Tracks of your tears

Last week’s rundown of the songs that make us cry brought an online flood of alternative tear-jerkers from Ticket readers

I THINK it’s not the songs that make us cry, but the memories that come into our mind . . . We all have different life experiences and there are songs for each and every moment of our lives, some of them make us smile, some laugh, and obviously some of them make us cry, which is absolutely normal because we are just human beings, able to feel. We just apply the song lyrics to our life experience and understand how true it is. Yana

One of the most heart-wrenching songs must be Mad World, the Gary Jules version. “The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had”. Always a tear- jerker! Gerry Hickey

And then there are the sad political ballads like Strange Fruit by Nina Simone –

“Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the popular trees . . .”

Frank Schnittger

Sometimes It Snows in April. Prince. Give it a listen. Murray Nolan

The whole appoggiatura thing shouldn’t come as much of a revelation to anyone who’s done a few grades on the piano or taken music for the Junior Cert, or even anyone who’s listened (and I mean listened) to pop music a lot. It’s a bit moot to base an article on the use of this kind of ornamentation in Someone Like You. Pick any other pop song: I’ll bet it also has appoggiaturas in the melody line.

Actually, isn’t the whole song frustratingly bog-standard? Much of it, the chorus, for instance, (marked as the supposedly emotionally climactic bit by the leap up the octave and jolt in volume, the oldest trick in the book) is built on the most pedestrian, overused and abused chord progression in pop. Nothing is done to subvert or develop this, to drag it away from the exasperatingly mundane.

Well, there’s a bit of variation and a wee bridge near the end, but it’s pop music by numbers. I should say I’m not a prog-rocker. I like good, simple pop. But this is just dull, dull, dull.

And c’mere now, those lyrics . . . again, I’m all for pop lyrics speaking directly, but ‘Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead’? Seriously? Next contestant: Adele from Tottenham. Specialist subject: the bleedin’ obvious.

Now, she’s a good set of lungs on her, even though I find her adenoid wail grating. And if you end up teary-eyed after listening to Someone Like You, grand, I’m not going to argue with that. But I’d suggest that you’re wasting valuable body salts on what amounts to standardised emotional pornography in music. Does that sound a little dramatic?

Well, all I’m asking is, if you heard anyone else at some local open mic night strumming C, G, Amin, F ad nauseum on an acoustic guitar and wailing, albeit ably, ‘Sometimes love is happy, sometimes love is sad,’ etc, would you give her a standing ovation?

I’d go back to the bar.Alice F

I always thought The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot was the saddest song going (I like the Girl Called Eddy version), till my Dad played me Tom Waits’ Kentucky Avenue on my way to a party. Absolutely ruined my night.

Also, “You probably don’t know this song”? Brian, you hipster. Rory Caraher

@Alice F. Is there a hint of envy here? I mean, some 20 lines to give a drubbing to Adele. Okay. Back to the bar. Eamon

When Love Breaks Down, Prefab Sprout. Actually quite a few of Paddy McAloon’s songs are good ’uns in this sense.

Alice F, I agree, I just don’t get the whole Adele thing. Readout Noise

Bob Dylan’s Dream always gets me . . . And Tom Waits’s On the Nickel. Jonathan Brennan

For me the saddest song is The Green Fields of France especially because unfortunately it’s still appropriate. After a century we did not learn our lesson how wars ruin people’s lives.

Klaas V

And some of your sad song choices on facebook.com/irishtimestheticket

Paul Condon: Sigur Rós – Ára Bátur.

Kieron O’Neill: Tom Waits – Martha.

Barry Du Monde: Sia – Breathe Me.

Teresa Madders: Tom Waits – Martha and

The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony.

Damian Nolan: Bobby Goldsboro – Honey, Randy Newman – Bad News From Home, Tom Waits– Lost in the Harbour.

Ciaran de Chaumont: Skunk Anansie – Follow Me Down.

Shane Keaveney: Nick Cave – Till We Came Along This Road.

Andy Millea: Anything by the X Factor shower – as soon as I hear them I feel despair.

Peter Fleming: Elbow – Friend of Ours and Puncture Repair; Spiritualized – Lay it Down Slow, and half their other stuff; Beck – Lost Cause; Elvis – In the Ghetto. Lorraine O’Connell: Johnny Cash – Hurt.

Steven McGlade:

Greg Laswell – Your Ghost; James Blake – Limit to your Love; Aimee Mann – One.

Karl Browne: Waiting Around to Die, by Townes Van Zandt, is probably the Mona Lisa of sad songs.

Mary Catherine Tupper: Tindersticks have so many good ones, but City Sickness is particularly good.