It’s hard to hear this song without getting defensive: our (post)modern allergies to sentimentalism all start acting up, and our thirst for context nags us with a particular ferocity. In this sense “Yesterday Once More” is a ruthless song, because its mission is to defer all such reactions completely; permanently, if possible. It’s picked nostalgia as the horse it will ride into battle against cynicism, and so in a sense it’s won before the first bugle sounds: who among us is immune to longing for our earlier days, when all seemed care-free? But why, then, is the lyric’s ultimate focus on how these songs, described as delightfully sweet in the chorus’s opening lines, can “really make [you] cry?”