You run into your ex’s best friend at the bar, or you hear a song that you both loved. You’d think that this would have happened to him all the time, but it did not. You can do whatever you want: You can party all night, you can eat at a fancy restaurant, you can put your arms around all the boys and girls you’d like, but it doesn’t matter. In it, he describes West’s near-fatal car crash in 2002 as an aborted climb “up the Lord’s ladder,” and honestly, that’s exactly what the collection of power strings sound like on this bridge. Parton is sympathetic, yet determined to go. Perhaps the song resonated with Gaye because he married a 41-year-old woman when he was only 24, and their marriage was full of infidelities. I can’t think of a song that better captures that duality than “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the 1990 O’Connor hit originally penned by Prince in 1985. Play on Spotify. In “Jolene,” our narrator isn’t just grasping onto her man, she’s grasping for survival. A year later Marvin Gaye released a slower version of it on his album In the Groove. Big Boi and André 3000 understood that on “Ms. 100 Best Songs of the 2000s: From Beyonce and Lady Gaga to Radiohead and Kanye West, the best songs from the first decade of 21st Century. 30 Songs From The Late 90s And Early 2000s That Defined Your Pre-Teen Girl Years. After enough listens, and enough heartache of your own, you realize that “If You See Her, Say Hello” isn’t really a breakup song. Whether you're on the receiving end of a split or the one doing the splitting, you're bound to experience intense feelings of sadness in the days following a separation.But there are a few time-tested ways to ease the pain that comes with a breakup. 1 pop hit. I never played it, but a friend who did described his frustration with the game: It’s as if its conclusion got further away the more time he devoted to it. He’s dating someone new, but he’s not thinking of her. Everyone thought about someone who could’ve/should’ve been their soul mate when this dropped in 2005. Eventually, we all learn that you can’t make someone’s heart feel “something it won’t.” But should you one day find yourself at rock bottom, suddenly alone in darkness—whether it’s your first time or your 14th—you can feel a little bit less alone knowing that Bonnie’s been there, too. Whether it's on your drive to work or hitting the gym, channel your inner 'yoncé and empower yourself through this playlist. We might've been a little too young to fully understand the lyrics at the time, but that didn't stop us from obsessing over the top R&B breakup songs of the '90s. It’s a song about moving on—I just came to say goodbye—but also about, just, moving. You didn’t have to do much sleuthing to figure out he was singing about Britney. (Side note: I don’t know who I’m sadder for here, Smokey or the rebound he’s walking around town with.) (That it was possibly inspired by Uncle Joey remains both iconic and deeply weird, but also makes sick sense: You haven’t truly been jilted until you’ve been jilted by someone who’s not even that cool, you know?) Each line, so honest it hurts, is about the fruitless search for reason in a scenario devoid of it. No matter your current relationship status, you will for sure sing your heart out when this song comes on. The best way to move on is by getting involved completely in activities you love. Michael, of course, didn’t write the song—it was penned by Berry Gordy and Co.—but he sells it in a way that someone two or three times his age never could. Drake spirals, telling her he’s “had sex four times this week / I can explain,” that he’s sponsoring women, that he can’t stop partying and asking for naked pictures. Breakups are freeing; breakups are imprisoning. He may have wiped away the tears, but they’ve left their mark. The final a capella chorus is a signature moment in American cultural history, at once exhilarating and devastating: “It’s unnatural / You belong to me / I belong to you.” The word unnatural has never sounded so natural, and so miserable. Guess what I saw? I Hate Myself for Loving You – Joan Jett and the Blackhearts You took my heart, then you took my pride away. Three Stacks’s verse is especially poignant—his intentions were good, but things took a turn for the worse. As the second (and best!) “Life is cruel without you here beside me,” you murmur, staring into the bleak chasm of loneliness you now know as life. Episodes about heartache and breakups are expressed in different ways in rock songs. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2000. Brightside” a breakup song; maybe it’s more accurate to call it a right-before-the-breakup song, an I-imagined-my-girlfriend-was-cheating-on-me-so-intensely-that-she-actually-started-cheating-on-me song. Let's face it: Breakups are the worst. Songs from the album were featured on One Tree Hill, Charmed, Sleepover, Smallville, The O.C. He says he loves me, but our relationship has to come to an end; he says he’s hurting and he’s not happy, but he’s breaking down and crying. “Hold up, they don’t love you like I love you.” In a breath, she’s less sure of herself: “What’s worse, looking jealous or crazy?” Beyoncé settles on crazy, then returns to anger. Get over your breakup with the 100 best breakup songs of all time. He pleads, “Let me live again.” Life as he knew it is over without this person, and as long as the song is on, it feels over for us, too. 3:43 0:30. In honor of Valentine’s Day, The Ringer presents a list of the most iconic tearjerkers and empowerment anthems in music history. @media(min-width:800px) {.flip_top {width:728px;height:90px;}} —Bereznak, Most heartbreaking line: “Yeah, I know it’s stupid, I just gotta see it for myself”, Last year, following a Robyn show at Madison Square Garden, elated concertgoers continued the party on the A/C/E train subway platform, breaking into a giddy public performance of “Dancing on My Own.” You wouldn’t typically expect a breakup song to be the one that leads New Yorkers to such displays of collective joy, but most breakup songs aren’t like this one: a song you can strut to, a club anthem, a scene-stealer, a story of lonesomeness that still finds its solace in a crowd. My guy. If you’re going on a stumble down memory lane, get the tissues, because these songs are some serious tear jerkers. She knows you’re afraid; she knows you’re petrified. Listen to early 2000's breakup songs now. The top mainstream rock song of the decade, " Kryptonite " by 3 Doors Down, peaked at No. —Ligons, Most heartbreaking line: “Say for me that I’m all right, though things get kind of slow / She might think that I’ve forgotten her, don’t tell her it isn’t so”. The AIM-friendly “U” in the title is just the icing on the cake. —Kate Halliwell, Most heartbreaking line: “I need somebody and always / This sick strange darkness / Comes creeping on so haunting every time”. They are both better off this way, she argues, but wishes him nothing but “joy and happiness.” One of the hardest relationship lessons is that two people can love each other and it still not be right for either—thanks to Dolly and Whitney, it was one learned early on. Like so much of his best work, it’s propelled by its poetry, the raw insights about how it feels to be alive. —Harvilla, Most heartbreaking line: “Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom / Well, who am I to keep you down?”, Even 40-plus years on, to hear Stevie Nicks softly moaning, “What you had ... and what you lost / And what you had ... and what you lost” to the guy playing guitar is to live forever, and to imagine that guitar player dropping dead from remorse on the spot. What about songs with a famous backstory, like “Cry Me a River” or any track off of Rumours? Still, for all of its confusing back-and-forth, this is a breakup classic. “I was in love with the idea of love,” Gaye once said. Listen to early 2000's breakup songs in full in the Spotify app. It’s a love letter. It preaches the ideology of forcing yourself to let go even when you don’t know what you’re going to do without your boo. Like, “The ‘Old Town Road’ of Its Day” big, a tearjerking shout-along anthem for lovelorn belters too devastated to even take their horses and leave the house. Many individuals are not able to vent out feeling after a bitter breakup. One of the greatest? / A fella tongue-kissin’ my girl in her mouth”, Turns out this woman did not have what Biz Markie needed. (Lindsey Buckingham, of course, has been known to belt out a sweetly caustic breakup anthem or two himself.) Drake pauses, then goes full Drizzy Deleterious: “But I’ve been drinkin’ so much / That I’ma call her anyway.” He proceeds to tell her that the man she’s with isn’t good enough to replace what they had. This was “the first girl I ever talked to,” Biz told EW last year. You may think that you won’t find someone else to lean on when times get rough or someone to talk to you on the phone until the sun comes up, but let me tell you, you will and you’ll be fine. The best rock songs of the decade come in many forms. This is one of those bangers that you and your girls blast post-breakup, pre-going-out. The chart was known as Modern Rock Tracks until June 2009, when it was renamed Alternative Songs in order to "better [reflect] the descriptor used among those in the [modern rock radio] format." —Gruttadaro, Most heartbreaking line: “Can’t you see there’s no other man above you? / What makes the world go round?” Green is begging for answers, for “somebody, please” to come fix him. This song is a decision to be done with suffering over a relationship, to recommit to oneself, to focus on healing and establishing new patterns. “I Can’t Make You Love Me” has been covered by countless artists, included on several Greatest Songs Of All Time lists, and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Like it and Rate it below. * This is easily the most played-out, sad breakup song of the early 2000s. Once your anger fades a little, you can switch over to the original recording of this song, released a year earlier in 1967 and sung by Erma Franklin (yes, that’s Aretha’s older sister). I’ve always taken the song’s urgency to imply something that every woman learns eventually: Relationships can be both romantically fulfilling, and, too often, an economic lifeboat to a better life. “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” resolves more easily. Warning: Songs may be *explicit. —Halliwell, Most heartbreaking lyrics: “Someone picked you from the bunch, one glance was all it took / Now it’s much too late for me to take a second look”, Perhaps the most outwardly joyous song in this entire ranking, “I Want You Back” spins a tale that anyone who’s ever taken someone for granted will understand. Breakups suck, but please don’t torture your broken heart (or your ears) by listening to this song on repeat. —Bereznak, Most heartbreaking lyric: “Forever never seems that long until you’re grown / And notice that the day-by-day ruler can’t be too wrong”, Sometimes breaking up with your significant other’s family is just as hard as breaking up with them. / How can you stop the sun from shining? As she sings in the bridge, it’s bittersweet. Lyrics about breakups and heartache have appealed to audiences globally. —Baumann, Most heartbreaking line: “Since you’ve gone I’ve been lost without a trace / I dream at night, I can only see your face”, This spectacularly maudlin New Wave ballad, which anchored the Police’s 1983 goliath Synchronicity and reigned as one of the biggest radio hits of the decade, is creepy as all hell, very much by design: an unrepentant stalker manifesto that doesn’t so much describe spurned love in terms of surveillance as it describes total state surveillance in terms of spurned love: “Every move you make / Every vow you break / Every smile you fake / Every claim you stake.” And so on. Instead, we spotlight the 20 most poignant breakup songs of all time. / Oh why? It’s part of the grand pop punk tradition of showing you mean business by going up an octave, of which “I Miss You” (along with the Starting Line’s “The Best of Me”) is the exemplar. First off, she was not your girl. So if you’re lonely, fire up our playlist and cry along as you read our thoughts on each entrant. “Interestingly, a great many of the popular songs in break-up-themed playlists are pop songs and the artists, for the most part, are big … —Micah Peters, Most heartbreaking line: “We can’t go on together / With suspicious minds / And we can’t build our dreams / On suspicious minds”, You can see the ripples of “Suspicious Minds” throughout the course of breakup song history, from “Train in Vain” to “Dancing on My Own,” which, you know, it’s Elvis. 3:36 0:30. The chorus, by contrast, is gigantic and majestic and crushing, punctuated by cloudbursting lamentations of “She’s gone! You have to face the harsh realities of life. —Cory McConnell, Most heartbreaking line: “I can’t forget the day you left / Time is so unkind”, This is a perfect example of the kind of breakup song you hear on the radio (or, in the late ’90s, possibly the club—the Frankie Knuckles house remix still goes) and, on a normal day, just hear another pop song, but when you’re experiencing heartache, what originally sounded like songwriting clichés become the truest words you’ve ever heard. That’s most palpable on “If You See Her, Say Hello,” which brings us into a fractured relationship in a way that’s both effortlessly relatable (“We had a falling out, like lovers often will”) and hyper-specific (“And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill”). What Biz Markie needed was someone to listen to his story and give him honest feedback about his predicament. —Harvilla, Most heartbreaking line: “Do I stand in your way / Or am I the best thing you’ve had?”, The agonizingly propulsive signature hit from flamethrower-voiced ’80s pop queen Pat Benatar laments not so much a breakup as a near-breakup in progress, an acknowledgement that true love means almost breaking up pretty much all the time: “Believe me / Believe me / I can’t tell you why / But I’m trapped by your love / And I’m chained to your side.” It’s a karaoke classic you have no business attempting, a cheeseball Reagan-era smash of eternal profundity, and a striking declaration that sometimes the only thing worse than splitting up is not splitting up: “Do I stand in your way / Or am I the best thing you’ve had?” she wails with genuine desperation, and the answer, of course, is both. It’s not Dylan’s flashiest or heaviest or best song, but it is my favorite, a gentle, intimate portrait of lost love and lasting anguish. This might not be the only reason the song fades out but there’s no real suitable ending point for the last notes of the chorus, so it always drops back into a verse or a bridge or another chorus. —Sayles, Most heartbreaking line: “She got me with nothing to win / And nothing left to lose”, Nothing changes if nothing changes, as they say, and “With or Without You” exists in that hopelessly recursive “I hate that I love you” space. There will always be disagreements with a list this long. “I’ll be watching you,” Sting concludes a couple dozen times throughout, but it’s the chest-pounding bridge where the trio’s creepy-soulful frontman does some of his best belting, his best pleading, his best super-creepy emoting and enunciating: “I feel so cold and I long for your em-brace.” Fun fact: He started writing the song at Ian Fleming’s writing desk on the James Bond author’s luxe Jamaican estate, which might not be creepy, but it’s certainly weird. Undoubtedly, there will be new versions of this song until the end of time⁠—because it’s an absolute banger—but also because … men. You know the story by now: In 2006, Justin Vernon broke up with his girlfriend, packed up his car, and drove into the Wisconsin wilderness, emerging only after recording an album of weepy breakup songs. Is he happy for her? —Halliwell, Most heartbreaking line: “When you left I lost a part of me / It’s still so hard to believe / Come back baby, please / ‘Cause we belong together”. —Harvilla, Most heartbreaking line: “Let me live again”, There’s heartbreak, and then there’s Al Green heartbreak. Then, after you all sing in unison: “Don’t get it twisted / You was just another nigga on the hit list / Tryna fix your inner issues with a bad bitch,” you all burst into laughter thinking about the man who is now barely a memory. @media(min-width:300px) {.flip_top {width:300px;height:250px;}} It’s the full force of the disorienting one-two punch of loss and loneliness. My Favorite Quote Lol. Lemonade was inspired by true events—i.e., it’s Beyoncé coming to terms with Jay-Z being unfaithful. Also, Eric Roberts in the video. Comedy films are popular with global audiences because they bring to life varied aspects that make you laugh. He’s already cried about it, and now it’s her turn. Also, remember when Tamera sang this song for the talent show on Sister, Sister? Only “Purple Rain” has the ability to feel like everything all at once, a near-religious experience of a song that has the ability to heal like no other. Now, as wiser, more Empowered™ listeners, we heard the remixed, catchy hook devoid of its devastating verses and bopped our heads as Drake reminded us of how short life is. Frank’s clearly still hung up on the past even if his old flame isn’t. That said, here are 49 pop-punk songs that are sure to bring you back to the long walk between your bus stop and your house. The song is defined by its maturity and its conciliatory attitude, but as with actual breakup conversations, that doesn’t make it any easier to hear. “Torn” has taken a turn for the over-covered and over-memed these days, but you’re lying if you say you don’t still hit that chorus every time. Blood strikes such a chord because the heartache it mines feels at once deeply personal and universal. It Also Changed the Breakup Song. Does it have to be empowering, à la “I Will Survive” or most of the songs on Lemonade? Rihanna basically made a hit off the “Sike, you thought!” meme and DJ Mustard added an unforgettable beat behind it. Top 100 Rock Songs of 2000s by Billboard By Jaakko Jäätmaa. and more. What truly elevates New Jersey diva Gloria Gaynor’s all-timer, though, is its sociopolitical import: “I Will Survive” has long been a stirring battle hymn for the LGBTQ community, for survivors of domestic violence, for anyone who can relate in any way, frivolously or otherwise, to the bluntly iconic line “I’m saving all my lovin’ for someone who’s lovin’ me,” which of course is everybody. He’s nobody.’” Not taking the hint, Biz flew out to California to surprise her a week earlier than planned. In the End Linkin Park • Hybrid Theory. Exactly what your ex-girlfriend wants to hear, I’m sure. Or if you need some more twang accompanying your despair, you can try the Faith Hill version. You might be a girlfriend, a husband, a partner, or even a friend with benefits. —Harvilla, Most heartbreaking line: “Wonder this time where she’s gone / Wonder if she’s gone to stay”, To make a song from 1971 about a video game from 2010: Dante’s Inferno is an RPG based loosely on the first canticle of the Divine Comedy.