April 26th, 2007
Usually, The A.V. Club uses our definitive mixlist series to deliver the last word on the absolutely best songs about a particular subject. (Generally, our formulations involve a lot of spinning test tubes.) But sometimes you have to look into your own hearts for answers, particularly if the question is "What songs make you cry?" Below are our weepy answers to the question, compiled into a mixlist designed to leave iPods drenched in tears.
1. Nico, "These Days" (available on Chelsea Girl)
Jackson Browne's "These Days" is a world-weary lament that could have been written by Holden Caulfield as he stared dreamily out of a mental-hospital window at the end of The Catcher In The Rye. Like Big Star's "Holocaust," it's a melancholy sigh of a song from someone who's seen far too much of what life has to offer to hold onto anything resembling hope. Not even Nico's Count Chocula-esque accent and tragic-robot delivery can keep the exhausted fragility of "These Days" from subtly but unmistakably working the tear ducts. Remarkably, Browne wrote it while he was still a teen songwriting prodigy learning the ropes from muse/lover Nico and Tim Buckley.
2. Reflection Eternal, "For Women" (available as a bonus track on Train Of Thought)
In "For Women," rapper Talib Kweli reached back into the pantheon of African-American song and offered a hip-hop version of Nina Simone's "Four Women." His poignant, multi-part story-song pays heart-wrenching tribute to four remarkable black women who symbolize the anguish and uplift of multiple generations trying to maintain their self-respect in the face of racism, sexism, and poverty. As with many hip-hop heartbreakers, the production here carries much of the emotion: Hi-Tek's melancholy beat aches with empathy and compassion.
3. The Beach Boys, "'Til I Die" (available on Surf's Up)
Brian Wilson's personal and creative resurgence after years of self-imposed exile is one of rock's great comeback stories, but the Beach Boy's future was very much in doubt in 1971. In his autobiography, Wilson claimed he was so depressed and death-obsessed at the time that he instructed his gardener to dig a grave in the back yard. Wilson poured his emotions into "'Til I Die," a song about humanity's insignificance in the face of the universe. His fellow Beach Boys thought the song was too much of a downer, so Wilson recorded it himself. That's probably just as well—"'Til I Die" is a suicide note that (thankfully) ended up being a false alarm.
4. John Lennon, "Mother" (available on Plastic Ono Band)
John Lennon wrote about his dead mother more than once, but "Julia" took in her memory through rose-colored glasses. "Mother," the lead-off track on Lennon's first post-Beatles solo album, is the angry, nightmarish companion piece. The "seashell eyes" and "windy smile" of "Julia" are set aside—Lennon denounces both of his parents for abandoning him for most of his childhood. "Mother" is devastating because of Lennon's naked hurt as he wails over and over, "Mama don't go, Daddy come home." In the hands of a lesser artist, "Mother" would merely be a rock-star pity party. But Lennon's greatest talent was finding the universal in the personal, and "Mother" digs out listeners' family-related dysfunctions and rubs them raw.
5. Eels, "P.S. You Rock My World" (available on Electro-Shock Blues)
The jolts on Electro-Shock Blues (namely, the deaths of the songwriter's mother and sister) come so fast that there's no choice but to try and mourn with it, which gets pretty oppressive over the course of 45 minutes of album. There are breaks in this million-ton cloud cover, but the closing track, "P.S. You Rock My World," finally lifts it: "Sitting down on the steps at the old post office / The flag was flying at half-mast / And I was thinkin' 'bout how everyone is dying / And maybe it's time to live." The sentiment is as sweet as E ever gets: Everything's still shit, yet there's hope.
6. Beulah, "You're Only King Once" (available on Yoko)
On its first three albums, Beulah draped its pain in shimmering layers of brass and strings; its fourth and last, Yoko, attains jaw-dropping bleakness on "You're Only King Once." For once, there's no whimsical escape from lines like "The stars refuse to shine for you, they do it just to spite / Well, they know you're trying too hard" and "Smile, please smile, I just want you happy." The frustrated character behind so many brilliantly angry Beulah songs has nothing left to comfort him, and it's suddenly very hard to smirk at him.
7. Elliott Smith, "Roman Candle" (available on Roman Candle)
The hallucinatory musings of a longsuffering hostage who can only imagine his revenge, "Roman Candle" is Elliott Smith's calling card—the first song on the first album in a mind-bogglingly rich career best understood as one giant attempt at catharsis. Recorded in a Portland basement under conditions Smith later described as "total autarchy," the track was never intended for public release, but it exists as a primordial soliloquy trapped in the amber of friends' ambitions for his career. Sung in a heavy whisper, the chorus—"I want to hurt him / I want to give him pain"—is just devastating.
8. Bright Eyes, "Going For The Gold" (available on Oh Holy Fools)
This excellent track contains ample ammunition for the anti-Conor Oberst set; it was puzzlingly relegated to a split CD in 2001, when he was 20. The singer-songwriter's cracked voice and weepy acoustic guitar indulge in exactly the kind of self-pity and despair people hate him for. If there's a sadness contest among coffeehouse artisans, the lyrics say, he's winning it—he's the "champion of idiots." But listen through to the last verse, when muted trumpet and weepy flute join in, and Oberst trades the self-doubt for a melancholy celebration of music's power and beauty.
9. Uncle Tupelo, "Still Be Around" (available on Still Feel Gone and 89/93: An Anthology)
One of the alt-country group's most affecting songs glimpses the aftermath of loss with an almost palpable sense of longing. "Still Be Around," which consists of Tupelo co-leader Jay Farrar singing with a 12-string guitar, opens with him on a search: "I don't see you through the windshield / I don't see you in faces looking back me." Unsuccessful, he turns to alcohol, which leads to a self-destructive routine where "the Bible is a bottle and the hardwood floor is home / When morning comes twice a day, or not at all." Farrar needs help out of the muck, but worries that the only person who can help is gone forever.
10. Leonard Cohen, "Famous Blue Raincoat" (available on Songs Of Love And Hate)
Saying "I get teary-eyed over a Leonard Cohen song" is a bit like saying "Coffee perks me up, " since a maudlin pallor hangs over nearly everything the man wrote, even the songs ostensibly about love. In fact, in terms of wallowing in morbidity, "Raincoat" pales in comparison to "Dress Rehearsal Rag," from the same record. Nevertheless, "Raincoat"—structured as a letter of reconciliation between Cohen and an old friend, who was involved in a love triangle with Cohen's woman Jane—is somehow the most emotionally wrenching. The welling of complicated emotions and gentle defeat contained in the lines "I guess that I miss you / I guess I forgive you" gets us every time.
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