Prince and Sinéad O’Connor Nothing makes you want to drown your sorrows quite like the next fresh wound in an ill-fated relationship — and nothing comforts like a good breakup song. History’s archive offers an array of colorful (and melancholy) melodies to match the full spectrum of post-breakup emotions: denial, sorrow, anger, resentment, gonna-show-that-cheater-a-lesson, and all the rest. Got an old-school broken heart? Here are some classic remedies:
“Your Cheatin’ Heart” – Hank Williams Sr. (1953)
It’s a classic done-wrong song in a genre that specializes in emotional wrongdoing. Williams, the country and western music legend also known as The Hillbilly Shakespeare, penned it after describing his first wife as a “cheatin’ heart.” The vocals, accompanied by fiddles and a steel guitar, address the conscience of a deceptive partner:
Hank Williams Sr. Your cheatin’ heart
Will pine some day
And crave the love
You threw away.
The time will come
When you’ll be blue,
Your cheatin’ heart
Will tell on you.
”Crying” – Roy Orbison (1961)
Ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as No. 69 in its Greatest Songs of All Time, “Crying” is poignant, simple and just as uncomfortably truthful as the longing feeling brought on by the sight of a not-tooold ex. Inspired by a young Orbison’s own personal troubles, the lines
But darling, what can I do?
For you don’t love me
and I’ll always be crying over you
describe his sadness upon encountering an old flame. The ghostly tune concludes with a climactic rise that Orbison described simply as the “retelling of a thing with a girlfriend that I’d had.”
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” – Bob Dylan (1963)
Greenwich Village’s freewheelin’ wordsmith put it bluntly: “This isn’t a love song.” The lyrics, however, drip with the kind of tender contempt that damaged love is known for producing. Dylan wrote “Don’t Think Twice” after hearing that his girlfriend Suze Rotolo, who was studying in Italy, planned to stay there indefinitely. His words cleverly toe that precious line between apathy and anguish:
I ain’t a-sayin’ you treated me unkind.
You could have done better but I don’t mind.
You just kinda wasted my precious time,
But don’t think twice, it’s all right.
”Nothing Compares 2U” – Prince (1985)
When this self-pitying masterpiece was first recorded in 1985 for Prince’s side project The Family, it received little recognition. Five years later, however, Irish songwriter Sinéad O’Connor turned it into an international hit. The 1990 music video, which features almost intrusively close shots of O’Connor’s emotional rendition, won an array of music video awards, including MTV’s Video of the Year. And what about those tears she (and thousands of viewers, undoubtedly) shed during the lines “All those flowers you planted … all died when you went away”? 100 percent genuine.