What is your favorite song (if you have one)

[Cool Chris]

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb on Delicate Sound of Thunder.

2112 by Rush has been my favorite song since late 1991/1992, but I can count on one hand the number of fully-engaged listens I have given it in the last decade.  It gets the lifetime achievement nod, even though I rarely reach for it anymore (after listening to a zillion times for many years).

This is my #2 song, and everything else you said applies to me as well.

[Animal]

Idioglossia by Pain of Salvation.

Can't really explain it. It just has more emotion in one song than I've ever heard. The music is fresh and interesting and it is constantly engaging in unique ways.

And, not for nothing, but I've heard the song 1000 times and I tear up every single time I hear it. No other song does that to me.

I find this very curious - it just shows how differently people react to music. I mean - I love TPE and Idioglossia is one of the best songs on that album. But it would never occur to me that this is a kind of song that provokes such strong emotional reaction. It's just feels more like heavy and cool. When thinking POS and songs that tear me up, stuff like Undertow or Sisters comes more readily to mind. Or Trace of Blood, but that is just because it used to hit me on a personal level...

[Stadler]

Idioglossia by Pain of Salvation.

Can't really explain it. It just has more emotion in one song than I've ever heard. The music is fresh and interesting and it is constantly engaging in unique ways.

And, not for nothing, but I've heard the song 1000 times and I tear up every single time I hear it. No other song does that to me.

I find this very curious - it just shows how differently people react to music. I mean - I love TPE and Idioglossia is one of the best songs on that album. But it would never occur to me that this is a kind of song that provokes such strong emotional reaction. It's just feels more like heavy and cool. When thinking POS and songs that tear me up, stuff like Undertow or Sisters comes more readily to mind. Or Trace of Blood, but that is just because it used to hit me on a personal level...

The beauty of music....   time, place, emotional state, the performance, the lyrics, the vocal intonation... all variables that we all hear differently, and react to accordingly.  I'm sure there are people here thinking "Train?  WTF?" and - largely - they'd be right.  But that one song....

[Animal]

This is hard as it tends to change over time.  But I can pick few songs that I remember were my favorites in certain periods of my life.

Undertow - Pain of Salvation
Eleanor Rigby - The Beatles
E lucevan le stelle - G. Pucinni
Shine on You Crazy Diamond - Pink Floyd
Yerushalaim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold) - an israeli song by Naomi Shemer (the one you can hear close to the end of Schindler's List)
Blackbird - Alter Bridge


Right now, my overwhelming favorite is Erbarme dich by J. S. Bach.

[Adami]

Idioglossia by Pain of Salvation.

Can't really explain it. It just has more emotion in one song than I've ever heard. The music is fresh and interesting and it is constantly engaging in unique ways.

And, not for nothing, but I've heard the song 1000 times and I tear up every single time I hear it. No other song does that to me.

I find this very curious - it just shows how differently people react to music. I mean - I love TPE and Idioglossia is one of the best songs on that album. But it would never occur to me that this is a kind of song that provokes such strong emotional reaction. It's just feels more like heavy and cool. When thinking POS and songs that tear me up, stuff like Undertow or Sisters comes more readily to mind. Or Trace of Blood, but that is just because it used to hit me on a personal level...

Sisters doesn't do much for me, though I've never wanted to bang my wife's sister. Undertow hits me too and is a go-to if I need an emotional release. I love A Trace of Blood and I hope I never relate to it.

For me, it's the anger of Idioglossia, the frustration over how the character has been treated all their life. I wasn't treated great growing up and while I'm no longer angry about it and I'm in a good place, that song just taps into a deep sense of sadness and loneliness and anger that I can relate to from my life.

[Animal]

I get it now - if you put lyrics into equation, it may completely change how you view the song. TBH, until now, I had no idea what Idioglossia was about...the way Daniel delivers most of the words makes it rather hard to understand and I tend to "turn-off" the lyric in most English songs anyway, the same way I ignore lyrics in, say, Italian or German classical music (it is the second language thing, I can't do that with my native language).
BTw...Sisters is definitely a kind of song I probably wouldn't like if I couldn't turn the lyrics off.

On the same vein, I had no idea what Trace of Blood was about until I randomly read the lyrics in the booklet. Anyway, the way I relate to this song gives me a better idea to why you relate to Idioglossia so strongly. I am also over it and i a good place but... if a song taps into something painful you have been through, it always hits hard...

[SoundscapeMN]

Michael Moore of course said a few years ago about Subdivisions from Rush
“I believe that song has saved lives,”

[Dave_Manchester]

Yerushalaim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold)

Wonderful and very unexpected choice. I adore that song. The live performance by Ofra Haza (RIP) is devastating:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L8Co7IzOyhw

[Adami]

Yerushalaim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold)

Wonderful and very unexpected choice. I adore that song. The live performance by Ofra Haza (RIP) is devastating:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L8Co7IzOyhw

Her version is the only one I listen to anymore.

Though I admit I have some mixed emotions with it.

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

Oh boy. 1 single favorite song....I don't think I could list just one. I can probably narrow it down to a handful though. These are in no particular order...

Anathema - Untouchable (that melody and the pure raw emotion throughout, it's beautiful and never fails to make me feel something deep in my soul)
Tool - Lateralus (just 9 minutes of absolute brilliance, a masterclass in progressive music)
Type O Negative - Anesthesia (there was a time in my life where I could really relate to this song. Just the overall hopelessness and not wanting to feel anything makes for an emotional rollercoaster)
Rush - The Camera Eye (Hearing this for the first time as a 6 year old blew my little mind and made Rush my favorite band from that point on. I was the weird little kid that pretty much only listened to Rush for almost 10 years until I really started discovering new music in my teens)
Moonsorrow - Jotunheim (It doesn't get more epic than this for me. Beautiful, destructive, powerful, grandiose, emotive)
Marillion - Neverland (A powerful and emotional way to end an emotional rollercoaster of an album....The greatest album of all time....change my mind)

There are so many songs I could list here and I feel like I'm leaving out so many that are deserving of the title of favorite song... ask me again tomorrow

[Buddyhunter1]

Moonsorrow - Jotunheim

That checks out.

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Anathema, Tool, Type O Negative, Rush, great stuff there. 

[Stadler]

Rush - The Camera Eye (Hearing this for the first time as a 6 year old blew my little mind and made Rush my favorite band from that point on. I was the weird little kid that pretty much only listened to Rush for almost 10 years until I really started discovering new music in my teens)

Marillion - Neverland (A powerful and emotional way to end an emotional rollercoaster of an album....The greatest album of all time....change my mind)

I'm not sure Marbles is the greatest album of all time, and the Rush facts aren't the same, but the rest of that is money.  When I saw Marilllion on the FEAR tour, I was sitting with a friend and his girlfriend, and I had to get up and stand on the side because I was crying so hard.   Really emotional performance of a song that has really struck a chord with me.

[TheCountOfNYC]

Octavarium. I’ve talked at length about this song, as have a lot of people on this forum, so I’ll just leave it at this: there are very few pieces of art/media that I consider to have changed my life, five to be exact. This is probably the most significant.

[soupytwist]

Pearl Jam - Black.

[WilliamMunny]

Octavarium. I’ve talked at length about this song, as have a lot of people on this forum, so I’ll just leave it at this: there are very few pieces of art/media that I consider to have changed my life, five to be exact. This is probably the most significant.

Would love to hear the story behind the other 4.

[Stadler]

Pearl Jam - Black.

That song has one of my favorite lines of all time:  "I know someday you'll have a beautiful life
I know you'll be a star* in somebody else's sky, but why, why, why can't it be, oh can't it be mine?"

That line is just simply heartbreaking.

(I thought for the longest time that Eddie actually sang "sun" but all the official and semi-official lyric sheets say "star", and now I sort of hear "star" myself.)

[SoundscapeMN]

[Her] Favorite Song 

so, this was what popped into my head.

But truth be, if I had to pick 1, basically driven 100% by nostalgia, this would be it.

[lonestar]

[Her] Favorite Song 

so, this was what popped into my head.

But truth be, if I had to pick 1, basically driven 100% by nostalgia, this would be it.

My kid was big into musical theater in HS, and played Dorothy in her freshman year. When I got the DVD of it (I lived on the opposite side of the country) I lost my shit in epic fashion at how beautiful she did it. One day I gotta upload it to YouTube to share.

[SoundscapeMN]

[Her] Favorite Song 

so, this was what popped into my head.

But truth be, if I had to pick 1, basically driven 100% by nostalgia, this would be it.

My kid was big into musical theater in HS, and played Dorothy in her freshman year. When I got the DVD of it (I lived on the opposite side of the country) I lost my shit in epic fashion at how beautiful she did it. One day I gotta upload it to YouTube to share.

you should. I was in the play in grade school myself, although not having a huge role as Uncle Henry (I got to be the understudy for the Tin Man at least). But The Wizard of Oz was my favorite story, movie, book ("The Wonderful Wizard of Oz") as a kid. And Rainbow always has had this magical, fantasy, escape-like quality to it, even as simple of a song and melody it has. All in a Major key, etc. I do feel like I'm a little kid always hearing it.

[Stadler]

There's no irony or sarcasm or anything like that; if we're talking songs that remind us of our childhood, "Snoopy And The Red Baron" by the Royal Guardsmen.  I had one of those booklets with the 45 rpm record in there and I listened to that song over and over.

(Side bar, at one point Ritchie Blackmore claimed to love that song as well; pretty sure Rainbow used that as the outro music on some of their recent shows with Ronnie Romero.)

[HOF]

If we’re talking sentimental favorites from childhood, I’ll add the theme song from “Cheers.” My dad would watch syndicated reruns every night while I was in bed, and that theme song was kind of like Taps in my house.

[lonestar]

Sentimental childhood music? Heck, my older brothers had me neck deep in Yes music by the time I was 6, so Roundabout? Close to the Edge?