FIVE SONGS THAT WILL MAKE YOU CRY (PART 2).

 Today I return with other 5 songs that will make you cry. This is the second part to a post I did near 2020 Christmas . The purpose is not to drive you in tears in the summer holidays, but to create a playlist that you can check out whenever you feel in the mood to listen to them.

1. Unchained Melody- Elvis: Elvis covered the classic song from The Righteous Brothers in his last concert in 1977, just weeks before his death. He sang it while playing the piano in his iconic white and shimmering golden suit. Elvis showed his vocal power during the performance and appeared to be a little bit exhausted after the whole show. You can even hear some suffocation on his breath. This performance may be the perfect metaphor for the last and final years of the King: Locked up in Las Vegas' Westgate Hotel, always performing and physically deteriorated, but so joyful and powerful on stage as in his early days. 

This memorable performance makes up the final scene of Baz Luhrmann's Elvis biopic, creating a moving end. Both, the song and the film will drive you to tears. 

2. La Cura- Franco Battiato: La Cura was a single from Battiato's album L'imboscata (whose cover -one of my favourites- is the Antoine-Jean Gros painting The Battle of Pyramids), written with the philosopher Malio Sgalambro. The lyrics conform one of the most beautiful poems you could say to a loved one. With marked ballad drums, a fearless electric guitar and orchestral arrangements, the song is a chant to love and trust, keeping the traditional Battiato's culturalismo alive (Vagavo per i campi del Tennessee /Come vi ero arrivato, chissà// Wandering around the fields of Tennesee, How I got there, who knows?). Love is portrayed with an immaculate pureness, without paraphernalia- just what's important.

'Ti proteggerò dalle paure delle ipocondrie
Dai turbamenti che da oggi incontrerai per la tua via
Dalle ingiustizie e dagli inganni del tuo tempo
Dai fallimenti che per tua natura normalmente attirerai
Ti solleverò dai dolori e dai tuoi sbalzi d'umore
Dalle ossessioni delle tue manie
Supererò le correnti gravitazionali
Lo spazio e la luce per non farti invecchiare
E guarirai da tutte le malattie
Perché sei un essere speciale
Ed io, avrò cura di te'                                                  (via genius)

'I'll protect you from the fears of hypochondria,

From the disturbances that starting from today you'll encounter on your way.

From all the injustices and deceptions of your time,

From the failures that your nature will attract.

I'll relieve you from the pains and from your mood swings,

From the obsessions of your delusions.

I'll overcome the gravitational currents,

The space and the light,

In order to not to let you grow old.

And I'll heal you from all the diseases,

Because you're a special being,

And I will take care of you'.                                            (via lyricstranslate)

3. Perdóname-Rosalía (La Factoría Cover): Rosalía is performing the cover of La Factoría's Perdóname in her Motomami tour. The Spanish star sings the melodic part of the song (one of the best examples of old-school reggaeton) with heart-felt vocals: Rosalía seems to actually feel the song, almost crying on-stage. 

On her third album, the songs from the side "Mami" are more vulnerable and can make you cry, like Como Un G or G3N15 (Genís) , a letter to her nephew where Rosalía describes the reality of life in Los Angeles, where she lived during the pandemic.

4.Point Blank- Bruce Springsteen: On the first part of Songs that will make you cry, I included another song from The River: the title track. This time, I choose Point Blank, a song where Springsteen talks about an ex-girlfriend's drug addiction and his wish of them living happily again . The song is dismal and full of pain, where Springsteen shows his storytelling with the rawness of reality and where words fit or 'fall one by one'.

 The Boss references again Shakespeare's masterpiece Romeo & Julliet , which also appears in Tunnel Of Love's Tougher Than The Rest . There's a video on YouTube that plays the song as the soundtrack of some scenes of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, but it could have actually worked as part of the soundtrack of The Panic In Needle Park (Jerry Schatzberg, 1971).There is harshness in the account, but there is some affection too.The writing illustrates hopelessness, but surrounded by a dreamy desire of the couple's joy:

'You grew up where young girls
They grow up fast
You took what you were handed
And left behind what was asked
But what they asked, baby, wasn't right'.                               (via Genius)

'I was gonna be your Romeo 
You were gonna be my Juliet
These days you don't wait on Romeos
You wait on that welfare cheque.'

5. Praying For Time- George Michael: The first single from Michael's second solo album, Listen Without Prejudice (Vol. 1), gathers every ingredient of an 80s ballad , with solid and powerful drums, not to talk about love, but about the society in the late 80s. This song shows George's social conscience, that persisted throughout his whole career. 

The protagonist of the track are the lyrics and Michael's voice, that almost yells because of desperation. This social-diving  that George Michael does on the track leaves the listener with sentences that 'stay with you', which reverberate in your mind,  as James Corden says in the Freedom Documentary. He digs deeper on the track (like Liam Gallagher comments on the documentary) and that results in great line. Here there are some to remember:

'The rich declare themselves poor,

These are the days of the empty hand, oh, you hold on to what you can
And charity is a coat you wear twice a year'.

'So you scream from behind your door
Say "What's mine is mine and not yours.'                                      (via Genius)

'It's hard to love, there's so much to hate
Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of
And the wounded skies above say it's much too late
So, maybe we should all be praying for time.'

You can listen to these songs and more on the playlist below: