I'll try to keep my response briefer this time
I think both categories for me have a mix of songs that have personal memories attached to them, as well as songs that have just touched me when I've heard them over time.
There's so many songs that I would class as songs I really, really like musically, but I don't necessarily listen to them when I want a spring in my step as I don't want to 'wear them out'. Some that I do listen to for perking myself up are:
One Night Only - Just for Tonight
N-Trance - Set You Free - makes me feel euphoric.
Boney M - Brown Girl in the Ring - puts a spring in my step because it's a bit bonkers and very catchy.
Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me) - any version really, just a simple wartime song about someone hoping that their love will still love them once they return from war.
Ellie Goulding - Quite a lot of her recent material
In terms of tears and lumps in the throat, at the moment I find 'Yours' by Ella Henderson a bit of a tear jerker. It verges on corny at times, but there's something about the exposed vocal and the way it summarises the feelings of someone who is utterly devoted to someone they love, but has perhaps taken a while to realise/accept it and has perhaps only just admitted in time. The lyrics are apologetic, reassuring, dedicated, scared, desperate, loving and beautiful. And I can relate them to my own life.
'Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral' from Wagner's 'Lohengrin' always brings a lump to my throat - it's a piece of music I have played many times with wind orchestras, during a very happy time of live when I'd made some truly special friends, had a great job and met a long-term partner
It was a piece of music that at first seemed boring and slow, but the more we played it the better we got at playing it and the more we realised how it was building to a climax, how dramatic it could be if played well - we got to the finals of a National competition in Glasgow, traveled there to perform it - It was like the weeks of rehearsals all came together in that final performance, everyone raised their game and it sounded like nothing we had played before - it was awesome - I remember glancing up at our conductor towards the end and he was really going for it and at the end he looked absolutely exhausted - we finished to rapturous applause, I was shaking and almost tearful and had sweat on my forehead - I looked across at my saxophone-playing partner and gave her a wink and just thought 'Wow, that was special!'
Sometimes it can be the performance/performer of a song, rather than the song itself that can affect you in one way or another - for example, Nessun Dorma from Puccini's Turandot - when sung by the appalling Katherine Jenkins this could easily make me weep for my musical sanity, but there are some live performances of this aria by Pavarotti that bring a tear to my eye - watching him work with the orchestra and the conductor, varying the length of time he holds the final note etc, it's like watching a couple have sex, building up to the best mutual orgasm that they can muster in that one moment. Wonderful.
Not very brief.
Cheers,
TTG
