Welcome to another installment of Song Musings, where I take a closer look at tunes I dig, which I haven’t covered yet or only mentioned in passing. Today’s pick is Cry by The Raspberries. Before telling you more about it, I have to give a shoutout to Max who pens the excellent PowerPop blog and brought the American power pop band on my radar screen.
Cry was co-written by Raspberries members Eric Carmen (vocals, rhythm guitar, piano) and Scott McCarl (vocals, bass). It’s from the group’s fourth and final studio album Starting Over released in September 1974. The album included their third and final U.S. top 20 hit Overnight Sensation. Unlike that song, Cry did not appear separately as a single. That’s a pity, in my opinion!
The Raspberries were formed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1970 by members of The Choir and Cyrus Erie, two other local bands that had become prominent in the late ’60s. Their initial line-up featured Eric Carmen, Wally Bryson (lead guitar, vocals), John Aleksic (bass) and Jim Bonfanti (drums). Carmen had been with Cyrus Erie while Bryson and Bonfanti had been part of The Choir.
By the time The Raspberries went into the studio for their April 1972 eponymous debut album, Aleksic had departed, Dave Smalley had joined on rhythm guitar and vocals, and Carmen had moved to bass. That lineup also recorded the two following albums Fresh (Nov 1972) and Side 3 (Sep 1973).

After Fresh creative tension emerged and eventually led to Smalley’s ejection from the band. Bonfanti departed soon thereafter, and the two subsequently founded a new group, Dynamite. The Raspberries’ above-mentioned fourth album Starting Over couldn’t save the group who broke up in 1975.
Eric Carmen went on to launch a successful solo career, which resulted in various hits, most notably All By Myself (1975) and Hungry Eyes (1987), which was part of the Dirty Dancing motion picture soundtrack. In 1999, Bryson put The Raspberries back together sans Carmen but with Smalley and McCall, who released an EP in 2000, Raspberries Refreshed. In 2004, Carmen, Bryson, Smalley and Bonfanti reunited for a show in Cleveland, which led to a well-received mini-tour, a VH1 Classic special and a live album, Live on Sunset Strip.
Following are some additional tidbits on Cry from Songfacts:
The song is a blast of power pop with a lyric that finds the singer emboldened after a breakup: she made a fool out of him, so he doesn’t mind if she does some crying too.
Scott McCarl told Songfacts the story behind this song: “We’d had such good luck with ‘Play On,’ our first joint songwriting effort, that Eric suggested I pull out a few more half-written songs for him to hear. The very first one I showed him was ‘Cry.’ I played him the verse, just as you hear it now, and he sat back at the piano, shook his head and said quietly, ‘Wow, that’s great!’
Many of the flourishes on this song came courtesy of Eric Carmen and Raspberries guitarist Wally Bryson. “So much of the cool overdubbing on ‘Cry’ – the Leslie guitar, the acoustic guitars with beautiful and unique Wally chord formations, all those wonderful Beatle ‘aahhs’ – was all thought up and laid down in one afternoon by mad professors Eric and Wally,” Scott McCarl explained.
Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube