That and On My Own
Lea Salonga was incredible in the 10th anniversary concert!
Please tell me what this is from ? I'm only A casual fan but I love Lea in Miss Saigon
Drop everything and watch Lea's On My Own on YouTube right now. You won't regret it. It's life changing
Edit: autocorrect made a fool of me😔
The 10th anniversary concert of Les Miserables.
And Samantha Barks in the 25th / saving the movie! My queens
A Little Drop of Rain is definitely mine. I genuinely gasped when he opened her coat and she was bleeding.
Also one of the joys in my life was the first time I saw Les Mis. I was 17 and my dad took me on a business trip to New York. He worked in advertising and was editing some commercials there. The editor was a veteran of the industry and the city.
He asked my dad what we wanted to do and my dad mentioned I wanted to see Les Mis. Next day he gives us tickets. Broadway, third row.
I fell in LOVE with Eponine. Then this!
When they harmonize "any pain..." 😭😭
This was it for me until I had a child. Now it’s Fantine. I Dreamed a Dream and Come to Me. 😭😭😭
She Used to Be Mine.
I saw Waitress a month after leaving my ex-husband. No-one else knew, not even the friend I was there with. I absolutely sobbed through She Used To Be Mine - to me it just spoke so perfectly to that sense of having lost who I was in that relationship and wanting to reclaim my sense of self, and was a really cathartic moment.
I love this show. I did not expect to cry but the song Take it From An Old Man just got me!
SAME! I was in the middle of my divorce, and that song just hit.so.hard.
On the same vibe - a soft place to land REALLY gets me
Had my husband in tears, and he rarely cries with entertainment. That song, plus revealing she got the diner broke him. ❤️
I heard this without knowing it was from a musical, I thought it was only a new Sara Bareilles song. I heard it when I was still in the closet, and the song resonated so much with me (even though I'm a guy) that I simply started crying when I heard it the first time.
This one. I sob every time
I'll Cover You (reprise) from RENT. Angel's funeral has me bawling every time I see it.
This and Finale B get me every time.
Glad I didn't have to scroll down too far to find this one. I've seen RENT live more than any other show and this never fails to get the waterworks from me. Then I have a happy cry during Finale B when Angel rejoins the cast on stage.
Yup, I was a mess when I saw the show live.
I saw this show for the first time 20 years ago and cried in the car to this song yesterday
It’s Quiet Uptown.
As soon as Angelica starts singing in the beginning, I’m just 😭
This song had no impact on me the first time I saw Hamilton but once I had a kid of my own…instant sobs
I saw it while 8 months pregnant and I was seriously afraid I’d be removed for sobbing so hard.
I watched it on Disney after my beautiful 17 year old niece died of Fentanyl poisoning and the song just wrecked me. I had also lost my 1st born when he was 4 months old, so it was double the pain.
Please talk to your kids about fentanyl. Tell them not to trust any pills that they buy or are given to them.
I lost my beautiful 24-year-old cousin to accidental fentanyl poisoning in 2021. Don’t trust any pills that aren’t prescribed to you.
“Forgiveness, can you imagine?” destroyed me
For me it’s “he’d be standing here right now and you would smile, and that would be enough.” The emotion in Lin’s voice on the cast recording always gets to me.
For me it’s the emotion when he sings “I know I don’t deserve you Eliza” where it’s like…here is a deeply flawed man, in anguish, asking for grace.
This is it for me. I saw the show and we had just lost my daughter’s best friend to a tragic accident. She was 10. My heart breaks every time I even think of that song. Present moment included. I’m out.
Oh my god, I’m so sorry that happened to you.
Omg yes I rmrber hearing this for the first time
I’ll also add the Stay Alive Reprise. When Eliza comes in and Phillip apologizes to her and they sing about playing the piano, instant tears. And then counting in French as Phillip’s voice gets weaker 😭
My mum’s brother passed away recently and she listens to it because it makes her think of what her parents are going through — breaks my heart every time I hear it playing from downstairs
Ugly cried the first time I heard this song!
my face scrunches up like Lin Manuel Miranda’s face did when the “Forgiveness” part happened when I listen to the song,
I saw it for the first time knowing very little about the musical, so I had no idea what was coming. I was about 8.5 months pregnant with my second child. I’d already identified Phillip with my first child in my mind during “Dear Theodosia” and had some happy tears thinking about how much I loved my two-year-old son. I was in complete shock during “Stay Alive (Reprise)”. And about two lines into “It’s Quiet Uptown”, I lost it. I mean tears streaming down my face, being as quiet as I could but still complete shaking, gasping ugly-crying. Ooof. I still play that song when I know I’m upset about something and need to cry. Damn what a masterpiece.
100% sob even when I’m just listening to the album and not watching
Others have made me cry harder, but the one that makes me cry consistently every single time I hear it:
I hope you're happy
Now that you're choosing this
(Me too)
I hope it brings you bliss
I really hope you get it
And you don't live to regret it
I hope you're happy in the end
I hope you're happy...my friend
The way they went from sarcastically snarling "I hope you're happy" to truly wishing each other happiness, even though they don't approve of one another's choices and will never understand them. And then, of course, the fact that they aren't happy in the end.
Oh I am going to sob at For Good in the movie omg
The first time I saw Wicked, I went in knowing basically nothing about the plot, and none of the music (except Defying Gravity).
For Good made me cry so hard I was literally almost hyperventilating in the theatre LMAO. I went with my roommate, who had seen Wicked several times and was prepared for it, and even she was still ugly crying.
It was so awesome.
For good destroys me.
This song was the only time I was emotionally overwhelmed at a musical.
Not this part, but the "if you care to find me, look to the western sky!" and following lines are just so damned empowering.
Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
Eddie redmayne singing this is one of the few things that stands out in the movie and it kills me
Eddie Redmayne understood the assignment. That is the only version I listen to now.
Me and the Sky. Most of Standing at the Sky's Edge, even the happy parts. Ditto, Next to Normal.
Me and the Sky is such an incredible song.
OMG maybe it’s just bc I’m old enough to remember 9/11 but the moment she says “my son is a firefighter in New York” I’m sobbing. You know he is dead and just watching her wait to find out.
I work in theatrical exhibition and film festivals. The end of Me and the Sky is the closest I can get to describing what the pandemic felt like for me. Feeling like this thing that you love so much like Beverly loves aviation has been completely destroyed and is also responsible for the disaster (in the way communal gatherings were in 2020). “The one thing I loved more than anything was used as the bomb.”
For me for Come From Away, it's "Prayer," maybe because I grew up with the song and seeing other religion's songs layered on is beautiful!
That pause in Me & the Sky gets me every time.
Epilogue from Les Miserables. Come with me where chains will never bind you 🎶 so goddamn beautiful.
When Fantine and Éponine appeared bathed in white, I lost it
I had to scroll too far to find this. This is what set me to sobbing.
To love another person
Is to see the face of God
Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story. I was bawling my eyes out the first time I listened to that song.
I can’t wait to see you again. It’s only a matter of time… 😭
The “in their eyes I see you, Alexander” 😭😭😭😭
It’s quiet uptown gets me more than this one. “She takes his hand….. forgiveness.”
Several from les Mis.
The end of Hadestown even though you know.
As Hermes says in Road To Hell "See, someone's got to tell the tale, whether or not it turns out well, maybe it will turn out this time"
Orpheus and Eurydice is a tale almost anyone whose even had a passing interest in Greek myth knows. We know how it ends, bit every single time, we just want the story to go another way. "So we're gonna sing it again"
I've always thought when this show shuts down(as in no show runs forever not like I think it's ending soon) it would be crazy to make a version for the last show where he doesn't turn around. Make sure no one can film and let the rumors that it exists go crazy. Would be a perfect "I swear it happened" and then would make a revival in the far future even crazier with the idea a version like that could exist.
At Reeve’s last performance he and Eva got to exit together!
Totally agree on all three.
I went to see Hadestown without being familiar with the musical (although I knew the myth), and I found myself crying at the end, and I realized that the lyrics are literally, "It's a sad song," and I realized they had said from the very beginning, "It's a sad song; it's a tragedy." I was forewarned, but I still cried!
Hadestown has some great ones
For me it was "Flowers". Eurydice's pain completely gutted me.
I wanna add Epic III.
It’s so tender and beautiful that I almost cried when I first heard it. And I don’t often cry over music.
I like the “They danced” portion of Epic III. That one brings on more happy tears than anything.
The majority of Come From Away. I listened to the cast recording on the train and people were looking at me weird when I started bawling.
“Prayer” gets me hard. I was crying and was so grateful we were still Covid masking because I did not handle that show well. I loved it. But it broke me. But also I want to see it again.
Omg let’s be honest, I started crying from the first beats of “Welcome to the Rock”. But I was absolutely sobbing throughout “Something’s Missing”. Top 5 favorite musical for sure
Slipping through my Fingers from Mamma Mia. Went to see it with my mom and that scene was so hard for me. The line “Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture and save it from the funny tricks of time” always gets me.
My wife and I just finished performing Mamma Mia for a local theater guild. She would have to step away from backstage when we got to that scene because it would tear her up. The best part was our now 10 month old came to see the final performance in the very front middle row, and she was excited to dance to Does Your Mother know and fell right asleep at Slipping Through My Fingers (wife would sing her to sleep with this song).
Do you hear the people sing? Lost in the valley of the night…
It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light...
For the wretched of the earth, there is a flame that never dies…
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise
We will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord
They will walk behind the ploughshare
We will put away the sword
The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward
The chain will be broken and all men will have their rewaaaaaaaard
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
And to love another person is to see the face of God...
"come with me (tears start prickling my eyes), I'll lead you to salvation (I sob loudly from the audience),."
BAWLING. Every time. Even just reading the lyrics I’m choking up a little.
I get chills every time I read those lyrics 😭
No more giants waging war Can't we just pursue our lives, with our children and our wives 'Till that happy day arrives, how do you ignore All the witches, all the curses All the wolves, all the lies, the false hopes, the good-bye's The reverses All the wondering what even worse is still in store All the children All the giants No more
Into the woods is amazing
Travesty that they cut this song from the movie
No One is Alone. That song gets me every single time. Such a serious moment about loss in a otherwise whimsical musical.
I was in a university production of this show many years ago and every night I would just stand offstage sobbing while our Baker and Narrator sang this song.
Who lives who dies who tells your story
That and The World Was Wide Enough as a set.
"My love, take your time"
"You would have done so much more if you'd only had time"
and
"I'll see you on the other side"
"In their eyes I see you, Alexander, I see you every time"
😭😭😭
The orphanage… 😭
“The orphanage” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Every. Damn. Time.
“In their eyes, I see you, Alexander” ugh!!
Makes me cry so hard. Especially Eliza’s last line.
“Oh I can’t wait to see you again. It’s only a matter of time…”
Makes me think of the people I’ve loved and lost and 😭
🎵 the ooooorphanage 🎵
I get chills just reading that line
I’m always fine the entire way through Hamilton until Eliza says “In their eyes I see you, Alexander.” Absolute shambles, every time.
"A Little Fall of Rain" from Les Mis.
and then a moment of dread/ someone simply said/ your child is…
I listened to Next To Normal one time like 10 years ago and I don’t think I have it in me to listen again
Next to Normal representation thank god!!!! It’s my favorite musical of all time!!!!!
No more/no one is alone - into the woods
Words fail - DEH
Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, from Phantom. Makes me tear up every time.
What Would I Do? from Falsettos and Sh’ma from Parade.
What would I do is mine as well. "Who would I blame my life on?"
What would I do kills me each time I hear it. I still remember sobbing on the bathroom floor the first time I watched it.
When the shared “what more can I say?” hits during the bridge I am in TEARS. So many tears. And then, “we’re just gonna skip that stage”???? Heartbreaking to the goddamn max.
You’ve gotta die sometime- especially as Whizzer starts falling apart at the end
I'll Cover You Reprise
Me, too!
Unlikely Lovers from the Falsettos 2016 Revival. i physically cannot get through that song without ugly crying
I start crying at More Racquetball and just cry through the rest of the show with fluctuating intensity. That's why I can't watch it with anyone.
Quiet Uptown hurts, but honestly to me Kindergarten Boyfriend from Heathers really resonates with me as a (very) depressed, fat, and extremely unpopular kid who’s dealt with issues their whole life. It’s a different kind of hurt, the kind where I can see myself in her
Epic lll, Hadestown. I completely lose it when I listen to it.
Seeing it live, Hermes saying “You know what they did? They danced..” had me crying for the first time in a very long time
The way I cried in Chant Reprise in Hadestown when the chorus sings.
Also epic 3.
Epic III is my favorite epic🫶🏻
Next to Normal made me cry the most and for the longest. Like the bawling started in Act I 😅
The punches start early and just keep coming at you with that show.
I don't know about the most, and this might be a bit weird, but the first time I truly cried at a musical song was 'the Final Battle' in Les Misérables when the officer tries to persuade the students from what ends up being a futile endeavour - at the time more so than Empty Chairs at Empty Tables or any of the other tragic moments in the show.
Either that or the Entire second half of the Hunchback of Notre Dame musical, but that's not a single song (and yeah I do have a thing for musical adaptations of Victor Hugo novels)
That moment can be really good if done right. If the actor plays it as a genuine attempt to convince them not to throw their lives away it hits hard
I tear up at the instrumental red and black reprise during the final battle every time. The music+gun shots is just so perfectly sad.
Can I put an entire half a show and more on here? Because Les Mis.
I have never once in my life made it through Empty Chairs at Empty Tables without ugly crying. ESPECIALLY the productions that have the barricade boys all lined up / lurking in the shadows behind Marius as ghosts/memories
Underrated choice here - Far From the Home I Love, Fiddler on the Roof. Hodel saying goodbye to Tevye at the train station hits really hard.
Similarly, Chava Ballet Sequence from the movie. And Sunrise, Sunset. There are just enough fun songs in the beginning of the show that I forget how devastated I always feel by the end
edelweiss from the sound of music
Children Will Listen. I was 5 months pregnant when I saw Into the Woods at City Center, and wow the hormones hit like crazy. Major ugly cry.
Left Behind from Spring Awakening. I'm not sure I've ever seen it performed and not ugly cried.
The talks you never had / The Saturdays you never spent always hits me hard. Fucking brutal song.
Oh 100% in fact I was SO teary eyed during the Deaf West production that I couldn’t even see Totally Fucked and had to buy a ticket for the following night.
Hearing Renée Fleming sing You’ll Never Walk Alone from Carousel broke me. The only time I’ve left a show sobbing.
I almost didn't comment because I thought, "Who, besides me, is gonna love that ol' chestnut?"
The 1996 national tour of Carousel had me crying from the moment the carousel pieces together to the curtain call. My head was throbbing from sobbing. I wish I could erase the memory from my mind just so that I could experience it all over again.
the finale song in Les Mis
"It's Quiet Uptown" and "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells your story", especially when Eliza and Alexander meet again.
Dear Theodosia breaks my heart because I'm in the US and we have failed kids in so many ways
I will sob just THINKING about Someday from Hunchback lol
I wish I could go back to college - avenue Q
For context, I saw Avenue q spring semester of my senior year of high school. I was getting really and graduation anxiety, and also starting to mourn everything I was living. That song struck a chord with me
I sobbed at my college graduation because I had no idea what to do with my life - 20 years later, I still don’t. “How do I go back to college, I don’t know who I am anymore.” 😩 And then the acknowledgement at the end that you can never really go back to how things used to be…This song lives rent free in my head (honestly most Avenue Q songs do - though for me, it’s “What do you do with a BA in Film Studies” haha)
Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, from Phantom. The pain of missing her dad, I understand that so well.
Our Time from Merrily We Roll Along. As soon as the first chords come in I'm a mess.
The Great Comet of 1812 from Great Comet had me ugly sobbing. It's just so cathartic and beautiful.
As soon as Hades and Persephone start to dance in Hadestown, I'm a leaky faucet, but I cry the hardest at We Raise Our Cups.
Somewhere that’s green reprise fr
Circle of Life
I am here from come from away. The idea of being away and trapped when my child needs me just makes me break down now.
As Long as He Needs Me in Oliver.
When I Grow Up from Matilda
Almost all of the songs in Les Miserable….
Burn and Dead Mom
I'd give my life for you. Miss Saigon.
Wicked. I ugly cried. Both times I saw it.
The Love You Song in 25th. Annual Putnam Spelling Bee. Hits too close to home
The Willkommen reprise at the end of Cabaret
Heart of Stone from Six the Musical
For me it’s All You Wanna Do
Underrated answer. Its so easy to be caught up in Katherine's fun sexy beat to forget that she's talking about being treated as a sex toy ever since she was 13
Yes, it’s so heartbreaking. On the surface it seems like a catchy pop song, but if you really listen to the lyrics, it’s all about how Katherine was sexually abused and manipulated by 4 different men throughout her short life. And how she was powerless to stop it because she was a child and because of the power her abusers had over her.
It’s even more devastating in person because you can hear the heartbreak in Katherine’s voice when she sings “He says we have a…connection…” and the pain and anger when she screams, “When will enough be enough?!”. The recording really doesn’t do this song justice.
I think if All You Wanna Do had been an emotional piano ballad instead, like Heart of Stone, it would be absolutely devastating. Maybe even one of the saddest songs on Broadway.
Without you from RENT. I balled my first time watching it. I love the song so much but it still makes me sad.
Days and Days- Fun Home
I’m Here - The Color Purple
Something's Missing from Come From Away. I was only 5 in 2001, but I still lived in Queens and had a mother and stepfather down at Ground Zero every day pulling out survivors and bodies. It just captures how the aftermath felt so well.
Also, Still Holding My Hand from Netflix Matilda. No personal reason, it's just that well written and I really hope it gets incorporated in future stage productions.
How Could I Ever Know from The Secret Garden is one that always gets me
Prayer from Come From Away, but not in a sad way. I'm not even religious, but seeing so many forms of prayer in one song moves me to tears.
It's quiet uptown. Shut makes me bawl every time
It's always Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story. I can't even listen to it in the car because I won't be able to drive anymore lol.
Your mom isn't going anywhere, your mom is staying right here... no matter what... I'll be here.
There are some obvious ones, like its quiet up town, which always gets me at the line, “you hold your child as tight as you can, and push away the unimaginable.”
BUT, I really enjoy a lot of lesser known musicals, and they have lots of sad songs!
A Tale of Two Cities: Greater Love First time I heard this one I held it together until I heard the guillotine at the end.
West Side Story 2009 Broadway Cast Recording: Finale This is a part that as far as I know is only in this version, when Tony dies, there’s a small reprise of the song Somewhere that sounds a bit like A Little Fall of Rain, and ends with the line, Te Adoro, Anton.
EPIC: The Musical: Polyphemus, Ruthlessness, and The Underworld Polyphemus and Ruthlessness include the deaths of Odysseus’s men, and in The Underworld, his dead men see him again. In all three they call out to him, calling him Captain. In The Underworld, they say, “Five hundred fifty-eight men, who died under your command.” blaming Odysseus for all of their deaths.
Once on this Island: Forever Yours (reprise) Context is difficult to explain, but the main character, Te Moune chooses to die instead of kill the person she loves.
"If I Believed" from "Twisted".
Science says you're dead and gone forever! Reason says I'm talking to the air! But something in my heart, some secret hidden part, illogically insists that you are there! Somewhere!
I love Twisted.
Something about Memory from Cats always makes me tear up every time I hear it.
Kindergarten Boyfriend from Heathers made me cry the first time I seen it in theatres.
No One Is Alone, especially after I lost my mom.
Absolution from Bare
Great. Now I’m crying.
Is It True from Hadestown.
"I believe that with each other, we are stronger than we know
I believe we're stronger than they know I believe that we are many I believe that they are few
And it isn't for the few To tell the many what is true"
Tell me it’s not true from blood brothers makes me snotty cry. The entirety of Les mis. And come what may moulin rouge
Anything from "Les Mis" and "West Side Story." I'm a wreck by the end of both shows. The cleaners would only need a mop.
"How Could I Ever Know," Come to My Garde/Lift Me Up," and "Lily's Eyes" from "The Secret Garden."
Two:
You will be found
And
Dear Theodosia
Ruthie Ann Miles singing “Fable” in last year’s Encores production of Light in the Piazza.
Basically the whole second half of Act 2 of Next to Normal, but especially “How Could I Ever Forget?” and “I Am the One (Reprise)”
You gotta die sometimes
All You Wanna Do
Empty Chairs and Empty Tables Gets me every time.
Maybe - Reprise. The version with Annie and Oliver Warbucks. It’s made me cry since I saw the movie in the theater in 1982.
Mama Look Sharp from 1776.
A Little Fall of Rain - Les Miserables
You’ll Never Walk Alone - Carousel
Sorry to be basic, but Valjean’s Death and Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story. I’m not a cryer but those get me 🥲
Shut your mouth Go to sleep Time I met a sailor Are you sleeping yet, or...? What is what? Whizzer, but I can't help but feeling I failed Let's be scared together Let's pretend that nothing is awful There's nothing to fear (There's nothing to fear) Just stay right here I love you
Hold him to the light now / let him see the glow / things will be alright now / tell him what you know . . .
Whenever he gets to "with his wife" I always lose it.
Bring Him Home
Definitely "It's Quiet Uptown." That song rips my guts out every single time.
Alabanza and Everything I Know from In the Heights
Upon seeing Lion King on stage for the first time I had a big and weird sob session during Circle of Life for reasons I still can’t figure out. I just felt so…overwhelmed.
“I Know Where I’ve Been”
I really don’t think this song is talked about enough
Can we be 17 - heathers, 😭 I know that’s not the reaction I should have, but I didn’t get a chance to be 17 at all.
and rain will make the flowers...
grow