cry the blues

Definitions

1. 1

   To sing in the style of blues music.

   • "Young people have forgotten how to cry the blues," said Big Bill Broonzy as he lay dying in a dark room above the littered streets of Chicago's Negro South Side.
2. 2

   To complain, especially in order to obtain sympathy for one's own purportedly sad…

   To complain, especially in order to obtain sympathy for one's own purportedly sad situation.

   • "The average citizen gets an extreme emotional delight in ‘crying the blues’ to anyone who might lend an attentive ear."
   • We have immense corporations that cry the blues all day long about how their pension costs are ruining them.

The neighborhood