SEVEN #5: songs that have made me cry
A very happy list
Hey, guess what, it’s Friday the thirteenth. A day of no significance. Neither is tomorrow, February fourteenth. Since no days mean anything, ever, I have decided to unveil SEVEN songs that have made me cry at one point or another in my meaningless little life thus far. We’ll go in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent song that reduced me to tears and ending with the melodies that wettened my face at around eight years old, conveniently skipping that time a Simple Plan song got me real damn close (is2g the deep cut “Holding On” is a shockingly poignant song (to a thirteen year old)).
Grab your broken mirrors and upside-down horseshoes and give up on Tinder altogether as you adopt yet another black cat: here are seven songs that have made me cry and could make you cry, too! Mild content warning for mentions of abuse, dementia, depression.
Emily Scott Robinson - Time Traveler
Let’s get one thing out the way first: Emily Scott Robinson’s new album is absolutely excellent. Cool, great, flashback to late 2025: I attended one of her shows where she performed a lot of new, unreleased songs, including the heartbreaking “Time Traveler”. If you have ever experienced a loved one suffering from dementia, this song is bound to, eh, fuck you up. To be quite honest, I find myself aching to praise the songwriting - from the hyper-specific verses to a simplistic chorus rendering the song intimately universal - as a way to avoid talking about the disease that kills someone twice. However, it is the angle of “Time Traveler” that makes it so gorgeous: it neither avoids the pain nor allows itself to fully succumb to it, instead finding a glimpse of beauty in someone’s inability to never be themselves again. I cried at that show, I cried when Appalachia released, and I’ll cry whenever I hear or think of this song.
Ethel Cain - Thoroughfare
It’s 2022, Preacher’s Daughter has just released and I was… trying to make sense of it. My first time hearing Ethel Cain’s debut album was a nice, pleasant, etc. experience: all the usual adjectives for decently good music. However, once I sat down with the lyrics for a proper listen, “Thoroughfare” hit like no other song… upon third listen. It’s a turning point, a deciding moment in the record’s story, packaged as an unassuming nine-minute behemoth of a tender “love” song. The statute of limitations still isn’t up for this record, so you’ll have to go experience it for yourself: no spoilers here <3.
Infinity Crush - nothing
Here’s another light and uplifting one! “nothing” is fucking devastating in spite of being a mere two minutes of understated indie, and remains one of the most poignant songs about abuse I have ever encountered. It’s a quiet meditation on not merely the terror, but also the ways in which some of the worst things to ever happen can remain in the shadows.
Oso Oso - the view
Ngl, I was quite miserable in 2019. However, Oso Oso’s magnum opus basking in the glow dropped during its relatively carefree summer, with the album’s overarching theme of desperately trying to find some glimmers of positivity in life in spite of everything speaking to me unlike anything else. As such, I found myself crying on a train during the decidedly deeply depressing/depressed autumn of that year while listening to “the view”. It was a reminder of the comparatively happier times of three months prior, while also stressing that it felt like I wasn’t achieving what the song (and album) meant to me. Got there in the end tho so dw.
Emma Ruth Rundle - Real Big Sky
I hope you recovered from that one pop punk song, and fear not, we are back to sad-woman-with-guitar-core, the single greatest genre. And who does it better than Emma Ruth Rundle? While most songs on this list remind me of a specific crying sesh, “Real Big Sky” (and, tbh, just about every other ERR song) is more… universal. Summer nights looking out over a dark Amsterdam during a pandemic, early morning walks through the red light district to make it to a lecture, long afternoons trying to finish gatekeep! posts: there’s rarely a bad time to tear up to this song.
I Am Kloot - Because
2011 was the first time in my life I meaningfully experienced loss, and uh I was also really into the British Alcoholic Indie outfit I Am Kloot (initially because “kloot” means “ballsack” in Dutch (I was twelve)). The true meaning of “Because” was lost on me, but my conversational level of English allowed me to grasp the intense emotionality of lyrics like “kill me before you die”, if not much else. Either way, the grand closer to the wonderfully hit-or-miss Natural History combined with the news of my granddad’s passing was enough to make me cry. And, perhaps for the first time ever, I felt the need to hide it and myself from the rest of the world. :).
U2 - Bad
This is the first song I remember crying to. I remember not being sure why these notes were doing this to me, but I understood that it made the music mean all the more to me. I did not realise I was a fucking freak for obsessing over U2 at eight years old, instead of like, idk, the new peppa pig album.
Yay! You made it. I hope your face is nice and damp. We have SEVEN’d all over the place, and if you want some slightly less sad music, you can make your moist eyeballs turn to one of our previous editions. Just stop your crying it’s a sign of the gatekeep!