Music That Made an Emotional Impact on You

gaporter

gaporter

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Given that this is sort of an abstract idea for a thread, I'm not sure if something like this already exists. Apologies in advance if it does!

I wanted to make a thread for people to discuss the songs or albums that have made an emotional impact on them. Maybe it was a song that you could relate to, one that changed your perspective or just a song that was there when you needed it to be.

I don't want anyone to feel obligated to put all their feelings and emotions out in the open if they're uncomfortable doing so, but it is encouraged!
 
No-Man Together We're Stranger

During a bad break up

From lyrics to mood it is a put on front to back album, not pick track at a time kinda meal

Steve Wilson's instrumentation is heartbreaking and nostalgic and Tim Bowiness' voice is like honey over wool
 
All of my top favorite albums are this thing. I want music to move me. I have a lot of trouble identifying emotions and a lot of times I don't even know I am having them. My emotions are way ahead of me and it can take me some time to catch up to them. I am aprticualrly attracted to people and music who can do some of this work for me. My most recent overly moving expereince along this vein was Florist - Emily Alone and before that I would say Big Thief - Capacity which, in a lot of ways, reignited my passionate search for music to touch me.
 
Quite a few Rickie Lee Jones songs, We Belong Together from Pirates, Nobody Knows My Name which was adlibbed after been given a brief outline and I Was There which are both on excellent The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard , The Gospel Of Carlos, Norman and Smith which is about the 2 African American (and one Australian )runners at the Mexico Olympics who protested against racial discrimination , Bonfires from the same album . . . a small sample of an incredible talent and unique voice who gets overlooked all too often .
 
There's a few...

Etta James - "I'd Rather Go Blind," version from Live In San Francisco.
After a failed relationship, I drove around with this in my car playing very loud. Somehow, through doing this, I found my singing voice for the first time.

Dar Williams - "You're Aging Well," from The Honesty Room.
It took me a while to realize that this song is about (surviving? not going through with?) a suicide attempt, and being able to talk with another survivor who showers her with praise for making it to the other side:

I'm so glad you finally made it here
With the things you know now that only time could tell
Looking back, seeing far, landing right where we are
And, oh, you are aging
And, oh, I am aging
And, oh, aren't we aging well?

Just thinking about how many people I knew who will never get to hear that brings me to tears every time.
It takes a much deeper level when I look at the rest of the lyrics and themes of both woman empowerment and woman suppression so boldly take shape. My daughter is only two and it terrifies me to think that, someday, this song could resonate with her.

Dar Williams - "Mortal City," from Mortal City.
The song is about a first-date during an ice-storm, presumably decades ago before technology became what it is, as the entire city has been asked to shut off lights because power is needed for the hospital. The narrator spends an the entire song thinking that the inhabitants of the city are lost, selfish souls until all the lights, one by one, go out. I always tear up at the end, but I can't exactly put into words why:

I hear your heart beating
I hear my heart beating
I hear a thousand hearts beating at the hospital
And a thousand hearts by their bedsides, waiting
Saying, "that's my love, right there in the white gown."

We're not alone in the mortal city.
 
It's February 2001, and I'm a senior in high school, and my home life really, really sucks (short version- abusive stepmother). Things were just falling apart, but I had always lived in a crappy home situation and didn't really have a way of conceptualizing it. I was just doing my time until I could escape to college.

I had recently started my journey away from radio rock music with the pop punk wave cresting at the time, but I was early in my journey. I had a Target gift card someone gave me for my birthday, so I decided I wanted to go buy a CD. For no good reason that I recall, I ended up leaving with Radiohead's Kid A. I get in the car, pop it in, and think that I must have made a big mistake.

Thing is, I only had a dozen or so CDs at the time, so I kept giving it a try, and I started to like this or that track. One day, I had to go to some early-morning meeting, and I put it in again. It was the pre-GPS era, and I got good and lost as the sun started rising, and "The National Anthem" was playing, and Thom Yorke is crying out "holding on!" as the song descends into free-jazz chaos, and it clicked. This wasn't music snarling at what's wrong with life, like so much of the punk I liked (and still do!), this was music that was down in the same trench as I was, next to me. Then, "How to Disappear Completely" came on, and "I'm not here / This isn't happening" just wrecked me. I pulled over and just watched the sun rise over the desert, and listened to rest of the album while trying not to cry and failing. I never made it to the meeting, but I had a new favorite album.

Within weeks I had the rest of Radiohead's albums, and had discovered stuff like Sigur Rós, Elliott Smith, and Built to Spill, and my musical life changed. I know it has a reputation for being a cold or distant album, but Kid A was and is an emotionally resonant album for me.
 
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MadLucas said:
There's a few...

Etta James - "I'd Rather Go Blind," version from Live In San Francisco.
After a failed relationship, I drove around with this in my car playing very loud. Somehow, through doing this, I found my singing voice for the first time.

Dar Williams - "You're Aging Well," from The Honesty Room.
It took me a while to realize that this song is about (surviving? not going through with?) a suicide attempt, and being able to talk with another survivor who showers her with praise for making it to the other side:

I'm so glad you finally made it here
With the things you know now that only time could tell
Looking back, seeing far, landing right where we are
And, oh, you are aging
And, oh, I am aging
And, oh, aren't we aging well?

Just thinking about how many people I knew who will never get to hear that brings me to tears every time.
It takes a much deeper level when I look at the rest of the lyrics and themes of both woman empowerment and woman suppression so boldly take shape. My daughter is only two and it terrifies me to think that, someday, this song could resonate with her.

Dar Williams - "Mortal City," from Mortal City.
The song is about a first-date during an ice-storm, presumably decades ago before technology became what it is, as the entire city has been asked to shut off lights because power is needed for the hospital. The narrator spends an the entire song thinking that the inhabitants of the city are lost, selfish souls until all the lights, one by one, go out. I always tear up at the end, but I can't exactly put into words why:

I hear your heart beating
I hear my heart beating
I hear a thousand hearts beating at the hospital
And a thousand hearts by their bedsides, waiting
Saying, "that's my love, right there in the white gown."

We're not alone in the mortal city.
Click to expand...
Wow, yeah, Dar Williams has a way with words. Mortal City is one of my favorite albums. Have you ever heard her duet of "Aging Well" with Joan Baez? It's haunting. The song that tears me up the most is "February". The cycle through the end of a relationship using the seasons of the year to illustrate. Christmas becomes the flag that shows the relationship is dead and you "give presents without cards or caring". In the Spring, they say they still love each other and then the last verse starts with "my new lover made me keys to the house". Damn, that line gets me every time.

I threw your keys in the water, I looked back,
They'd frozen halfway down in the ice.
They froze up so quickly, the keys and their owners,
Even after the anger, it all turned silent, and
The everyday turned solitary,
So we came to February.
First we forgot where we'd planted those bulbs last year,
Then we forgot that we'd planted at all,
Then we forgot what plants are altogether,
and I blamed you for my freezing and forgetting and
The nights were long and cold and scary,
Can we live through February?
You know I think Christmas was a long red glare,
Shot up like a warning; we gave presents without cards,
And then the snow,
And then the snow came, we were always out shoveling,
And we'd drop to sleep exhausted,
Then we'd wake up, and its snowing.
And February was so long that it lasted into March
And found us walking a path alone together.
You stopped and pointed and you said, "That's a crocus, "
And I said, "What's a crocus?" and you said, "It's a flower, "
I tried to remember, but I said, "What's a flower?"
You said, "I still love you."
The leaves were turning as we drove to the hardware store,
My new lover made me keys to the house,
And when we got home, we just started chopping wood,
Because you never know how next year will be,
And we'll gather all our arms can carry,
I have lost to February.
 
LeSamourai said:
It's February 2001, and I'm a senior in high school, and my home life really, really sucks (short version- abusive stepmother). Things were just falling apart, but I had always lived in a crappy home situation and didn't really have a way of conceptualizing it. I was just doing my time until I could escape to college.

I had recently started my journey away from radio rock music with the pop punk wave cresting at the time, but I was early in my journey. I had a Target gift card someone gave me for my birthday, so I decided I wanted to go buy a CD. For no good reason that I recall, I ended up leaving with Radiohead's Kid A. I get in the car, pop it in, and think that I must have made a big mistake.

Thing is, I only had a dozen or so CDs at the time, so I kept giving it a try, and I started to like this or that track. One day, I had to go to some early-morning meeting, and I put it in again. It was the pre-GPS era, and I got good and lost as the sun started rising, and "The National Anthem" was playing, and Thom Yorke is crying out "holding on!" as the song descends into free-jazz chaos, and it clicked. This wasn't music snarling at what's wrong with life, like so much of the punk I liked (and still do!), this was music that was down in the same trench as I was, next to me. Then, "How to Disappear Completely" came on, and "I'm not here / This isn't happening" just wrecked me. I pulled over and just watched the sun rise over the desert, and listened to rest of the album while trying not to cry and failing. I never made it to the meeting, but I had a new favorite album.

Within weeks I had the rest of Radiohead's albums, and had discovered stuff like Sigur Rós, Elliott Smith, and Built to Spill, and my musical life changed. I know it has a reputation for being a cold or distant album, but Kid A was and is an emotionally resonant album for me.
Click to expand...
Damn. Great story! I’m listening to this album right now because of your post. Thank you
 
gaporter said:
Bumping this thread and also sharing a song that impacted me emotionally. You ever have a song that describes a feeling you have better than you ever could yourself? In 2014, Against Me! released that song for me and I've held it dear ever since.

Click to expand...


This may sound stupid, but this song helped me to emotionally understand, even if just a tiny, tiny bit, some of the feelings trans people must face. It took an intellectual reality and made it a bit more real. The line about the ragged edge of the summer dress brought tears to cis-gender Mormon-raised straight dude's eyes.
 
LeSamourai said:
This may sound stupid, but this song helped me to emotionally understand, even if just a tiny, tiny bit, some of the feelings trans people must face. It took an intellectual reality and made it a bit more real. The line about the ragged edge of the summer dress brought tears to cis-gender Mormon-raised straight dude's eyes.
Click to expand...
It's not stupid at all! I feel like that's partially the purpose of the song, to try to convey to someone on the outside just what that turmoil is like. Multiple times I've sent this song to friends to try to explain to them how I feel. It's such a powerful song and one that hits hard for me even after a billion listens. Hearing it for the first time was so overwhelming emotionally. It's hard to say how it feels to have someone say things you've always felt deep down, like they just pulled it straight from your soul. So I don't think it's stupid - I think that was just the song doing what it was meant to do <3
 
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