I like making lists. There’s an old (and not particularly memorable) Go-Go’s song called “Girl of 100 Lists,” and I always related to it (although it applies even more to my friend Vicki, the Queen of Listmaking). I don’t make written lists quite so often as I used to, because in my current job I’m usually focused on a single task at a time, so to-do lists aren’t as important as they once were. I do, however, just as an example, carry around index cards with lists of books that I want to get at the library on them. These are mostly gleaned from the appropriately named Booklist, the American Library Association’s magazine devoted to book reviews. It’s insanely expensive, over $75 for a year’s subscription, but I got so used to having company subscriptions to it when I worked in publishing, and I missed it so much after I left, that as soon as I could afford it, I started subscribing again. It’s one of several little annual presents that I allow myself. Plus the reviews are geared toward librarians, with the goal of helping them determine whether to order a given book for their library, and since I’m a librarian who has never worked in a library—sort of a library wannabe, I guess—it lets me sort of almost pretend that I work in collection development in a large public library.

Not that I would actually want to work in collection development, given my druthers. It would probably be my second choice if I were to work in a library, but my first choice is cataloging. Which ties in to my love of listmaking, I think, as well as to my actual life as an information architect. (And I miss cataloging, much as I love being an IA.) Cataloging doesn’t actually involve making lists, but it, and IA, involve imposing a structure on disordered information, among other things. And I love that. I’m not sure why, because my own life is utterly disordered (I’m one of those people who occasionally buys CDs I already own either because I don’t know I have them or because I can’t find them—and I take books out of the library that I’ve read already, too), and I’ve coped okay with that for 44 years. But one of the things I love about cataloging is that it is extremely rule-governed, and I like rules. I like order. I like structure. It’s why I’m obsessive about obeying traffic laws and stuff like that (although I’ve been known to flout certain laws…but that’s not relevant here), and why it drives me crazy when other people don’t—I can’t stand people who think the rules don’t apply to them.

And rules aren’t that different from lists, I guess. Except that lists are way more fun. So I’m going to try to start a tradition of listmaking here on the blog.

(Geez, it took me a long time to get to the point there—even by my already windy standards.)

Today’s list, which is a preliminary one, is the Songs That Make Me Cry list. There are several subsets of this list that I’ll explore later on, such as the Songs I Can’t Sing All the Way Through Without Choking Up list, and the Songs That Make Me Cry Out of Sheer Joy list, and the Songs That Shouldn’t Make Anybody Cry But Have Such Powerful Associations for Me That They Make Me Cry list (that one may consist of only one song, though: “Let’s Go” by the Cars makes me cry. I can sort of explain why, but won’t right now, because it’s…just an odd story).

But this list is just songs that make me cry. Some songs on thist list are also on one or more of the sublists, and this is definitely just a preliminary list, but I’ve been meaning to start compiling it for a while and was reminded of that fact by the first song on the list—it came on while I was at the gym last week, and I had to skip it, because crying on the elliptical trainer would be weird. And yes, now I am just typing to take up more space before I get to the actual list, because it amuses me. I crack me up. Someone has to, after all.

1. Iris DeMent, “My Life”
2. Iris DeMent, “Our Town”
3. Iris DeMent, “Mama’s Opry”
(Okay, so there’s actually a significant percentage of Iris’s catalog that makes me cry, and I’m thinking a whole Iris post is going to be needed soon…but those are the top 3. I think.)
4. Patty Griffin, “Useless Desires”
5. Townes Van Zandt, “Tecumseh Valley”
(His hokiest song, in a way, and yeah, I have a problem with the resolution of the story, but it still makes me cry)
6. Sandy Denny, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?”
7. Sandy Denny, “The Pond and the Stream”
8. Nick Drake, “Northern Sky”
9. Nick Drake, “Hazy Jane I”
(And oddly, I’m not sure any other Nick Drake songs make me cry consistently, even though if there were a soundtrack to my depression, it would be the work of Nick Drake, boy howdy. Some of them give me chills, and some of them move me beyond belief, but those two are the only ones that always get to me. I can’t sing “One of These Things First” without choking up, but that’s another list for another day, as previously noted.)
10. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, “Perfect Blue”
11. Keith Whitley, “I’m No Stranger to the Rain”
(Actually, if that song doesn’t make you cry, I recommend checking yourself for a pulse. There’s a Keith Whitley post in the offing somewhere too, I think.)
12. Soul Asylum, “Ain’t That Tough”
13. Soul Asylum, “Closer to the Stars”
(Most Soul Asylum songs make me cry since Karl died, actually…but those two always got to me, long before Karl got sick. Soul Asylum were touring when Husker Du’s manager, David Savoy, killed himself, and they played a version of “Ain’t That Tough” on stage that night (in Boston, I think) that was as blistering and furious as anything I’ve ever heard—I wasn’t there, I was in Minneapolis in a state of shock over David’s suicide, but I heard a recording of it later. And never forgot it.)
14. John Prine, “Hello In There”
15. Lucinda Williams, “Sweet Old World”
16. Richard Thompson, “Small Town Romance”
17. Richard Thompson, “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (which really belongs on a list of its own: the first time I ever heard it was right before “Rumor and Sigh” came out, at an RT show at the Guthrie Theater in Mpls. in 1991, and before I’d even heard all the lyrics, the sheer beauty of the guitar-picking made me cry)
18. Dale Ann Bradley, “East Kentucky Morning”
19. Rosanne Cash, “The Real Me”
20. Elliot Smith, “Miss Misery”
(Totally because of the movie, which also makes me cry. It’s a flawed movie, but it still gets to me, and has continued to do so each of the 75 times or so that I’ve seen it.)
21. Peter Gabriel, “In Your Eyes”
(Speaking of “because of the movie”…)
22. The V-Roys, “Goodnight Loser”
(I do just fine until Scott gets to the “Ain’t she the sweetest thing?” part, and then I’m lost)
23. The Replacements, “I Will Dare”
(“Answering Machine” used to be the one song by any artist that absolutely without fail made me cry, but somewhere along the line, all the heart-grabbing Mats songs—”Within Your Reach,” “Unsatisfied,” even “Hold My Life,” which comes closest to still getting to me— became so familiar to me that they no longer choked me up. “I Will Dare” makes me cry in a happy/sad way because it is, quite literally, the song that changed my life, more than any other single song ever.)
24. 10,000 Maniacs, “Back of the Moon” (mock if you will, but that’s the best song on by far their best album. It’s also #1 on the list of songs I can’t sing without choking up—it’s among my favorite songs in the world to sing, and I’ve sung it literally hundreds of times, and I still choke up every damn time.)
25. Joni Mitchell, “Urge for Going”
(See notes on 10,000 Maniacs song, but multiply the number of times I’ve sung it by at least 10. And it’s a good one to end tonight’s list on, because the weather is finally supposed to turn sharply colder overnight—the mere phrase “turning sharply colder” in a weather forecast can make me happy, especially this time of year—and I’ll probably be singing it in the car tomorrow. And choking up, right around the part about “See the geese in chevron flight.”)

Comments noting songs that make you cry are especially welcome.