One question regarding your heartbroken music

Those of you who've laboured through a mear one devastating heartbreak need not participate. There's enough person above you bollocks to keep you entertained, merci.

Over the course of your life, you might have become familiar with the concept of the breakup song; I'm sure I don't need to explain that in this case I refer specifically to a piece of music that resonates in perfect harmony with that dreadful palpitating wreck you'd much rather had been removed shortly after birth.

In the spirit of questionably-scientific enquiry, I ask you:

Has there only been one song for each particular Horrible Instance?

Has one song ever lasted throughout more than one Horrible Instance? Perhaps for all of them?

Do your songs appeal to you in a specific manner, for precise reasons and individual lyrics?

What have you found is the more important element of the break-up song? Did you scream the bitter lyrics, or did the lyrics merely lend meaning to the caustic instrumental?

Have you ever found yourself in the unlikely position of selecting your breakup music premptively?



Thank you dearly for allowing your pain to quell my seemingly endless curiosity. Each and every participant will be quietly thanked.

Take care, emo kids.

I've never really had a "breakup song." Instead, I tend to think of every song, everywhere as having some secret, painful message about my breakup embedded somewhere within it.

hah! im the same way. hidden messages which may or, more likely, may not be in a song seem to jump out at me.

I want you - Elvis Costello

ALWAYS on my mind during a breakup

While "rationally" it is probably not true, I believe that "dada da da dahhhh, I'm loving it!" is a direct rebuke directed at me by my last girlfriend.

There have been a few that I didn't notice until a break up. These were songs that I liked the music too and knew the words but, after a break up the lyrics evoked some response or other in me.

While there have been new ones added to the list, the old ones seem to pop up on the playlist also. Some are because of the lyrics, some are because of the music and have nothing to do with a break up at all.

I personally believe that the most important elment in any song you would call a break up song is, the emotion or feeling it evokes in the listener. I have never premptively chosen a song myself.

Um... San Dimas Highschool Football Rules by The Ataris

The short answer I like songs that I can learn to play on the guitar. Then I can scream and kick around in my room with my headphones plugged into my amp, although almost all my sad songs are quiet burning slow songs.

I don't limit myself to break-ups, though. There simply haven't been enough of them. I have songs for every horrible instance. For example, I just spent nearly the entire weekend in one giant extended screaming match with my family over my desire to take a year off from school to work on writing the Great American Graphic Novel or whatever the fuck. Right this minute, I'm sitting in the Lit Department lobby with a paper bag full of Orange-Pineapple V8 and Johnny Walker Red Label scotch (on the good advice of Elliott Smith in "Miss Misery": I'll fake it through the day with some help from Johnny Walker Red...), and I'm listening to Jawbreaker's "Friends Back East." Lyrics sample:

So, I guess it comes back to songs that seem like they were written for my situation. Now Jawbreaker's just ended and I've flipped it to a The Mr. T Experience song that's the most on target I've ever felt about school.

I would like to take this moment to contend that there is always a Mr. T Experience song to go with any situation, be it good or bad. I would also like to introduce the curious thing with me which is that, along with songs that I listen to obsessively during Horrible Instances, there are songs that I can't bear to listen to because they hit too close to home and rip me up inside. Por ejemplo, during my last and greatest-magnitude break-up, I listened obsessively to their album Our Bodies, Our Selves because it has several go-to break-up songs on it, "More Than Toast" being the obvious example (Everywhere I go, I see your ghost, the spirit of '91; you said you loved me more than toast, but less than a staple gun...) but "Love Manifesto" and "Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend" (Nixon had his puppy, Charles Manson had his clan, but god forbid that I get a girlfriend...) not falling far behind. But I always had to skip over "Will You Still Love Me When I Don't Love You?" (I sure hope you do; it would be an ego boost...) because listening to it made me cry so hard because it was true. Same goes for their song "The Boyfriend Box" on Yesterday Rules.

The #1 Song for the last big break-up though was "Okay, I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't" by Brand New. We were both really into them at the time. (Still are.) We'd gone to see them a week before we broke up. Jesse Lacey's hair and polo shirts reminded me of him. It was bad.

I could listen to this song for hours. On the other hand, "The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot," two tracks down on the album, made me want to rip my own heart out. Those songs were extremely particular to the Horrible Instance. But the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song "Modern Romance" just makes me cry on the stereo even when things are good. When I was alone it brought me to silent tears in the middle of the show.

Jesus Christ, I could write a novel on this subject.

[Edited on Jan 23, 2006 by _DictionaryGirl_]

Let's see here...I can onyl remember one breaksup song that mattered or has endured. The only "serious" girlfriend I've ever had played it for me. It was "The Promise" by Tracy Chapman. It was meaningful because we both cared very much for each other but knew that the relationship could not work. The lyrics aren't bitter or overly morose...more like, wistful.

Yep, that's about right!

Oh, and Damien Rice's "The Blowers Daughter" was on heavy rotation during my last breakup

Cure Show over and over and over....

Oh

Magnetic Fields- I cant touch you anymore

you wanna know if we fell in love too fast
you wanna know if this is well too good to last
you're asking the wrong questions
you're opening the wrong doors
i love you, i can't touch you anymore

there are several MG songs that used to illicit the same response when i was broken up from the fella, but luckily they dont make me quite as sad anymore.

It's Only Love, by Bryan Adams. Fuck off.

it's never just been one song that I listen to during breakups, but every time I go through one, the song "Somebody" by Depeche Mode can reduce me to tears.

Ummm......sorry?

I think All the Umbrellas in London is Magnetic Fields' best tune and a good break-up song to boot. Plus I play a mean blues guitar version of it, to DG's earlier point.

[Edited on Jan 23, 2006 by FridgeMagnet]

"You and Me and Rainbows" was the standard for many years, and many relationships..

My last girlfriend told me what our breakup song would be after being together for a month - Every You, Every Me by Placebo. 3 months later it turned out she was right.

For me, the lyrics are intensely personal, and the best part about a break-up song is that they can reflect my malaise while not adding to my depression.

The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix
When I Come Around by Green Day
Old Friend by Rancid.

These are the three songs that have been with me through every major heartbreak since I went to college. More recently it's been Alkaline Trio stuff. That shit is made for breakups. I think without their Good Mourning record I would have been much more depressed for much, much longer next time.

Usually it's a lyric that catches my attention. Sometimes, it's just that I spent a lot of time listening to that album or song during the time before that. Not that there have been that many relationships or breakups.

The two salient choices are:

Fiona Apple's "I Know." The song has been my favorite song since the first time I heard it. I was unlucky enough to find myself in a similar situation years later, so now it's taken on new meaning.

and

The Get up Kids' "Michelle With One 'L' "

Might as well start my drinking days now if I’m really alone

Yeah...