Tear Jerker / Music Videos

As much as songs could bring tears to a listener's eye, so can music videos with the power of storytelling and visuals.

Examples (in alphabetical order):

• Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful". As Christina is singing in an empty room, clips are shown of multiple people, who either believe they are "not beautiful", or just look different. This consists of a male disappointed by his body lifting weights, an anorexic girl, another girl burning magazine pictures of models, another girl recovering from getting beaten up, a goth man on a bus, a trans woman preparing herself, and a homosexual couple making out in public. As the song continues, it shows the struggles and even pain they go through. But, during the song's climax, they all smile, conveying the song's message of being proud of yourself, no matter what you believe your looks say about you.

• The music video for Blur's "Coffee & TV" will make you feel sadness for a living milk carton.

• "I'm Not Gonna Miss You", the final recording by country-pop legend Glen Campbell, is a retrospective of his 50-plus-year music career, tied in with scenes from doctor's visits during his then-ongoing struggle with Alzheimer's. The lyrics, which he co-wrote, foreshadow the inevitable deterioration caused by his illness.

• Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" The video is about a couple, who at the beginning of the video, promise they won't separate. However, eventually, the girlfriend finds out her boyfriend signed up for the army, which leads to a fall-out. The video ends with the boyfriend trapped in the battle he's in, and the girlfriend sitting alone on a bench in a field without him.

• Argentinean rock band Kapanga's music video for "Postal" (from 2004's Esta!) mixes this with Nightmare Fuel: the protagonist of the video is a lower class "cartonero" (slang for person who picks up dismantled cardboard boxes for recycling in order to make something resembling a living) being slowly turned into a cardboard person. It's a metaphor for the deep poverty the lower classes of the country were suffering during the early TOTM as a consequence of the disastrous political and economical measures taken in The '90s and the early Turn of the Millennium.

• Avril Lavigne's "When You're Gone" video shows an old man grieving over his dead wife, and a woman whose husband is deployed in the military -it seems the woman might be pregnant and at one point it seems like perhaps the husband was dead, but then she gets a text from him.

• The music video of Lazee's "Stronger ft. Dead by April" (No, not the one by the latter) features a happy relationship between a couple until the protagonist's pregnant wife suffers from a heart failure and the doctors won't be able to save both her and the baby, as finding a replacement with the B+ blood type is very rare. Meanwhile, the protagonist finally saves her life by donating his heart. Unfortunately, the baby couldn't make it...
  • The aftermath in the intro is nothing short of depressing, specially for the wife's Heroic BSoD.
  "Why me?"
  "Why I was the one to live?"

• "Runaway Love" by Ludacris ft. Mary J. Blige. Basically, the video is a retelling of the song, which is about three stories of girls who ran away from their tragic lives. The first girl has no parents for comfort, but a mother on drugs, who brings home men that attempt to molest and abuse her, which her own mother refuses to believe. The second girl had an abusive stepfather, no friends, and when she does get one, she gets killed in a drive-by. Finally, The third girl, played by Keke Palmer, is in a relationship with a teenage boy, who she partakes in intercourse with. However, she gets pregnant, with no money for an abortion. After the boy bails out on being a father, nowhere to turn to, she sits on a bench, completely breaking down. The video ends with a dozen runaway girls under a tunnel, with Ludacris singing to them.

• The Moody Blues' "Your Wildest Dreams" knows how to use nostalgic imagery to show how hard the woman pines for when she knew the band in her teenage years, and the time spent trying to get hold of them again, despite having long since gotten a family of her own.
  • All is made well a couple years later in "I Know You're Out There Somewhere".

• Even if you're not a Nickelback fan, the video for "Never Gonna Be Alone" could still hit a nerve. In the video, a girl, on her wedding day, flashes back to her childhood, where she reminisces on her father, from when he was alive, to after his death. Cutting back to the present, she sees the spirit of her father smiling at her.
  • So is the video for "Far Away" [1]. A volunteer firefighter is called out to fight a forest fire, despite his girlfriend's objections. While on the job, he doesn't notice a burning tree falling towards him until it's too late. His girlfriend gets a call, and sinks to a seated position, crying. Then, at the end of the song, he shows up, alive and well...

• P!nk's "Family Portrait". The song is mostly sung by a little girl, who is beside the main singer throughout the entire video. The two are both shown to not get along, even when the child service agent comes to the house. Then, as the two start happily playing with each other, the mother of a cereal commercial, shown earlier in the video, takes the girl away, as she and the entire family in the commercial smile, resembling a portrait, while Pink is left outside the television.

• Rascal Flatts' "What Hurts The Most". The video begins with a young woman screaming at her father, blaming him for the death of her boyfriend. As she reminiscences of him, she is also implied to be pregnant, shown by her after throwing up. She then runs down a road to her boyfriend's grave sight. The video ends with her saying to her boyfriends grave "I saw you."

• The music video for Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight" opens with a woman in a cafe before dawn with a phone to her ear. She numbly puts the phone away, exits the cafe, and takes a long walk. Her expression is mostly neutral, though the urge to break down is constantly read in her eyes. The skies start to brighten and she's still walking, as though if she were to stop, she would have to face the reality of whatever tragic news was shared in her phone call. When she finally reaches a small set of stairs, the interruption in her pace is enough to break her stoicism and she doubles over, sobbing. But she only allows herself a few seconds to grieve before she's tamping her emotions back down and pressing onward. It helps that the woman is played by Elisabeth Moss, who really nails the performance.

• Rise Against's song "Make It Stop (September's Children)" was a collaboration with the It Gets Better Project. If you can get past being triggered by the bullying, homophobia, and the suicide attempts, you'll probably lose it when the clips of affirmation by proudly-gay teenagers start rolling.

• Soul Asylum's 1992 song "Runaway Train" featured photos of actual missing children in the video. Heartwarmingly, some of them were reunited with their families as a result of the publicity the video got; unfortunately, several have had good reasons for running away in the first place...

• "Fields of Gold" has Sting walking around a years-abandoned town, with gold-toned images of its active days visible through him.

• Steven Wilson's "Routine" is about a young, careworn (former) housewife and mother busying herself with her day-to-day chores (because allowing herself time to stop and think brings back unbearable pain).

• "Hunch" by YARUKI-ARIMI features an all too relatable scenario for people in the LGBT community. In it, God Himself visits a closeted gay teenager and tells him that one of his classmates is gay too, so if he discovers which one by brushing him with a golden feather, they'll be able to date. Seems easy enough, except now that he knows one of his friends might be gay, all of them seem to be acting chummier than normal with him, which makes it harder for him to figure out who it could be. Eventually, he starts wondering (and hoping) if it's his best friend and long-time crush, and this eventually leads to him using the feather on him on impulse. When he does, nothing happens and to make matters worse, the feather immediately vanishes and God stops contacting him, meaning he's lost his chance for good. He ultimately decides that it doesn't matter, as even if he did learn who in his class is gay, he's firmly convinced that he'd only have feelings for his friend. He's extremely heartbroken knowing that his friend will never love him back, but is ultimately fine with staying friends with him as long as they can be together. The story does end with a slight "Ray of Hope" Ending that maybe he was right all along and his friend does love him back, but this is left largely vague.

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