AFI songs that make you cry!

AFI Everything
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Yeah, so, I can’t be the only one lol. I know probably almost all of their fans have at some point, don’t lie! There are many songs these guys did that made me bawl my eyes out the first time I ever heard them. Totally not ashamed to admit that either. :joy:

I’ve heard them so much now that typically I can get through an album or whatever without crying (the more I type the more this is sounding more and more like just about everyone in 2006 lol) unless I’m having a moment. Sing the Sorrow is, of course, like the fucking poster child for this, really that entire album is one long rip your heart out, cry your eyes out, alleviating, cathartic release. Okay, well at least to me it is, not that that happens every time…

Anyway, songs that have really gotten to me:
Morningstar
Silver and Cold (especially the video)
the ending of Death of Seasons (those screams, dude…even still…)
The Great Disappointment
The Leaving Song (yeah, still makes me cry sometimes, I remember hearing it for the first time and sobbing into my pillow for like an hour lol)
This Time Imperfect
Now the World
The View From Here (once I could discern the lyrics)

There are others that have made me tear up but not really exactly cry per se, that sort of tug at your heart kind of feeling. The likes of The Despair Factor, Bleed Black, …but home is nowhere, Endlessly, She Said, etc…

But the one song, the one song that to this day never fails to make me dissolve into a mess of uncontrolled sobbing whenever I hear it is 100 Words.

That song… My. God.

The vocal performance and that damned guitar solo at the end, that already got to me. But recently I realized something. I used to think the lyric was “I fell”, but now I do believe the actual lyric is “I feel”, although I don’t own Crash Love so I can’t actually fact check it, but I’ve read in the comments section of the few videos of it on youtube that that’s what the lyric is. So listening to that song again, and recognizing, or at least believing, that’s the lyric, that song is even more powerful, it changes an already deep and profound song’s meaning in an even more deep and profound way.

Yeah, way to reach out and punch me in the fucking heart again, Davey, you motherfucker. :laughing:

But it’s just how this band is, at least it’s the way they have always had this effect on me, especially when listening to something for the first time. It’s like…they can somehow actually touch my soul, it’s always been a bit creepy and disturbing, almost invasive in a way, but also so infinitely comforting to me.

/ end fanboy rant

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“100 Words” will make anyone cry. There’s a deep sense of sorrow to it, an almost, “well, this is it” moment.

I sobbed my heart out when they played “This Time Imperfect.” My little sister was there and just patted me on the shoulder. Poor girl. I waited YEARS to hear that live. And of course it was to the bland as hell Hartford show where people weren’t allowed to mosh and everyone looked awkward and I was sure Jade was going to kill the sound guy.

Poor Jade.

Anyway, considering I have been having a series of shitty weeks, this is the perfect post.

Like you, Sing the Sorrow drags me heart out of my chest, stamps on it, twists it, chars it, and then places it gently back in leaving me a swollen eyed, hiccuping mess. Between the instrumentals, Davey’s lyrics and vocals, and my own personal feelings about that album, I never get through it well.

But I have to say that “God Called in Sick Today” has gotten me from day one. There’s such an air of resignation and anger in it. It’s always struck me. That song makes me bawl every time.

“Feed From the Floor” is another one. The first time I heard it I really got lost in how the vocals and instrumentals played off each other. It gave me goosebumps. Then lyrically it’s stunning. The imagery brings back certain memories of mine and it spoke to me during a very tough time for me personally. That song is always going to bring me to tears for the same reason “This Time Imperfect” will always make me cry; those songs were there with me when I was hurting.

“It Was Mine” is another that one that gets me all misty eyed.

Then the real killer is that weird instrumental part at the end of “Affliction,” the part when it’s the telephone call from the woman. It’s so cold and lonely. I cry every time. Decemberunderground is an incredibly haunting album. There’s an inherent coldness in it- even in the name-that makes you feel so alienated yet empowered.

But, yeah, I cry during a lot of their songs. I haven’t been able to figure out if it’s because the songs themselves are tear-inducing, if it’s because I have a lot of memories tied to the albums, or if it’s a combination of both. Probably the latter.

It always strikes me how songs can be so evocative and how they can trigger vivid memories without warning. They’re doing studies on how music can help those with Alzheimer’s and dementia get a piece of themselves back. There are videos on it. Really quite interesting.

But, anyway, thanks for starting this thread.

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You’re welcome!

That’s interesting you say that about DU, I get the very same feeling from Black Sails (about feeling alienated and empowered). Although, here’s something odd…when I listen to their music, I get these sort of…physical/emotional sensations? Like, for example, Black Sails feels hot to me, there’s a blistering feeling of anger there, both physically and mentally. I’ve listened to that album almost non-stop for the last maybe two years, because something really terrible happened (I won’t give details), and I was really down for the count. That album is probably the single most important thing that brought me back, and now I believe I am much better for it. It really helped me realize some things.

Personally, I believe DU could have had a lot of potential, like could have been nearly as fantastic as Sing the Sorrow, a lot of people bash it and I can see why, but there are some really excellent moments on that record. I have an entire theory as to why/what happened when they were making that record due to actual factual events that took place (Interscope’s acquisition of Dreamworks) and that’s why it sounds the way it does. The thing that bothers me about that album is the post-production. It just sounds so…plactic-y to me. And Davey’s screams, I really can’t listen to Kill Caustic or Affliction because they sound so very contrived and unnatural. But I absolutely love the album conceptually and the album art as well.

I feel similar to how you do about Sing the Sorrow. Lyrics aside, Davey is really, really ingenious at how he is able to convey such powerful and evocative feelings just with his voice. Just the certain way he sings certain things, it’s so brilliant and many times on that record he sounds so broken and hopeless, I think just from an empathetic point of view it can get a little heartbreaking for me. I think I’ve said this in a different thread, but I really can’t just pull up that album and listen to it on my way to work or whatever. Individual songs, yes (The Leaving Song Pt. II, Girl’s Not Grey, Paper Airplanes, This Celluloid Dream), but to listen to the entire album is almost a ritual for me. To get the full experience I shut my blackout curtains, light some candles, lay down on my bed and just blast that record.

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The music doesn’t make me cry so much as it stirs my imagination. But Morningstar comes the closest to making me cry. Heard it live in New York but then, as it was years ago, Jade was rushing the beginning. The song needs to breathe for it to work. It has to be still, ambient, like that star glowing beneath the stairs.
My reaction most of the time is less crying but lot of goosebumps. Probably because I’m too impressed with the sound design of AFI ballads like This Time Imperfect or the infamous The View From Here. Especially This Time Imperfect. (I have to wonder how Jade’s bandmates reacted when they heard that outro texture for the very first time.) That must be why Morningstar is so effective for me; because its production is so minimalist. The only artists that have made me cry are Nick Drake, Loone, and a guy named Anthony Savino. Acoustic artists. I guess that says a lot.
Vanished, I actually really love Decemberunderground and its production. Yeah, there’s autotune on the vocals but it’s used more on the backing vocals and on leads it’s more like an occasional doubler than just straight pitch correction. It adds a bit of a snowflake shine to the record. Personally I think some of Jade’s strongest arrangements are on DU. But yeah, the more I think about it, they could have gone a lot weirder with their music post-Sing the Sorrow or post-Decemberunderground and they just didn’t. Not complaining too much though; maybe that’s on me to make the surreal, twisted version of AFI that I always wanted to hear.

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I think that’s why Morningstar evokes an overwhelming feeling for me, because of the minimalism of it. The same reason I absolutely love The Leaving Song and On the Arrow. I really wish they had done an acoustic album or just a clean one. I think it would be great, had it been anything like those three songs, and I think they would be more than capable of doing it.

As for DU, I’m primarily a metal head despite having quite a range in musical taste (I really enjoy everything from Dark Funeral to the Cure to the Clash, to give some examples), and there’s a certain amount of heavy grittiness in music that really appeals to me. That grittiness was for the most part totally absent in DU, and it just sort of led to a feeling of it being…I don’t know, sort of vacuum-sealed. It’s not bad, not by any means, like I said, there are a lot of things I do really like about that album. I don’t know, it always sort of felt like it could have been better than the finished product, and I do genuinely believe the label and who the people AFI were working for/with had a lot to do with that, through little or no fault of the band itself. Like I said, I have an entire theory about why that is, based on interviews I’ve heard with the band, as well as what I know to have happened around that time.

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Huh, yeah, I think DU really struck me because it felt cold, sleek, and steralized, as if they were resigned and angry about it. There’s something so icy about that album; it’s the only way I can describe it, and haunting not in an old house way haunted but in a modern hospital way, the way you know all those people are lying in those beds dying, surrounded by all the technology that can’t save them.

I guess I can understand why people hate the cleanness of that record, but it was such a startling contrast to STS that I immediately latched onto it.

I have no idea what went on during the writing/recording of that album, but I can only imagine there was a lot of strife.

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DEFINITELY Death Of Seasons!

This Time Imperfect, gets me EVERY time, just those lyrics man, dang Dave, deep.

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Oh, I never would have thought of Death of Seasons as a song that might make someone cry. (Welcome, by the way @MissLivHavok).
I’ve noticed most of the songs mentioned on this thread are the quieter, slower songs.

The Face Beneath The Waves had me close to tears the first few times I heard it, as did A Deep, Slow Panic (specifically the final minute or so).