Songs for the lachrymose
"We were so young / The time just hung ..."
That was me, many years go. Now I'm not young and time flies by. Is it a problem no longer being young and carefree? No, because when you're young you're not carefree. You're stressed. And uncertain. Nervous and shy. (Tense and nervous and you can't relax). Not to mention poor, unworldly and naive. Anyway, Chad Vangaalen's "We were so young" couplet from his excellent Lila has prompted this sad and maudlin post from your favourite music blogger. Sad and tear-stained, even. Yes, because Lila is a sad, emotion-drenched song. A tear-jerker. And it's not the only one. Here are a few songs that have been known to leave me with a sopping-wet handkerchief (or at least to bring a strange faraway look to my determinedly dry eyes):
Neil Young, After The Goldrush
Jubilee Allstars, Don’t Give Up On Me (the YouTube version is very distorted though)
Sinéad O'Connor, Nothing Compares 2 U
Schneider TM & Kpt.michi.gan, The Light 3000
Herman Düne, You Stepped On Sticky Fingers (especially live c.2004)
Big Deal, Thirteen (the recorded version, which is not online)
The Velvet Underground, New Age, the last two minutes in particular
Felt, The Stagnant Pool
Chad Vangaalen, Lila (as previously mentioned)
The Smiths, Asleep, especially the ending
And ... probably tons of others I can't think of right now. Maybe there was something in the air back then, but there seemed to be a spell in the mid-noughties when every other gig I went to somehow involved tensely desolate moments which threatened to bring tears to the eyes of your humble blogger. I particularly remember a ridiculously sad and bleakly beautiful song by George Thomas in front of an audience of about 11 people at Taylor Johns in Coventry in around 2005, while a Herman Düne show at the Betsey Trotwood in London from about the same time was similarly lachrymose. There was also an occasion, jumping back to the late-80s, when a friend of a friend sang Pale Blue Eyes in the living room of our squalid student house in Manchester during one back-from-the-pub-session - amazing. It's a tired old truism that music acts as an emotional trigger, but I guess if you care about music to any degree then you're surely going to be moved by it in some way. Right? Otherwise, what's the point?
I guess these songs don't, strictly speaking, move me to tears, but they do move me in some way. Or their epic or "ethereal" or melancholic qualities just sound fantastic to my ears and that's what music is all about. There is, though, one exception in all of this. And that's Sinéad O'Connor's weirdly brilliant Nothing Compares 2 U, which actually does reduce me to tears. I think it's the memory of that video where her eyes are brimming over with what seem to be real tears. I saw this on TV with the aforementioned Manc student mates in 1990 and we were all ... shocked. After we'd all sat transfixed watching it no-one could joke about it or even really speak. So, yeah, reckon you're a tough nut and music doesn't move you? Maybe you don't actually like music then ...?
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