MUSIC OR LYRICS? WHY DO CERTAIN SONGS INVOKE TEARS?
Perhaps a decade ago, I was driving in Sparks when “In My Life” by the Beatles came on the radio and then, about halfway through the song, I was crying, apropos of nothing. Well, not nothing. Plainly, the lyrics say something, and not just to me. In 2000, a group of renowned songwriters convened by Mojo magazine selected “In My Life,” written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and made a hit by the Beatles, as the greatest song ever written. The Beatles’ famed producer, George Martin, produced a farewell album of his own, gathering a group of “heroes and friends” to perform Beatles songs. He titled it In My Life. The song itself may partly explain why I reacted to it the way I did. “Though I know I’ll never/ Ever lose affection/ For people and things that went before/ I know I’ll often stop and think about them.” It’s a song of my time, my experiences, my generational identity. I get why it resonates with me. But there’s another song that does it, too—“I’ll Be Seeing You.” It’s not a song of my experiences and generation. I wasn’t even aware of it until I heard it in my 40s in a movie, The Philadelphia Experiment. It’s a World War II song, and I’m a baby boomer. Why does it get to me? I began asking people and writing others to learn if there were songs that could make them cry. It was an occasional hobby stretching over the years, for so long that one of my respondents, former Nevada schools superintendent Eugene Paslov, passed away. His contribution, spanning decades of times and experiences, is included here. Some participants speak here of family or friends who are also gone. I thank those in whom my queries awakened painful memories but who assisted me, anyway. I’d like this article to pique interest so that some readers will go looking for some of these titles. One thing I didn’t want was a cluster of recent hits. I vividly recall all those end-of-century lists in 1999, of movies and albums and books that named the greatest—or worst—of the 1900s (we were still a year away from the end of the 20th century). They tended to name titles within the memory of those who were asked, meaning they tended to be bunched around the late 1900s.
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BY DENNIS MYERS
12 | RN&R |
FEBRUARY 11, 2016
There is even a song called “The Saddest Song” by the Ataris. The lyrics portray a man who grew up without a father—and whose son is now growing up the same way: “So I pretend I’m doing all I can/ And hope someday you’ll find it in your heart/ To understand why I’m not around/ And forgive me for not being in your life.”
