List: 'Top 10 songs that make men cry'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. I’ve previously written that I’m an emotional old guy [1]. It doesn’t take much to reduce me to tears. Reduce to tears? What a strange expression. As if being tearful’s a lesser – reduced – state of being. What bulldust. I’m not ashamed to weep. My feelings are close to the surface. I’m thin-skinned. So what. What gets to me most is my darling family [2]. But music’s pretty close behind. I’ve previously written of my love of music, and how it too brings me to tears [3, 4, 5]. Any music genre can do it: opera, orchestral, band, folk, and sometimes even country music. Of course when family and music combine – to wit darling Emily’s music [6, 7] – I’m a goner. Today’s list – ‘Top 10 songs that make men cry’ resulted from a 1,700-person survey by the the UK organisation PRS for Music [8], and was published by PRS [9] and reproduced in the Age [10]. To my knowledge I’ve heard only three of the ‘Top 10 songs’: ‘Candle in the Wind’ makes me puke. ‘Hallelujah’ never makes me cry. But ‘Tears in Heaven’ brings me close – maybe because it’s redolent of my weak point, i.e. the intersection of family and music. Having seen this list, I’m tempted to have a listen to the other seven. I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. h/t Sweetheart Vivienne for alerting me to today’s list.

My comfort list - item 5

Item number five on my comfort list is music. I can’t play a note, but listening to it’s a tonic for my soul. It never fails. My favourite type of music? Opera, I reckon.

Come back tomorrow for item four on my comfort list.

farmdoc's blog post number 576

Last mid June, I wrote that ‘Though I haven’t created music, it’s been a major accompaniment to my life. Just about all types. Classical, opera, folk, bluegrass. Even country.’ That list didn’t include Rap. And I’m not sure I’d include it today. But I’m on the way to finding out. Last Thursday darling Emily’s boyfriend Jono – aka J-Dog, as he’s affectionately called – presented me with a CD compilation he’d burned especially for me. Titled Rap 101 with Prof J-Dog, you can see the CD’s emblazoned with ‘Farmdoc’s Hip Hop Mixtape #1’. (I must confess that until then I didn’t know for sure that Rap and Hip Hop are one and the same.) The CD has 17 tracks, each by a different American artist/group. I’d previously heard of only one, i.e. Eminem, the heterograph of the confectionery). I can’t recall exactly how this CD came about. I think I confessed to Prof J-Dog that I knew nought about Rap, and he volunteered to rectify my deficiency. Yesterday Sweetheart Vivienne and I played a few tracks during our drive back from Daylesford. The words were hard to hear, so I look forward to listening on my iPod. Until then I’m taking my decision under advisement and reserving my judgement. I’ll let you know my verdict. Prof J-Dog said if I like Rap 101, he’ll make me a Rap 201 CD. (Or is that 102?) And that one’ll be Australian Rap. Oh what fun. Stay tuned.

farmdoc's blog post number 421

I’ve previously written I’d like Ed Harris (pictured) to play me in a film of my life. But I’ve never mentioned what I’d like the theme music to be. I’ve now decided. It’s this. One of its best lines is: ‘Regrets, I’ve had a few’. And I have. One of the biggest is that I’ve never learnt to play a musical instrument. I thought I’d try the banjo, but my fingers are too arthritic, methinks. Though I haven’t created music, it’s been a major accompaniment to my life. Still is, actually. Now more than ever, I think. Just about all types. Classical, opera, folk, bluegrass. Even country. And Sinatra, of course. Given all this, I’ve been enthralled by the Canadian Broadcasting Commission’s series The Nerve whose six 1-hour episodes have run on ABC Radio National for the past six Friday afternoons. Sequentially they’re about music and the brain, evolution, war, spirituality, identity and emotion. You can listen here. You can’t download it – only stream it. Each episode’s worth listening to, but especially the last one which explains why music stirs the emotions, and which musical ingredients stir particular emotions. Indeed the question’s raised whether music really is the language of our emotions. I think it is. Each time I hear My Way it sends a shiver down my spine. But I doubt I want to hear Ed Harris singing it. I’d prefer Emmylou Harris any day.