In Your FeelsBeST Songs to Cry To

want to do is lie down and have a cry. Worry not - our contributors have got your crying playlist covered!

Vienna - Billy Joel

Vienna by Billy Joel is my favorite song to cry to and has been for many years now. Vienna is not your typical sad song; it’s actually filled with hope and comforting lyrics. Billy Joel asks the listener to enjoy getting old and maturing, insisting that there’s no need to rush since ‘Vienna’ is always waiting for us. When I feel overwhelmed and fall into the mindset of chasing my goals, I often take some time to listen to my favorite songs and have a cry. Vienna is the perfect song for this because it has a calming grounding effect which I appreciate so much. The lyrics have acquired so many meanings for me over time, I will always come back to this fantastically melancholy song.

Words by: Ashleigh Adams

Personally, my go-to song when I need a good cry would have to be Vienna by Billy Joel. For me this song holds a lot of sentimental value; my earliest memories of hearing it was my parents playing the album (The Stranger) on our old CD player every time they cooked a Sunday dinner for me and my siblings. As I got older and began to handle a fair amount of academic pressure on top of all the other everyday stresses of life, this song became a lot more personal and brought me such a sense of comfort. “Slow down, you’re doing fine” never fails to make me cry every time I hear it when I find myself overwhelmed and ture of the lyrics.

Words by: Maddie McCabe-Smith

Me - The 1975

I have an obsession with my depression. It sounds so dumb, and like a Halsey lyric that 2014 Tumblr would have ate up. But it’s true. For the past nine years of my life, I have been living with a chronic feeling of desperation and dread, anxiety pounding at my skull every waking second. How could I not obsess over it? Feed it, try to nurse it back to health? I do this by medicating it with the one thing I’m addicted to – music. Hear me out, we all do it. Get sad, and choking on our tears we load up Spotify, gasping for breath as we play the same old pathetic playlist of our little misery mantras. But what song truly does resonate with the levels of melancholia that I feel nightly? Me, by The 1975. No stranger to making the listener feel shittier than they already did, this four-minute-thirty-four long mind-ache never fails to remind you just how down you really are. It is a beautiful song, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes that 2:14 mark hits too hard to give it any sort of credit. My advice? Don’t listen to it if you have plans for at least the next two years of your life. You could be ecstatic, levels of serotonin through the roof, and this song will rip through your sternum, reach up and break every rib, one by one, until it gets to your heart, where it squeezes it into this despondent mush of regret for every single decision you’ve made yet in your life.

Words by: Tegan Davies

Kinsley

We all know that life can’t always be full of sunshine and rainbows - so what better to do than to listen to a sad song when you’re feeling down and blue? I, like I’m sure many others do, have a playlist of such songs, so it was really hard for me to choose a favourite. I’ve finally decided upon If I Were a Mountain by Sarah Kinsley: an up and coming indie artist from California (best known for her song ‘The King’ that went viral on TikTok). Are you feeling a bit lost in life? Feeling unsure of who you are? Then this is the song for you. Kinsley describes her frustration of being unable to become the kind of person she aspires to be. The overall theme is summarised in the final lines of the track:

“Is it really so bad? I can do it on my own.” which to me signifies that she is the only one holding herself back from becoming a “mountain”, she has it within her - she just doesn’t realise it yet. The piano that plays throughout the song’s duration truly elevates her ethereal singing voice, which, in combination, never fails to bring me to tears.

Words by: Genevieve Gunn

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