Tear Jerker / Queen (Band)

aka: Queen

"I still love you."

A hand above the water
An angel reaching for the sky
Is it raining in heaven?
Do you want us to cry?
And everywhere the brokenhearted
On every lonely avenue
No-one could reach them
No-one but you

No one can ever accuse this classic rock band of not being able to perform sad songs:

---

• "The Show Must Go On". All the more heartrending is the fact that this is the closing track of Innuendo, itself a tearjerking album on the whole. What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?
  • From the other wiki: "Demo versions featured May singing, having to sing some parts in falsetto because they were too high. When Brian May presented the final demo to Freddie Mercury, he had doubts that Mercury would be physically capable of singing the song's highly demanding vocal line, due to the extent of his illness at the time. To May's surprise, when the time came to record the vocals, Mercury consumed a measure of vodka and said "I'll fuckin do it, darling!" then proceeded to nail the vocal line in one take without problems."
  • Even the version used in Moulin Rouge! is tear-jerking. The combination of the old seamstresses doing their coloratura, the stark lighting and funereal imagery on Satine, Nicole Kidman's very effective emotional performance, and how the song segues into a very melancholy version of "Nature Boy" at the end (itself already something of a Tear Jerker) can really get to one.
  • "The Show Must Go On" will make you cry in three ways: The sad lyrics, the Reality Subtext with Freddie dying of AIDS while singing it, and the sheer, overwhelming awesomeness.
  • Another especially powerful use of it is Tommy's death scene in Cobra Kai, filmed shortly before the actor Rob Garrison's death from mass organ failure much like Freddie.
• Two years before, in The Miracle, there was "Was It All Worth It?". "The Show Must Go On" might have been Brian May's farewell to Freddie, but this track was Freddie's own farewell to his fans, where he muses on everything he went through over the course of his career, and concludes that yes, it was very good while it lasted.
• Want a Queen tearjerker? Listen to Made in Heaven, Queen's last album, released four years after Mercury's death. Mercury recorded the lead vocals for many of the tracks during his final days. Numbers such as "Made in Heaven" and "Winter's Tale" (the last song Mercury wrote — reportedly, two weeks before he died) can be hard to listen through.
  • By the same token, for Brian May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor to pull themselves together emotionally and creatively to finish the record from what was left over (and it didn't appear that Freddie's death was easy to cope with for any of them) and produce such a quality effort was a Moment of Awesome for the surviving members of Queen, too.
  • "No one's gonna stop me now!" Freddie Mercury wails at the album's end. And then come the clips from "Seven Seas of Rhye", one of the band's earliest powerhouse anthems, bringing the legacy of Queen full-circle and ending where it began, like an ouroboros, ready to start all over again. The man may be gone, but his body of work lives on, on infinite repeat.
  • "13". Wordless, ambient, 22 minutes long... And yet easily the last great hurrah. It's been thought of as a symbolic run-through of Queen's entire career. And the way it ends...
    Freddie: Fab!
• "Who Wants to Live Forever?" That song—the lyrics are a perfect tearjerker, considering it comes on when Connor McLeod's wife grows old and dies, since McLeod, being Immortal, never will. Sheer emotion in the last line always gets the waterworks started.
  • As well as "Who Wants to Live Forever," a funeral dirge that gives way to a powerful middle eight that ends abruptly, replaced by an otherwordly outro.
  • Made even worse at the 1986 Wembley concert. Freddie responds to rumours that the band are going to split up by triumphantly announcing "We're going to stay together until we fucking well die!", before introducing the next song - Who Wants to Live Forever.
  • The Reality Subtext of this song isn't much better: it was written by Brian May while he was dealing with the death of his father and his first marriage.
• "These Are the Days of Our Lives" and its video run a close second. Especially the ending with Freddie Mercury visibly thin and weak speaking the final line 'I still love you'.
• And then after the last album, after his death, the Made In Heaven album was released... and it's like Freddie came back from heaven to tell you "It's a beautiful day."
• And perhaps the only worthwhile effort after Freddie's death, "No One But You (Only the Good Die Young)"
• "Bohemian Rhapsody" alternates depressing with happy ("I see a little silhouetto of a man...") and ends with depressing. One of the interpretations of the song is that it's about a young man convicted of murder, probably wrongly accused, and it ends with the man accepting his fate as he heads to the gallows. The upbeat part? He's fighting it out in court. And he lost in the end. And if he wasn't wrongly accused (as seems evident from the lyrics) then it's one of the few songs (outside country and folk music) that makes you feel genuine, tear-jerking sympathy with a murderer. "Life has just begun... and now I've gone and thrown it all away..."
• The final verse of "Under Pressure", a song about pressure and stress. Even sadder when it sinks in that now both Freddie and David Bowie (who sings the main part of said final verse) don't walk among the living.
  Because love's such an old-fashioned word
  And love dares you to care for
  The people on the (People on streets) edge of the night
  And love (People on streets) dares you to change our way of
  Caring about ourselves
  This is our last dance
  This is our last dance
  This is ourselves under pressure
  Under pressure
  Under pressure
  Pressure
• Arguably, the coda of "Teo Torriate"; some interpret it as the last call of the Classic Queen.
• "Dear Friends" from Sheer Heart Attack. A Brian May-penned lullaby that lasts for just over a minute, but it's enough to get you to break down. Once again, Freddie's passing makes the song even sadder.
• "'39". Though it's a bit more "aww" tears than sad tears.
  • This video for the song gives it a new meaning. The pictures of Brian in 2008 singing "Don't you hear my call, though I'm many years away, don't you hear me calling you?" alternated with Queen performing in 1977 can really give certain people sad tears.
  • It was already quite sad in 1975; it was just a case of Lyrical Dissonance coded in what seem like Word Salad Lyrics but are actually a case of Viewers Are Geniuses. The song describes the time dilation effects of Einstein's special relativity on spacefaring explorers who embark on a voyage that, from their perspective, lasts for a year. When they return, a hundred years have passed on Earth, and everyone they ever knew or loved here is dead (or at least massively aged). (Brian May had been an astrophysics student before the formation of Queen and earned his PhD in the subject in 2008; he has additionally worked on one of NASA's Pluto missions.) May also commented that the song was somewhat autobiographical:
    "I felt a little like that about my home at the time, having been away and seen this vastly different world of rock music which was totally different from the way I was brought up. People may not generally admit it but I think that when most people write songs there is more than one level to them – they'll be about one thing on the surface, but underneath they're probably trying, maybe even unconsciously, to say something about their own life, their own experience – and in nearly all my stuff, there is a personal feeling."
• There are also "All Dead, All Dead" and "Jealousy".
  • The hybrid version of "All Dead, All Dead" with Freddie's vocals and altered lyrics is arguably even more sombre, especially as the line "Memories, Memories, how long can you stay to haunt my days" accompanies the opening piano.
• "Mother Love" was the last song Freddie recorded, and despite the powerful performance he somehow managed to pull off, you can hear the weakness in his voice and couldn't be blamed for wondering if he was even fit to record at that point. Even the subject matter is somber, as it's about wanting to be with one's lover not for sex, but for nurture and companionship in one's final days. The reason Brian May sings the last verse is because Freddie was too ill to finish the track. The random noise at the end is snippets from every Queen song ever recorded, played super-fast, essentially the band's own goodbye to Freddie.
• "Love of My Life". It's even better live, when sometimes Freddie didn't even have to sing it at all because the whole audience was singing it for him.
• "Sail Away Sweet Sister" My God.
• "Bijou" (another one from Innuendo, by the way). That heartbreaking guitar, it sounds like it's crying. And the lyrics...
  You and me we are destined you'll agree
  To spend the rest of our lives with each other
  The rest of our days like two lovers
  For ever
  Yeah
  For ever
  My bijou
• "Save Me".
  Each night I cry
  I still believe the lie
  I love you 'til I die
  Save me, save me, save me
  I can't face this life alone
  Oh, save me, save me, save me
  I'm naked and I'm far from home
• "Too Much Love Will Kill You". Brian's solo version in particular, it's heartbreaking to hear him belt out "And it seems like there's no way out of this for me..."
• Steer clear of "Nevermore" if you've just gone through a breakup.
• "Jealousy" is certainly a Tear Jerker. Also a Mood Whiplash as it is placed in between "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" on the Jazz album.
• "I Want It All" when you know what it's about.
• "Somebody to Love" is painfully resonant for many people who've struggled with depression and/or loneliness and/or doubting their faith. Just listen to the lyrics:
  I work hard, every day of my life
  I work 'til I ache in my bones.
  At the end of the day I take home
  My hard-earned pay, all on my own.
  
  I get down on my knees and I start to pray
  'Til the tears run down from my eyes, Lord!
  Somebody, oooh, somebody!
  Can anybody find me somebody to love?
  
  I work hard, every day,
  I try, and I try, and I try,
  But everybody wants to put me down
  They say I've gone crazy...
  • After George Michael's death on Christmas Day 2016, the official YouTube page updated the description of his cover of "Somebody to Love" with a message from Brian saying that George is singing with Freddie now.
• Much of Brian's solo material is unbearably saddening. His own rendition of John Lennon's "God", which he performed live, is a prime example.
  I don't believe in being Queen any more
  I just believe in me
• "Life Is Real", their tribute to John Lennon, is basically the soundtrack to seeing your life flash before your eyes.
  • Speaking of, their cover of "Imagine", played live in concert the day after Lennon's assassination.
• "Long Away" by Brian May is an underrated song that, while it sounds happy, is actually really depressing lyrically.
• The ending to "In My Defence" which, technically, is a Freddie Mercury song and not Queen, but the way Freddie sounds at the end of it really makes it sound like he's reaching out for help. It really hits deep.
• Finally, the long untitled track on Made in Heaven, given the Fan Nickname of "Ascension". Wonder, ethereality, laughing, memory, "Ascension" is an appropriate appellation.
• "Radio Ga Ga", while mostly fun and anthemic, does have a very melancholy and nostalgic undertone that can tug at the heartstrings.
• Queen's version of "Made in Heaven" not only launches the song into Awesome Music territory, it also makes it sound pretty melancholy with the context of Freddie's death.
  • This song gets even sadder for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fans after the ending of Stone Ocean.
• "Love Me Like There's No Tomorrow" and "There Must Be More to Life Than This" from Freddie's solo album Mr. Bad Guy.
• "My Melancholy Blues" is pretty appropriately named as it sounds like drunken sadness in musical form.
• "We Will Rock You" has such a well-deserved reputation as the sports anthem to end all sports anthems that it's easy for an excited crowd to miss just how tragic the third verse is. An impoverished elderly man, once ambitious and full of vigor, but now haunted by his violent past, begs the younger generation not to repeat his mistakes. The narrator, who doesn't know any better, can only feel contempt for him.
  Buddy you're an old man, poor man
  Pleadin' with your eyes, gonna make you some peace some day
  You got mud on your face, you big disgrace
  Somebody better put you back in your place
• The ending verse to "Innuendo," the narrator pleads for God to reveal Himself and put humanity at ease by letting us know what the true faith is. Doubly so when you consider Freddie was near death at that point.
  If there's a God or any kind
  Of justice under the sky
  If there's a point, if there's a reason
  To live or die
  If there's an answer to the questions
  We feel bound to ask
  Show yourself, destroy our fears
  Release your mask

---