This is Anna Karina, after listening to my compilation.

I’ve often said that one of the reasons I love music so much is that it’s virtually indistinguishable from magic. How else do you explain the fact that by sending subtle vibrations into the air, you can make humans gyrate uncontrollably, tap their toes and fingers, or even march to war. While these audio-induced rhythmic nervous system reactions seem easily explainable as a simple stimulus/response process, you can also use these subtle vibrations to cause less predictable responses, like the release of salt water from their eyes. To me, the latter is perhaps the most intriguing result of these subtle vibrations of air, because although humans usually reserve this release of fluid from the eyes for moments of sadness or physical pain, when a person cries in reaction to a piece of music (unless of course they’re just crying because it’s a really horrible Justin Bieber song) it can be nearly impossible to determine if they’re crying because they’re happy or sad, inspired, proud of their country, or some mixture of all of these feelings and more. I got the idea to compile this list more out of curiosity regarding what makes *other people cry, but once I got going, I got a little obsessed, and perhaps a little embarrassed. I had forgotten, for instance, that I had a playlist called “Music To Hang Yourself By”, or that a song by a band with a name like “Goo Goo Dolls” could make me cry. A lot of more obviously sad songs have little effect on me; frankly, the best way to ensure that I don’t cry when I hear a piece of music is if the tune starts off by saying something descriptively sad in the lyrics. I find it more effective when the singer first claims they’re doing just fine, and then rips it up, implying with plaintive wailing – but never admitting – that suicide will be their only salvation. Below are just a few tunes that are likely to jerk a tear from my eye. I included a few obvious ones like “Hallelujah” and “Crying”, and a few cheesy ones for sentimental reasons, but omitted many, many more, mostly because I’d like to know what makes YOU cry. So give it up. What makes you weepy?

K.D. Lang – Hallelujah

Okay. Let’s get this one out of the way first off. K.D. Lang’s rendition at the Juno Awards pretty much puts the “who does the best version of hallelujah” question to rest.

INXS – Never Tear Us Apart

I don’t know if this is a tune that actually makes many people cry. It just happened to be a song that I and the only woman I ever loved listened to around the time she broke my heart forever. Thanks Deni. Okay, I exaggerate. She wasn’t the ONLY woman I loved, she was just the only one I loved that ripped my heart out and didn’t even have the decency to stomp on it. She just moved on. I’m better now, twenty two years later. Honest.

Godley and Creme – Cry

I have to be in a rather feeble frame of mind, but this one will still get me once in a while.

Joan As Police Woman – Start Of My Heart

Why are video producers so convinced that the close-up glam headshot is the only way to shoot a sad song?

Insensatez – Stan Getz & Maria Toledo

I think this is Maria Toledo singing, not Astrud Gilberto. It’s interesting that most people don’t realize “Insensatez” doesn’t actually mean “insensitive”.

Suzanne Vega – I’ll Never Be Your Maggie May

I play this whenever I get dumped. It gets a lot of rotation.

Roy Orbison & KD Lang – Crying

Watching KD Lang holding her pipes back so as not to frighten Roy off the stage brings a beautiful tension to this rendition…

Llorando – Rebekah Del Rio

Everything is more intense in Spanish. Especially crying. Rebekah Del Rio’s performance literally made my knees buckle once.

10cc – I’m Not In Love

This might only make me cry because I played it 7,632 times as a teen to convince myself that I didn’t care about the latest girl to dump me for that idiot whats-his-name.

Melissa – Allman brothers

Again, this may be some residual teen emotion that was burned into my neural pathways by smoking marijuana on depressing autumn days.

Sinead O’Connor – The Emperor’s New Clothes

Yup. Ol’ Shinehead made the list. People usually list “Nothing Compares 2 U” or however you spell it, but this makes “Nothing Compares 2 U” sound like a pep rally song in my opinion.

Goo Goo Dolls – Iris

Okay. I’m embarrassed. A cheesy song from the soundtrack of a horrible remake of one of my favorite movies. Maybe I cry out of disappointment in myself about the whole affair.

This Mortal Coil – Song to the Siren

If you were the right age in the 80′s, you almost certainly cried yourself out of jumping off the roof over a lost love listening to this. And then went out the next night, got wasted, and met someone new.

Tim Buckley – Song to the Siren

And if you did have that experience with This Mortal Coil’s version of Song to the Siren, you may have discovered years later that Tim Buckley’s version may be even better than the one you didn’t realize was a cover in the first place.

Jane Siberry – Calling All Angels

Most people think of “Pay It Forward” when they think of this tune, but it was used in the soundtrack of Until The End of the World much earlier.

Clair De Lune

There are a million versions that should at least make you moody, and Alexis Weissenberg’s version (used in The Darjeeling Limited) is one…