Sentimentality sometimes dies with age. However, everyone has a handful of songs that bring them back to times of hardship, times of love, times of glory, and generally, just times that evoke a lot of emotion. So, no matter how old you get, these three songs from the 2000s will always leave you on the brink of tears.
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“Make You Feel My Love” by Adele
If you haven’t cried in a while and want to, then look no further than Adele. Frankly, all of her songs get the waterworks going. Although one that especially does it for us is her 2008 cover of Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love”. As soon as the piano comes in and Adele starts to sing, you know you’re in for a four-minute journey that will make you either relish in romantic nostalgia or long for the love you’ve lost. Either way, you’re bound to feel something when this song comes on.
Released in 2008, Adele’s cover of “Make You Feel My Love” peaked at No. 4 in the United Kingdom. For all the reasons listed above, the value of this song is not its statistical success. Rather, the value is in its sentimental appeal.
“The Scientist” by Coldplay
Many of the songs in Coldplay‘s catalog have the same appeal as Adele’s—they are songs that target the heart. There is a laundry list of songs that we could have selected, such as “Fix You” or “Yellow”. However, the one that gets us time and time again is their 2002 single “The Scientist”.
The music in and of itself sparks a melancholic chord, but when you listen to the story in the lyrics, then you are left in utter emotional dissaray. While the story isn’t anything new, and might even be considered cliché, it still hits its mark and reminds one of how love is destroyed by youthful naivete.
“The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert
Miranda Lambert‘s 2009 single “The House That Built Me” is bittersweet in every sense of the word. While it celebrates the past, it also holds an anguish and a longing for the past. Like Coldplay’s “The Scientist”, Lambert’s music lends itself to a certain kind of nostalgic melancholy, but when you listen to the lyrics, the pain becomes all the more prevalent.
Have you revisited your past in hopes of making sense of your present? Surely you have, because who hasn’t? That is one of the many emotional threads Lambert dissects in this song, and consequently, listeners are seemingly left with an introspective plight that lasts for days on end.
Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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