Israel Kamakawiwo'ole: Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World

[pegkerr]

I was driving to work today, and just as I pulled into the parking ramp, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" came on, and so I had to sit in the car and listen to the whole thing, even though it made me late to work. Read the story about the song here. Such a powerfully stripped down, poignant, sad setting of a familiar song. Listen to the song with Windows Media Player here or Real Audio here, and get the album here. Chording is here.

Tell me about a song that grabs your heart and gets under your skin.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Dar Williams's "The Babysitter's Here" has been grabbing my heart lately, even though the girl in the song is not at all like my old babysitter. Also the Indigo Girls recording of "Finlandia" makes me laugh and cry every time.

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

There's a piano bit from the Buffy soundtrack (TV show, not movie) called 'Close Your Eyes' -- I'm pretty sure it's written/performed by Christopher Beck. The moment in the show that it was written for hit me at just the right moment in my life; I always cry when I watch it, now, and I always am moved by the song.

Also originally heard via Buffy but perminantly melancholy in other ways is Lucky Ones by Bif Naked

And The 'I Love You' Song from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will always make me listen a second time.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Sit Down Young Stranger by Gordon Lightfoot. Song came out when I had friends who were dying in VietNam and the lines about "And will you try and tell us you've been too long at school, that knowledge is not needed, that power does not rule, that war is not the answer, that young men should not die.." always gets me.

The last time I saw Gordon at Massey Hall in Toronto was about 4 months before he almost died. An acquaintence of mine had spoken to him, and asked him to please sing SDYS. It was one of the most amazing moments I've ever experienced - he had to tune down, because his voice has lowered. He began to play, and the other lights went down. YOu know the saying "the years fell away"? They did. When he finished, there was a moment of total silence.

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Brother Iz has lots of songs that do that to me; besides "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", "E Ala E" works really well. As an aside, I was visiting family in Hawai'i in 1997 when he died; the entire state went into mourning and his funeral was held in the state capitol rotunda.

[misia.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. I'm glad you got turned on to that recording, it's astonishing. Bruddah Iz was magic. I miss him and wish him much Aloha wherever he is.

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's beautiful. Never heard it before.

This is embrasssingly sappy but there's a song that goes something like "to dance with my father again". Not sure what the title or artist is, but when I hear it on the radio it makes me cry. Because I do wish I'd been given more time to know dad and mom.

Googling:
It's Dance with My Father by Luther Vandross

sample tracks from the album it's in here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000099J41/104-9318037-3409533?v=glance&n=5174

[ckd]

One of the local radio stations has a show called "Sunday Morning Over Easy", where they play lots of live/acoustic versions of songs, covers, and other stuff. Great show, and every week they close out with that song. Gets me every time.

Another song that can absolutely wipe me out is the Corrs' unplugged cover of "Everybody Hurts". Take a song that works well in Michael Stipe's voice, have Andrea Corr sing it, and strip the instrumentation down to the minimum...it gets me deep, it does.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

That's such a lovely piece of music. Really, if you listen to it and are not affect in some way, you need to check your pulse. Thank you also for posting the chording. It is such a simple piece, beautiful piece. I'm going to have to learn this one.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing that.

"Ghost" by the Indigo Girls. I first heard it on a tape I bought in 1997, and I used to listen to it, over and over, on every road trip to Boston to look for a job and visit my partner (now wife) when she moved up here for grad school. I was dealing with a bunch of emotional fallout at the time, and I spent a lot of those drives crying. It spawned what my brain insists must become a graphic novel, and every time I hear the song again, all the images, scenes, and lines come up again and I refine it a little more. Someday, I suppose, I'll find someone to do the visual art.

[ravenspb.livejournal.com]

"I've Got a Name" by Jim Croce. This one has been with me since high school and it always helps bouy me up when I lose my sense of what makes me unique.

As to Iz, thank you for the link to that story. I have loved his music for many a year. Another one of his songs that deeply touches me is "Hawai'i '78." This man loved his land with all that he was. It's amazing. Listening to both versions of this song let's me toch that devotion and experince it, if only in a small way.

[archmage45.livejournal.com]

I love that song. I first heard it on Radio Margaritaville while at work, and I stopped everything I was doing and just sat and listened. Even now it evokes so much emotion... Thank you for posting the story!

As for another song that always catches my heart is Kenny Loggins Return to Pooh Corner.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Lately, it's been the Cry Cry Cry cover of Keelaghan's "Cold Missouri Waters." It's about a forest fire in which thirteen smokejumpers died in 1949.

k.d. lang's cover of Cohen's "Bird on a Wire" is amazing.

[bluewaterlilies.livejournal.com]

Dar Williams has a version of Finlandia that's beautiful.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I love that song, too. Thank you so much for linking to it -- my music collection as been reduced to a sad fraction in the last 5 years due to multiple breakups where I departed with only those things which I could assert to be "solely mine", and I've been missing that track a whole lot.

The song that most recently made me cry while I was listening to it is Catie Curtis' People Look Around. I've been lamenting the lack of contemporary protest songs, but I think the problem is more that I haven't been finding it, not that it's not being created.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I adore "Cold Missouri Waters," too, and in fact started doing a whole bunch of research to write an SF story about firefighters. It got bogged down, however, and I ended up passing the story idea along to scott_lynch.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I love "Ghost," too.

[loup_noir]

Bruddah Iz gets a lot of air play here as one of the semi-local radio stations, KMUD out of Garberville, has a Hawaiian show called the Coconut Wireless that plays on Tuesday afternoons 3-5 PST. They have an Internet link, if you want to give that a whirl.

Most of the music that holds me revolves around obsession, which is probably not what you were looking for. There are songs that have made me break down and cry, but I try not to listen to those unless I'm all alone.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Stan Rogers' "House of Orange" makes me cry every time.

Also, the Leningrad Cowboys/Alexandrov Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble version of "Those Were the Days". And indeed their march version of "Yellow Submarine". Because nothing captures the spirit of rock'n'roll like the kind of Russian male voice choir that's evolved to sing the Volga Boat Song at window-shattering volume.

[castiron.livejournal.com]

Stan Rogers, "The Mary Ellen Carter". I can listen to ballads about doom, death, and despair all day without batting an eyelash, but this one, because it's hopeful, kicks me over every time.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Libby Roderick's anthem How Could Anyone might be the simplest, most necessary words ever sung. I'm sure that everyone has had a time when they've needed to be told they're loved and complete just the way they are. If You See a Dream is a great CD all around, anyway. I encourage everyone to buy it. It's great and it supports independent artists and labels.

The other one that gets me every time is 100 Years by Five for Fighting, which is emotional without being sentimental, and it's refreshing to know that songs with actual meaning are still being written and recorded.

The first song speaks directly to the scared, socially outcast little girl still living inside somewhere. The second reminds me of my kids, my age, and the blasted ephemerality of life. I've actually been reduced to sobbing with this one.

[mlion.livejournal.com]

Yep, me too. That one always gets me crying.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Also the Indigo Girls recording of "Finlandia" makes me laugh and cry every time.

Whoa. Wow. Thank you for alerting me to the existence of this recording. That's one of my favorite hymns, and it always makes me cry. I still remember singing it the Sunday after 9/11, and breaking down in sobs, and having a total stranger just hold me.

[(Anonymous)]

Bette Midler and "the Rose"

It's a beautiful, simple, bittersweet song that's yet so full of a trembling hope...

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for setting up downloads.

[qwyneth.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I was going to post "Cold Missouri Waters" too. It never fails to give me chills. Cry Cry Cry is a beautiful album, and I am a diehard Dar fan. The music just...touches something inside of me.

Another song that gets me is "Life Support" from Rent.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's on the "Rarities" CD along with "Clampdown" and "Uncle John's Band" and "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" and some other good stuff. The laughing comes in for me because I'm a Finnophile, and the "but other hearts in other lands are beating" is just so typically Finnish. But usually I'm already sniffling by that point, so.

The hymns that get me crying on strangers every time are "Now the Green Blade Rises" (because we sang it a lot after the tornado at my college) and "It Is Well With My Soul" (the one song at my grandmother-in-law's funeral I hadn't sung often otherwise). Although "On Our Way Rejoicing" can make me break down and howl in the wrong circumstances, too.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Hey, I was thinking of doing that.

I kept hearing it as, "I was crew chief at the jump gate and prepared the boys to fly...."

[(Anonymous)]

Michelle Featherstone's "God Bless the Child." It was playing during a scene on the television show in which a teenager shot himself after holding his classmates hostage (and after a really heartbreaking monologue). Everytime I see it and hear that music start in the background oh man...I'm done.

~Elizabeth

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Maddy Prior's "Heart of Stone" can still make me stop dead. maybe not in the way you mean, because it's about looking at yourself hard, and seeing where you're wanting.

Emmylou Harris's "Michelangelo" is still a mite too new to me for me to be sure it's another one, but that one song alone justified our decision to hang in there at the folk festival through one truly nasty late night last-act windstorm.

The Mollys - Dance with Me Johnny. You can see all the details of the over-tabloided murder that inspired it peeping through, but the song holds a heart in part because the media didn't.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I was at work one day (this was while I was just beginning to come out), and "The Rose" came on. The line that gets me is, "...and the soul afraid of dying/that never learns to live." , 'cuz that's me

The next song that came up was "Let It Be", and that's when I knew...

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I used to hang around the piano bar upstairs at the '90's, where Lori Dokken used to sing. Over the years I got to know the wait-folk up there, especially Michael. He was tiny, blond, whipcord lean, and had a great Georgia wit.

He also had AIDS. (He once mentioned to me that he had to get help from M.A.P. to pay his rent a couple of times, and that the money came from their Emergency Fund. The same fund that I raised money for when I did the hug-a-thons. No matter how negative my feelings are towards MNSTF/Minicon I am still very grateful that, in essence, they paid Michael's rent for a couple of months.)

One night, a year or so later, sometime around Thanksgiving, I popped upstairs, found a chair in the bar, and snapped open the latest GAZE (which later transformed into Lavender Magazine) and read Michael's obituary.

I couldn't take it, and ran out of the bar.

A few weeks later I decided that I needed to get back on the saddle again, and swung by the bar. Lori was upstairs, as usual, and since it was close to Christmas the decorations were up.

As Lori noodled away on the piano, I just sat and thought, as I usually did.

Then she started into "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", and it was so bittersweet. The line, "through the years we all will be together/if the fates allow" taking on a melancholic, irony.

Lori was hunched over the keyboard, barely looking up. And it was like she took in a deep breath, then launched into the next line with such...life & defiance.

It was like she was launching us...ME, back into life.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I wish yousendit didn't have a limited amount of downloads, though.