Borough Market, London, summer 2013. 'How long does this feeling last? I Googled it and apparently, it’s half the time of the relationship. So, a year?' I can still vividly recall that evening sitting outside a wine bar, the lump in my throat, tightness in my body, a refusal to cry, an uncharacteristic loss of appetite. I remember my friend’s honest and gentle response that she couldn’t give me an exact date, but promised with absolute certainty that the acute pain of heartbreak would pass eventually.
Frustratingly, getting over a break-up — in this case, my first — does not adhere to ‘a rough ETA’ schedule. There are of course coping mechanisms: kissing unsuitable men (indie singer-songwriters with a laissez faire approach to personal hygiene and texting back), or embodying the drama of that dog in the Instagram meme 'when a sad song comes on in the car and you look out the window and pretend you’re in a music video'.
Music has long been my emotional crutch. It has been for people for centuries: lyrics translating the euphoric experience of finding love or wading through its wreckage. Odd, when you think about it, how heartbreak is as much a collectively painful experience as an individual one, a life card we are all sure to be dealt. Some pop stars just choose to channel their pain into a song or entire record.
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Lest we forget the popularity of then-teenager Olivia Rodrigo’s Grammy-award winning, autobiographical debut 2021 album, Sour, with hits like ‘drivers licence’, ‘traitor’, ‘good 4 U’ and ‘brutal’. It was hailed a triumphant ‘revenge record’, unapologetically exploring the bitterness and rage felt towards a former boyfriend who had 'moved on really easily'. While Rodrigo hasn't pioneered the genre (think the anthemic sounds of ‘You’re So Vain’ by Carly Simon; ‘You Oughta Know’ by Alanis Morissette; or Taylor Swift’s many, many achingly detailed lyrical clues alluding to past romances, from John Mayer to Jake Gyllenhaal), she did spark a rebirth of messy pop. Just last year Lana Del Rey placed a single billboard in her ex’s hometown to promote her 2023 album, Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (in September she’ll release her first-ever country record, Lasso). And Shakira recently released viral ‘diss’ tracks (featuring un-subtle references to her ex Gerard Piqué, who allegedly cheated on her).
'I’ve always thought how cool it is for a woman to immortalise a failed love with a f**k boy and make money from her words and help heal others who have gone through it,' music publicist and founder of Artists' Way agency, Elspeth Merry tells me. As Taffy Brodesser-Akner writes in The Paris Review, Swift’s catalogue, for instance, ostensibly allows listeners to live out a fantasy, to 'dream of a time when the stings of the past are made better through the public hanging of dirty laundry'.
This raw storytelling in music is crucial. It’s cathartic, most definitely, and potentially helpful for both artist and audience. What is equally as important though is exploring heartbreak through an empathetic, rather than a scornful, lens. Writing from the scar, rather than the wound, so to speak. Binge-listening to Ariana Grande’s post-divorce ‘concept record’, Eternal Sunshine, I was struck by her self-awareness, sensitivity, reflectiveness, and refusal to paint her ex as a villain (‘i wish i hated you’, Ariana explained, is about accepting 'I don’t need to pretend you’re a monster to make peace with this ending'.) Music critic and author of Reach for the Stars, Michael Cragg, says Grande’s album speaks to the power of self-protection for artists today. '[Also], maybe as songwriters they’re just bored of coming at it from the same angle,' he says. 'Miley’s "Flowers" really shone because it was refreshing to hear such a plain-speaking, I Will Survive-esque song about a very public split [reportedly about her ex-husband, Liam Hemsworth].'
If Karl Marx is right and music is the mirror of reality, is 2024's music signalling that we’re all just becoming less petty when it comes to break-ups? More emotionally mature? Learning the importance of putting our personal growth above exhaustive spite? Perhaps. The fact ‘divorce rings’ – repurposing one’s wedding ring after a split à la Emily Ratajkowski and co – are having a moment is suggestive (twice-divorced TikTok star Mia Khalifa shared on her Instagram stories: '[it’s] the most beautiful thing to honour that past relationship.') As does the new wave of ‘secret uncoupling’, that cares little for overshare in the eye of an emotional storm (from Natalie Portman 'quietly' filing for divorce from her ex Benjamin Millepied last summer to Jada Pinkett Smith revealing her and husband Will Smith have been separated for seven years).
'I think it’s to do with therapy,' Cragg says. 'Protecting your mental health, getting older, looking to external answers such as astrology, and not wanting to deal with the fallout on such a grand scale when fans now jump on unpicking clues,' he says. 'Having said that, Taylor [Swift] is the queen of that and I’m sure her new album, The Tortured Poets Department [released April 19] will be full of those Easter eggs.'
Ultimately, it’s necessary we consume a varied heartbreak mixtape 'diet'. Relationships are full of nuance and competing narratives. Sometimes people behave carelessly in love and you daydream about their humiliation post-split. Sometimes we find ourselves in denial about how we even feel. Sometimes there is nobody to blame in the aftermath of heartbreak, there’s just sorrow. These Carole King’s lyrics from her award-winning 1971 album, Tapestry, are some of the saddest and truest ever written about coming to terms with the demise of a relationship:
There's somethin' wrong here, there can be no denyin'
One of us is changin', or maybe we've just stopped tryin'
And it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Somethin' inside has died
And I can't hide and I just can't fake it
The other day I was chatting to leading music supervisor and self-described 'stupidly sensitive listener', Lucy Bright. She admitted she has to emotionally prepare for playing certain break-up songs as they are so devastating (including Blur’s ‘No Distance Left To Run’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Most of The Time’). And yet, 'everyone is somewhat reassured by a heartbreak song', Bright adds. 'It helps us move through that pain.' Movement is crucial. Alongside revenge manifestos à la Rodrigo, we need art that reflects all the other seasons of the lonely-hearts club, that asks more questions than reveals answers. Acknowledging that no feeling – happy, sad – is final.
In researching this article, I discovered one of the most bitter break-up records of all time: Marvin Gaye’s My Dear. Inspired by an acrimonious (and costly) divorce battle with his wife, Anna, in the 1970s. Long story short, Gaye didn’t have enough cash, so as part of the divorce settlement he agreed to give his ex the full advance and profits made from his next album. The song titles are…brazen. ‘When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You’; ‘You Can Leave, But It’s Going to Cost You’; ‘Anna’s Song,’ and so on. Upon release, she threatened to sue him for invasion of privacy. In a wild plot list, they became close friends years later. 'It’s taken me a while,' Anna said. 'But with the passage of time I’ve come to appreciate every form of Marvin’s music.' Then I think about my friends promise over a decade ago. How that relationship ending turned out to be a kind of freedom. Something that allowed me, years later, to meet the person who has expanded my world in unpredictable ways. Any sadness and soured feelings attached to that break-up have long passed. Now I just feel grateful. Time, I suppose, is funny like that.
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