diff --git a/beets/importer.py b/beets/importer.py
index ba534b0ea..bf0cf7f4e 100644
--- a/beets/importer.py
+++ b/beets/importer.py
@@ -65,7 +65,12 @@ def _open_state():
     try:
         with open(config['statefile'].as_filename()) as f:
             return pickle.load(f)
-    except:
+    except Exception as exc:
+        # The `pickle` module can emit all sorts of exceptions during
+        # unpickling, including ImportError. We use a catch-all
+        # exception to avoid enumerating them all (the docs don't even have a
+        # full list!).
+        log.debug(u'state file could not be read: {0}'.format(exc))
         return {}
 
 
diff --git a/docs/changelog.rst b/docs/changelog.rst
index 49c7ef5a3..8368bb681 100644
--- a/docs/changelog.rst
+++ b/docs/changelog.rst
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ Fixes:
 * The :doc:`/plugins/lyrics` only strips featured artists and
   parenthesized title suffixes if no lyrics for the original artist and
   title were found.
+* Fix a crash when reading some files with missing tags.
 
 
 1.3.7 (August 22, 2014)