Fierce songs that hit you as hard emotionally as stereotypically “emotional” songs

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cobl04

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Awful title but you’ll see my point soon.

Name some songs that are heavy, hard, fast, intense, fierce, anything that wouldn’t necessarily be regarded as “emotional”, ie, you wouldn’t expect them to make you cry, but they do.

Playing To Pimp a Butterfly today I realised The Blacker The Berry makes me cry. It is just so fucking intense. At two points - first it’s the start, the transition from Complexion - “Barefoot babies with no care / teenage gun-toters that don’t play fair, should I get out the car? / I don’t see Compton, I see something much worse / the land of the landmines, the hell that’s on earth” - going into that blacker-than-midnight beat, and then the the tailend of the final verse

So no matter how much I like to preach with the Panthers
Or tell Georgia State “Marcus Garvey got all the answers”
Or try to celebrate February like it’s my B-Day
Or eat watermelon, chicken, and Kool-Aid on weekdays
Or jump high enough to get Michael Jordan endorsements
Or watch BET cause urban support is important
So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street when gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?! HYPOCRITE


It is just so fucking raw and powerful, it brings tears to my eyes every time. I have a similar reaction to B.O.B., again just because it is so fucking fierce, from the jam-packed music - slamming drums, melting electric guitar, demented church organ, two incredibly fast verses from 3000 and Big Boi, and then it just keeps fucking building until the monstrous, apocalyptic “POWER/MUSIC/ELECTRIC/REVIVAL” refrain at the end. It’s so huge, and was such a perfect opener on their reunion shows, it just melts your face and reminds you that no one can match them.

So yeah, any songs like this that move you to tears, even though they aren’t traditionally songs that would do that?
 
Definitely TBTB, the emotion is all too real, it's not just about a breakup or something, it's a matter of life and death and there isn't a foot put wrong for the whole track. Sometimes I just sit in silence listening to it.

For some reason The House that Dripped Blood by Mountain Goats was the second track I thought of, there are a lot of Mountain Goats tracks that can make you cry for sure, but this one seems to just because of how damn visceral it is. Sheer efficiency of music and lyrics, as if it was smithed. Also Power by Yeezy, it's no mournful ballad, just a genius at the top of his game, personal and taking no prisoners.
 
I should get into some Mountain Goats. Recs?

Agree on Power. Especially that "at the end of the day goddamn I'm killing this shit..." part.


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I should get into some Mountain Goats. Recs?

The Sunset Tree. It's not my favorite, it's not the favorite for quite a large number of fans, but it's probably the most consistently well-liked album by them. It's extremely personal and gives you a great idea of their sound. It's like reading an entire autobiography in 40 minutes, he's that efficient with details.
 
As far as this thread goes, I'm having a tough time thinking of any examples, but I'll throw one out there that jumps between fierce and soft: Piece of My Heart. The lyrics are a bummer, but the chorus is a bulldozer due in large part to Janis' vocal. I find that song is extremely powerful without it overdosing on pathos. It's very cathartic.
 
Yeah, most of the songs that really hit me are going for the gut already. One that isn't really emotional lyrically but has a lot of personal resonance for me, so much that I almost can't listen to it anymore, is Sufjan's UFO Sighting Near Highland, IL. Morrissey's Southpaw and Depeche Mode's Waiting for the Night would probably fall into that category as well.
 
Interesting, care to elaborate on UFO Sighting? It's a beautiful song, very mournful.

It has to with my partner, who introduced me to Sufjan back in 2007. We were taking our first major trip together, and as we were driving through fuck-all country in central Illinois at midnight or 1 AM, she put on that album and talked about what it meant to her. It's one of the few songs I remember the exact situation when I first heard it; I remember it with perfect clarity. So I always associate that song with us and the beginning of the relationship.

That piano line is sheer beauty; I remember when I learned it and finally played it correctly, it was really powerful for me. Sorry if that's TMI.
 
It has to with my partner, who introduced me to Sufjan back in 2007. We were taking our first major trip together, and as we were driving through fuck-all country in central Illinois at midnight or 1 AM, she put on that album and talked about what it meant to her. It's one of the few songs I remember the exact situation when I first heard it; I remember it with perfect clarity. So I always associate that song with us and the beginning of the relationship.

That piano line is sheer beauty; I remember when I learned it and finally played it correctly, it was really powerful for me. Sorry if that's TMI.



That's utterly lovely man, really made me smile :) thanks for sharing, wish more people would do that.

:up::up::up:
 
Got another one:



I've always interpreted this song as being about a restless, compulsively destructive and consistently unsatisfied person that's growing to recognize what they do to people around them. It's a very fierce, exhausting song with a breathtaking instrumental performance and the vocal really sells it. Possibly the best song by one of the best rock bands of the past 20 years.

I, I am a poison and I
I am still coursing through your bloodstream like a ghost
Like wine
Gathering vintage for the day I hurt the most
I, I am a land mine and I
I lay on the soil burned out by battles you thought you'd won.
I've got time
To wait for the footsteps
Of a memory that's on the run
 
LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends? I don't think it's a stereotypically emotional song, but it does hit hard.

Also, it's a cobbler thread, so I need to mention James Murphy somehow.
 
See I struggle a bit with this thread topic because 'emotional' or 'stereotypically emotional' seems to be casting a rather narrow net. It would never have occurred to me to nominate the National's 'Abel' or 'Mr November' in this thread if somebody else hadn't, because to me they are deeply emotional songs. Just not, you know, power ballads or whatever.
 
See I struggle a bit with this thread topic because 'emotional' or 'stereotypically emotional' seems to be casting a rather narrow net. It would never have occurred to me to nominate the National's 'Abel' or 'Mr November' in this thread if somebody else hadn't, because to me they are deeply emotional songs. Just not, you know, power ballads or whatever.

It was a tough concept to explain :lol: You're right, they are emotional, just not in that obvious, heartstring-pulling way.
 
I took it more like songs that are emotional for you, but for personal reasons rather than lyrics, structure, etc.
 
It was a tough concept to explain :lol: You're right, they are emotional, just not in that obvious, heartstring-pulling way.

What about genres like metal or emo? I could nominate a whole bunch of songs from said genres that aren't obvious heartstring pullers but were written to be emotional. Hell, it's right there in the genre name for emo. Just to take two examples from one such band, The Hotelier, "Your Deep Rest" and "Our Lives Would Make a Sad, Boring Movie" are uptempo tracks with pop punk influences, and if you don't pay attention to the lyrics they might even seem fun tracks, but they get me right in the gut - as they're intended to. The chorus of "Your Deep Rest" describes the funeral of somebody who committed suicide, and the little lyrical changes made each time just compound the emotional intensity of the song.

But I suppose one that might hit on the spirit of what you're getting at would be one of my favourite metal tracks, Agalloch's "In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion". It's a sprawling and heavy atmospheric black metal composition that really puts their post-rock and neofolk influences front and centre to emphasise the band's sonic connections with nature and winter. But oh man there's a part of the verse that comes in after the eight minute mark where Jon Haughm whispers "and fade away" that gets me every time. When he repeats it after the ten minute mark - first "wash away", then "fade away" - and some more martial drumming changes the direction of the song, that's the absolute kicker.
 
The Good Life by Weezer is really hitting me hard right now, just because the lyrics are basically my life right now. Considering that Rivers wrote it after a long, painful process of lengthening his leg that was shorter than the other one and I just got done with a long painful process of dealing with a chronic illness and a couple surgeries...god damn I wanna get back to the Good Life.


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