslim, he was a Christian. They were murdered by snipers as they were trying to flee the city. Dubbed by the international media as Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo, their pictures were on many international magazine and news broadcasts. Watsky said that coming from a house with a Jewish father and Christian mother he wanted to write a song about the transcendent power of love. This song powerfully does that, hits me right in the heart.



 "I Can't Write Left-Handed" - Bill Withers

The most powerful anti-war song ever recorded, Bill Withers in his Live at Carnegie Hall album (my favorite live album) tells the story of a man coming home from Vietnam having lost his right arm. He has to ask someone else to write a letter to his family, begging them back home to get a draft deferment for his younger brother. He talks about how fighting seemed exciting when in basic training but how the reality of war changes that in your mind. It's a powerful sketch of a broken man just trying to make sure no one else goes through what he had to.