Heartbreak has more songs written about it than almost any other subject, which means there are a lot of bad ones to wade through before you find the ones that actually get it right. This list skips straight to the ones that get it right.
Be sure to check out the Heartbreak Songs Playlist at the bottom of this page.
Best Songs About Heartbreak
1. “Goodbye My Lover” – James Blunt
Lyric Sample: “You have been the one, you have been the one for me.”
Blunt’s 2005 hit ballad is about saying goodbye to someone who was the most important person in your life and knowing there’s no coming back from it.
Related: Best Songs About Missing Someone
2. “The Heart of the Matter” – Don Henley
Lyric Sample: “But I’m learning to live without you now, but I miss you, baby.”
“The Heart of the Matter” is about hearing that your ex has found someone new and working through what that means, choosing forgiveness as the only way forward.
Related: Best Songs with “Heart” in the Title
3. “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” – Jimmy Ruffin
Lyric Sample: “What becomes of the brokenhearted, who had love that’s now departed.”
This 1960s Motown classic is about the aftermath of heartbreak, walking through life feeling lost and wondering if anyone who has loved and lost ever finds their way back to happiness.
4. “Space Song” – Beach House
Lyric Sample: “Fall back into place.”
This 2015 dream pop song is about the disorientation after a relationship ends, being alone in your own head, and not quite knowing how to get back to feeling okay.
Related: “Space Song” Meaning
5. “Against All Odds” – Phil Collins
Lyric Sample: “So take a look at me now, well, there’s just an empty space.”
This 1984 hit is about a man who has lost the one person who truly knew him, and the desperate, almost irrational hope that she might still come back.
Related: Best Love Songs
6. “All I Want” – Kodaline
Lyric Sample: “All I want is nothing more, to hear you knocking at my door.”
“All I Want” is a 2012 folk-pop song about a man who can’t make sense of losing someone who claimed to love him, unable to reconcile the goodbye with everything that came before it.
Related: “All I Want” Song Meaning
7. “Nothing Compares 2 U” – Sinéad O’Connor
Lyric Sample: “It’s been so lonely without you here, like a bird without a song.”
“Nothing Compares 2 U” is about trying to get on with life after a tough breakup and finding that nothing comes close to what you had.
Related: Best Cover Songs
8. “She’s Gone” – Hall & Oates
Lyric Sample: “I’d pay the devil to replace her.”
This 1973 soul classic is about the heartbreak that sets in after a breakup and feeling like nothing can fill the gap she left.
9. “So Sick” – Ne-Yo
Lyric Sample: “And I’m so sick of love songs, so tired of tears.”
Ne-Yo’s 2005 R&B is about being so tired of missing someone that even the songs on the radio feel like an attack. He’s trying to erase the traces of the relationship and not getting very far.
10. “Black” – Pearl Jam
Lyric Sample: “I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life, I know you’ll be a star in somebody else’s sky.”
This 1991 sad grunge tune is about the grief of a breakup where you still love the person, but you know they’ll be fine without you.
Related: “Black” Song Meaning
11. “Tears Dry on Their Own” – Amy Winehouse
Lyric Sample: “He walks away, the sun goes down.”
Winehouse’s 2007 track is about ending a relationship she got too attached to despite knowing better, and slowly convincing herself she’ll be okay.
12. “I Fall to Pieces” – Patsy Cline
Lyric Sample: “I fall to pieces each time I see you again.”
This country classic is about a woman who can’t get over her ex, no matter how many new people she dates or how much time passes.
Related: Best Unrequited Love Songs
13. “Wicked Game” – Chris Isaak
Lyric Sample: “What a wicked game you play, to make me feel this way.”
Isaak’s 1989 hit is about the helplessness of wanting someone who is definitely wrong for you, knowing exactly what you’re walking into, but going for it anyway.
Related: “Wicked Game” Meaning
14. “Someone You Loved” – Lewis Capaldi
Lyric Sample: “I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved.”
This 2018 heartbreak song is about what happens when the person who kept you afloat is suddenly gone, and realizing too late how much you were depending on them.
Related: “Someone You Loved” Meaning
15. “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” – Jeff Buckley
Lyric Sample: “Burning in the corner is the only one who dreams he had you with him.”
Buckley’s 1994 track is about a man waiting for someone to come back who isn’t coming, knowing the relationship fell apart because of his own inability to handle it.
16. “End of the Road” – Boyz II Men
Lyric Sample: “Although we’ve come to the end of the road, still I can’t let go.”
This 1992 R&B tune is about loving someone past the point where it makes any sense to, staying even after being cheated on because the alternative feels impossible.
17. “Ain’t No Sunshine” – Bill Withers
Lyric Sample: “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, only darkness every day.”
Withers’ 1971 hit is about missing someone whose absence makes everything feel empty, even knowing she’s not good for him and he’d be better off letting her go.
Related: Songs About Sunshine
18. “Without You” – Mariah Carey
Lyric Sample: “I can’t live if living is without you.”
Carey’s 1994 cover of the Badfinger original is about a love so all-consuming that its absence feels unsurvivable.
19. “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” – Bee Gees
Lyric Sample: “How can you stop the rain from falling down?”
This 1970s soft rock tune is about a man who has nothing left after a relationship ends, asking for something, anything, that makes the world feel worth being in again.
20. “Don’t Speak” – No Doubt
Lyric Sample: “It’s all ending, I gotta stop pretending who we are.”
Written during the breakup of bandmates Gwen Stefani and Tony Kanal, this 1996 song is about a woman who knows her relationship is over and doesn’t want to hear it said out loud, because saying it makes it final.
21. “Yesterday” – The Beatles
Lyric Sample: “Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be.”
This 1965 classic is about the guilt of knowing a relationship ended because of something you said, and the helpless feeling of not being able to go back and unsay it.
Related: Saddest Songs Ever
22. “Drivers License” – Olivia Rodrigo
Lyric Sample: “Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me.”
Rodrigo’s breakout hit is about a girl who reaches a milestone she and her ex had talked about together, only to find herself experiencing it alone while he’s already moved on to someone new.
Related: Grammy – Record of the Year Winners
23. “The Tracks of My Tears” – Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
Lyric Sample: “So take a good look at my face, you’ll see my smile looks out of place.”
In this Motown classic, Robinson sings about a man who’s been putting on a cheerful front after a breakup, using other women and parties as cover while the one he actually wants knows none of it means anything.
24. “Let Her Go” – Passenger
Lyric Sample: “Only know you love her when you let her go.”
This 2012 hit is about not appreciating a good thing, with a man looking back at a relationship and finally understanding what he threw away.
Related: “Let Her Go” Song Meaning
25. “He Stopped Loving Her Today” – George Jones
Lyric Sample: “But he still loved her through it all, hoping she’d come back again.”
Widely considered one of the greatest country songs about heartbreak, this tune follows a man who stays devoted to a woman who left him. He only stopped loving her when he died.
Related: CMA – Singles of the Year
26. “Torn” – Natalie Imbruglia
Lyric Sample: “I’m all out of faith, this is how I feel.”
Imbruglia’s late-’90s hit is about the disorientation of a relationship ending when the person you thought you knew turns out to be someone else entirely.
Related: Best One-Hit Wonders
27. “I Can’t Make You Love Me” – Bonnie Raitt
Lyric Sample: “I can’t make you love me if you don’t.”
This 1991 pop ballad is about the moment a woman stops fighting the truth that the man she loves doesn’t feel the same way. It has one of the most heartbreaking choruses ever written.
Related: Unrequited Love Songs
28. “Something in the Orange” – Zach Bryan
Lyric Sample: “But I miss you in the mornings when I see the sun.”
This 2022 country song is about the helplessness of loving someone who has already checked out, no matter how hard you try to convince them to stay.
Related: “Something in the Orange” Meaning
29. “All Too Well” – Taylor Swift
Lyric Sample: “And I know it’s long gone and there was nothing else I could do.”
Swift’s 2021 song is a full account of a relationship with a man she remembers in painful detail, right down to the moments where his behavior made it obvious she mattered less to him than she thought.
30. “Crying” – Roy Orbison
Lyric Sample: “Oh, you wished me well, you couldn’t tell that I’d been crying over you.”
“Crying” is a 1961 heartbreak tune about running into an ex and realizing, the moment she says hello, that he never got over her the way he thought he had.
31. “Someone Like You” – Adele
Lyric Sample: “I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded that for me, it isn’t over.”
Adele’s modern classic is about showing up at an ex’s door to find he’s already married and moved on. The song became one of the biggest heartbreak ballads of the 2010s.
Related: “Someone Like You” Meaning
32. “Operator” – Jim Croce
Lyric Sample: “You know it happens every time I think about the love that I thought would save me.”
This 1972 folk-pop song is a one-sided phone call in which a man slowly unravels while pretending to be fine about the woman who left him for his closest friend.
33. “Un-Break My Heart” – Toni Braxton
Lyric Sample: “Un-break my heart, say you’ll love me again.”
This 1996 R&B ballad is about a woman who can’t function without the man who left her, so she begs him to come back and make it like it never happened.
Related: Top Songs with “Heart” in the Title
34. “The Night We Met” – Lord Huron
Lyric Sample: “I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.”
Lord Huron’s 2015 song is about a man who’s gone from having everything with someone to having nothing, wishing he could rewind to the very beginning and take a different road entirely.
Related: “The Night We Met” Meaning
35. “I Will Always Love You” – Whitney Houston
Lyric Sample: “If I should stay, I would only be in your way.”
Written by Dolly Parton and made more famous by Houston in this 1992 recording, “I Will Always Love You” is about a woman who loves someone but knows she has to leave, and wants him to know that going doesn’t change how she feels.
Related: Best Karaoke Songs for Women
36. “It’s Too Late” – Carole King
Lyric Sample: “And it’s too late, baby, now it’s too late, though we really did try to make it.”
King wrote this 1970s tune about the unique sadness of a relationship ending with no villain, just two people who drifted apart until there was nothing left to save.
Related: Grammy – Record of the Year Winners
37. “Dancing on My Own” – Calum Scott
Lyric Sample: “And I’m giving it my all, but I’m not the guy you’re taking home.”
The 2016 heartbreaking pop ballad is about loving someone who picks someone else right in front of you.
Related: Best Songs About Loneliness
Conclusion
Heartbreak songs come in many forms and are among the most relatable songs out there. The tracks above have been played on repeat at 2 a.m. by more people than anyone could count.
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