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Break Up Songs

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Miley Cyrus is riding high in the charts with Flowers, a break up song with an I Will Survive vibe. Apparently, it’s inspired by her divorce from Liam Helmsworth. For me, it rings hollow, especially on the video, in which she cavorts around a mansion by herself. Scantily clad, of course.

I’m sure The Afterword can come up with much better ones. What’s your favourite?

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  1. I imagine young Bingo Little was out pretty late last night celebrating Rod Stewart’s and Matt Hancock’s combined generosity and isn’t yet conscious of this thread, so I feel it incumbent upon myself to point out that he elicited a fair few responses to this very question way back in November 2021, whenever that was. The most interesting answer he received back then was, I believe, ‘Blemish’ by David Sylvian.

    The Afterword’s Greatest Break Up Songs

  6. Blood On the Tracks came out around the time of my first big break up. I played it endlessly , which of course helped not one jot. But sometimes wallowing in your misery is what you are gonna do.
    50 years later it still fucks me up.

    • THIS is the break-up album of all break-up albums, as well as being the Dylan album of all Dylan albums, and in the top five albums of all albums ever, ever, ever. Top 5 on the desert island, nudging In The Court Of The Crimson King just out of the crack cinq, and accompanied by Abbey Road, Caravanserai, Astral Weeks and Grassroots Of Dub in the Holy Handfull.

  14. 40 years ago this May, I had the biggest breakup of my life. I was crassly dumped after 3 1/2 years. I was utterly heartbroken, and hadn’t even behaved badly. It was something to do with “feminism”, which sounded a crock at the time, and so it proved. After a week or two of grief, I consoled myself by catching up on casual student couplings that had been previously eschewed, and jumpstarted my sad neurotransmitters with regular psychedelic therapy. In no time I found being dumped was the kindest thing she ever did, though i still missed her (and still do). I could not have done what I did if we’d remained together, so i cannot complain. Even more pleasingly, she had a rotten time with the new boyfriend, and has had to live with her bad decision – dogshit that can never be scraped from a shoe. My prog side was in remission and a guilty secret, and I was more listening to Kid Creole and the Coconuts and The Cure at the time. Maybe this stark juxtaposition was too much for someone who at the time listened to Gilli Smythe. This track was playing at the moment of dumping (as it were):

    • Bizarrely have just spent the evening at the National Stadium watching Mary Chapin Carpenter playing with some traditional Irish tradiditional musicians

  18. Miley sings a decent song, but I can do without the video. Almost 50% of the human race can relax when I confess that I find ink on a woman a huge turn off.

    I just don’t like tattoo’d ladies (soz Rory). Any other chaps here feel the same way?

    • It can be extremely artistic, Foxy. But, much like Morris dancing, or Prog, or Death Metal, I don’t usually like it.

      My 2 Tone loving pal has Walt Jabsco on her arm. It suits her.

    • Depends on the tatt.

      Despite being able to afford the best in the business, they don’t do Miley any favours, IMO. Look at her singing with David Byrne. Her legs are fantastic, with no visible tattoos, arms not so much.

    • I may be exaggerating slightly, but it seems to me that there’s barely a woman in northern NSW who isn’t tattooed. Especially when you consider the invisible ones (tattoos, not women). I saw a woman yesterday whose chunky pins were adorned with Dennis the Menace and Gnasher.

  20. After the oppression of Christmas and the ominous shovelling sound conjured by the turning of a new year, the Miley record came as a welcome tonic. To paraphrase The Wild Reeds: the only thing that saves me are the songs I play baby!
    This had yet to come out in 2021:

    (Jessie Reyez – Mutual Friend)

  23. When at first you left I thought I’d surely die
    I couldn’t see a future without you by my side
    We’re not together but I’m still alive
    I’d rather not see you for a really long time

    Funny how love is

  24. Pretty sure I chose this one last time. If not, I’ll have words with myself.

    “Forever doesn’t mean forever
    It just means maybe some other time or place
    But how can two souls still eat together
    When life has lost its taste?”

  29. I’m past the depressing stuff – Fleetwood Mac’s ” Love that burns” used to be a favourite when I was a broken hearted teen. Last time I had the breakup blues, which thankfully is a long time ago, I was self aware enough to know there is something essentially self indulgent about it, and you need something like the musical equivalent of a pile of junk food or chocolate to really revel (a pile of Revels would do) in it. Back then for me it was Whitney. Specifically the B side of the “So emotional” 12″, nearly 7 minutes of Whitney blowing the roof off (well, it was outdoors so there was no roof) with a live version of “Didn’t we almost have it all”. Oh yes, we did. Nearly. Then we didn’t. Cue the song. Particular highlights are the way she sings “foreeeeeeeeever” at 2.34, and the whole bridge at 3.55. “Didn’t we have the best of times/when love was young and new”. Oh yes. Also no in-line auto tune, fake booty or bling. Just a cracking ballad and that voice. Even the shite 80s instrumentation sounds great.

    • I thought you were going to post the GOAT, inexplicably number three in Bingo Little’s chart. It is a truly amazing song, the little details heartbreaking. The singer knows how long, to the minute, the suffering has gone on for. The fancy restaurant. When Prince sings it, he can’t seem to take it seriously. There is a hysteria, a cartoon-like over-reaction to his delivery. Sinead brings out the magnificence of the song. She lives and breathes it as though it is about to overwhelm her. She renders it so perfectly, it becomes her song, and no-one else can match her.

      • Nothing Compares 2 U is up there with the greatest vocals ever recorded, and is absolutely, bar none, unbeatable for pure melodrama.

        But Ex-Factor is, let’s not forget, Ex-Factor.

        The song has the holy trifecta: amazing lyrics, an outstanding vocal and an outrageous arrangement. Those drum rolls, that beautiful guitar solo on the outro, that chorus of heavenly voices. It’s at various points a Soul record, a Hip-hop record and a Reggae record. It samples the Wu Tang Clan, as well as Gladys Knight and the Pips covering Barbara Streisand. It’s utterly nuts.

        I vaguely understand how Prince wrote Nothing Compares, and how Sinead sang it. It’s in line with some sort of creative process I can wrap my head round. I have no idea how you go about writing and producing Ex-Factor. Nothing else sounds like it,
        and it’s raw as fuck (that “where were you, when I needed you” – oof).

        Perhaps importantly at this level of the game, it’s also clear that Ex-Factor is one hundred percent a breakup song. Hill wrote those words regarding, and was actually singing about, a failing relationship, whereas Nothing Compares was quite possibly written about Prince’s housekeeper and then repurposed by Sinead to channel grief towards the loss of her mother. It’s splitting hairs, but up here in the musical stratosphere these tiny increments count.

        Choosing between these songs is like picking a favourite child, because they’re both absolutely incredible in different ways. I will always go to bat for either of them. You can switch the order all you like, but there’s nothing inexplicable about Ex-Factor at number 1 for break up tunes. That song is the bomb.

        • Ex-factor is stylish, sophisticated and very beautiful. Hill to “write songs that lyrically move me and have the integrity of reggae and the knock of hip-hop and the instrumentation of classic soul”. She certainly succeeded with Ex-factor.

          However, Sinead moves me the most. Maybe, it’s because it is more than just about a simple relationship break up, the grief, the cleaner. Mainly, I think, because the arrangement is so simple, the power of the vocal is stunning. There are so many other distractions in Ex-factor. There’s an insect buzzing noise which I sometimes want to swat away. The multi-tracked voices swamp the lead at times.

          Still, as you say, both are superb. Plus, your posts (and threads) are passionately well-articulated, I hesitate to argue the point. Besides, when all is said and done, with music this brilliant, the point is moot.

          • I’d never actually heard that quote from Hill before, but it makes total sense. You’d think it wouldn’t be that difficult to fuse those elements, but I can think of vanishingly few other songs that make it work.

            I agree with you on Sinead’s vocal. It’s an absolute all-timer (on which note, heartbreak vocals are probably worth a thread of their own), and that “tell me baby, where did I go wro-oo-oo-ong” is spine tingling on every single listen.

            I also agree that when music is this good it doesn’t really matter – they’re both sensational songs and I will never grow weary of listening to (or indeed attempting to sing) them.

  32. About a year ago, a couple of Afterworders mentioned how brilliant Cathal Smyth’s album “A Comfortable Man” is. I took them at their word and bought it. It’s superb. And I suppose the whole record is a break-up album. But this is the track that really gets me…

  38. In this thread @Tiggerlion comments as below;

    There are two types of break up song: I hate you and I’m so much better without you.

    I am here to argue that there is a third & it is the song that captures the slow decline of a relationship & the subdued end of one. For my money no band/artist captures this better than Frightened Rabbit. Poke is a beautiful yet harrowing & heartbreaking example.

    • @seanioio

      Tom T Hall’s Pamela Brown is. another one that may or may not falls into the better off without you camp

      Not sure if it’s just me, but rather than “what she did FOR me” of TTH’s original, LK’s recorded version of the song sounds as if he sings “for what she did TO me” which – if my interpretation was correct – would totally change the entire meaning of the song

      Remember seeing Leo Kottke play this live when he supported Jethro Tull at Manchester Apollo in early 77 and rushing out and buying a few of his albums over the years on the back of it. Stunning player and very droll between song patter “a voice like geese farts on a muggy day” indeed

  39. Two king-sized slices of angst with a ginormous order of cries on the side from that master of the form,Ol Possum.

    The second was surely a huge influence on 10CC’s I’m not in Love

    • We have a winner! Bloody love this track.
      I live 10 mins up the road from New Mills & we always use it’s full name ‘No frills, handy for the hills. That’s the way you spell New Mills’.

  42. My favourite break up lyric has to be:
    Listen John, I love you, but there’s this bloke I fancy. I don’t want to two-time you, so this is the end for you and me.
    Sincere and touching.

    • @jaygee

      Thanks for the offer. I found out about Rainer when Alpaca Lips came out, so was able to backtrack through his earlier work and then get the posthumous releases as they came out, but it’s a real shame so much of it is unavailable apart from the odd tracks that people have put up on You Tube

      The only CD I couldn’t get is the one with Calexico, but looking on Discogs it seems only 100 copies were released?

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