Soothing sounds: 10 albums that are perfect for a broken heart
There is no feeling in the world like heartbreak, and it’s only if you’ve experienced it that you’ll know that’s true. It somehow manages to be totally universal, like one of humanity’s few shared emotions, but also devastatingly isolating. In the throes of heartache, you feel like no one else in the history of the world could have ever felt so low, so gutted, or so lost. You find yourself scrambling for anything to cling on to for proof that you’ll get through it and things will be okay again. You look to your playlists and search desperately for signs of hope or a companion to sit within the hurt. Hit play on one of these.
On this Red Hand Files, Nick Cave was once asked about heartbreak by a 17-year-old fan, and there are few creators as ready to eloquently label the transcendent emotion as he: “The surest way to avoid a broken heart is to love nothing and no-one — not your partner, your child, your mother or father, your brothers or sisters; not your friends; not your neighbour; not your dog or your cat; not your football team, your garden, your granny or your job. In short, love not the world and love nothing in it. Beware of the things that draw you to love — music, art, literature, cinema, philosophy, nature and religion. Keep your heart narrow, hard, cynical, invulnerable, impenetrable, and shun small acts of kindness…”
Cave perfectly sums up a fact that is simultaneously terrifying and comforting; “A broken heart — that grief of love — is always love’s true destination. This is the covenant of love.” All love, even the most life-long, forever kind, ends in loss or heartache in some form. There is no way to love truly without it. It’s inescapable. But anyone who’s ever loved or got through heartbreak to find love again knows it’s utterly worth it.
As such a grand and vast topic, it’s one that artists from the very dawn of time have tackled. It’s a feeling that can be milled over time and time again but never exhausted as the experience is so unique yet so relatable. Even as artists sing specifically about their own stories of loss, their feelings hit the hearts of thousands. That’s exactly why so many of the greatest albums ever made are heartbreak albums and why, year on year, we’re bowled over by new releases on the topic.
They’re a friend in the hard times, a giver of relief or catharsis, a reminder that you’re not alone. To soundtrack your heartbreak, visit these ten records as some of the finest considerations ever made on the topic.
The 10 best albums for a broken heart:
For Emma, Forever Ago – Bon Iver (2007)
At the end of 2006, Justin Vernon found himself utterly lost. He’d graduated from university, split from his girlfriend and felt directionless as the waves of heartbreak beat against him. In response, he packed up a van full of equipment, drove to his father’s hunting lodge in Wisconsin and stayed there for three months. In an incredibly extreme approach to riding out heartache, he hunted his food and spent all of his time alone, making music. He only left once this album for Bon Iver was done.
For such an intense origin story, For Emma, Forever Ago is a soft and tender beast. Across the nine tracks, Vernon picks at the carcass of the relationship, looking for answers while also turning his gaze on himself, trying to find them there too. Allowing himself to play around with production and sounds and even vocal delivery, the album is the equivalent of a wolf howl of heartbreak. He said, “I found all this shit, all this grudge and meaning in what I was singing,” emerging with a record that holds his feelings in every word or minor decision. Wrapped up in a gentle acoustic package with the occasional swells of instrumental drama, it’s a perfect companion to a wounded heart.
Melodrama – Lorde (2017)
After Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, made her a star, all eyes were on what the young artist might do next. But the very nature of confessional songwriting is that you need life to happen in order to write it. In the four years she spent between the releases, life happened, and it brought loss and her first true taste of heartbreak.
“Thought you said that you would always be in love / But you’re not in love no more,” she spits out in the opening track, ‘Green Light’. Throughout the record, Lorde traces back through the breakup with a series of bold indie songs designed for dancing the pain away, denying it’s there or eventually crumbling to it.
Tracks like ‘Supercut’ or ‘The Louvre’ revisit the beautiful early days, while ‘Writer In The Dark’ deals with the bitter ending. The musician also nails the kind of self-reflection, introspection, and necessary self-care that come with heartbreak. As the devastating sound of ‘Liability’ gives way to the hope of ‘Hard Feelings/Loveless’, it’s an album to remind you that things will be okay again eventually.
Back To Black – Amy Winehouse (2006)
“We only said goodbye with words / I died a hundred times,” Amy Winehouse sings on her title track, perfectly summing up the pain of parting and the politics of the end. As the follow-up to her debut album, Frank, Winehouse went all in on her sophomore attempt. Life delivered her the ultimate subject as she grapples with the end of a relationship, the gradual loss of interest in her partner and the introduction of a newer and endlessly more toxic one.
If you’re in need of a breakup album that has a little more bolstering, turn to this. Even when Winehouse is at her most gutwrenching, there is always a clear sense of power in her voice. Her Camden drawl and witty lyricism will pick you up and send you back out into the world with your head held slightly higher, even through the pain. Writing tracks that will forever be seen as heartbreak anthems, Back To Black was an instant classic thanks to the relatability of the feeling.
Blue – Joni Mitchell (1971)
Named aptly after the only colour that could possibly paint the feeling, Joni Mitchell’s confessional masterpiece has been an accompaniment to heartbreak for decades now. Whether you look towards the tender optimism of ‘Case Of You’, waving goodbye to a love you’d outgrown, or whether you’re crumpled on the floor crying to ‘River’, there is a song for every option. There are also songs of real love and life here, which feel like a necessary antidote. Let songs like ‘Carey’ and ‘California’ lighten the mood and remind you that there is still life to live.
The record, in this way, is a multifaceted look at the feeling. Mitchell inspects love as a whole in its grandest sense, including heartbreak, happiness, familial love, and the strangeness of revisiting an old flame and finding them still struggling long after you’re done healing. It’s an album to grow alongside and come back to year after year as you collect life experience. With each new story you gather, a new song or lyric will stand out.
“Here is your song from me,” Mitchell sings as the final life of the title track, a bitter and aching ode to a lost love. In the darkest days, play it often and hold her anger too. It’ll help.
Rumours – Fleetwood Mac (1977)
The landmark 1977 record from Fleetwood Mac, Rumours is a great breakup album to listen to, simply just to remind yourself that no matter what, your situation cannot be as bad as theirs was.
Imagine going through heartbreak and then having to head into the studio with your ex and sing songs about how they make you feel like they back you up on guitar. Or worse, imagine playing songs written by your ex about how great their affair was. You can take comfort in knowing that you don’t have to do that.
It’s the story of two very messy splits in all of its sad, angry and bitter glory. ‘Dreams’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’ go head to head as two sides of the same story, while ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’ is an anthem from trying to ignore the inevitable in the denial phase. With slow moments matched equally with raging classic rock breakdowns, ignore your own pain by diving into theirs.
Crushing – Julia Jacklin (2019)
“Don’t know how to keep loving you, now that I know you so well,” Julia Jacklin sings as her long-term relationship falls apart. Or perhaps more so than that, Crushing is the story of her tearing it apart as she attempts to pull herself from the comfort and move onto new things, grappling with the feeling of wanting a fresh start but struggling with the self-discipline to actually start it.
Tracing the highs and lows of the experience, from the fizzy drunken emotion of ‘Pressure To Party’ to the sad desire for affection on ‘Good Guy’, Jacklin covers it all. Managing an incredible amount of nuance while still being relatable, this is an album for the dumpers who can’t stop wondering about how their dumpee is doing.
Good Riddance – Gracie Abrams (2023)
Or perhaps you don’t really care. Who says heartbreak albums should only be for the heartbroken? What about if you’re the one who called it off, needing to get away from someone who wasn’t serving your life? Gracie Abrams dared to make that album as she holds her hands up and admits to being the bad guy.
But it’s not that simple. Across Good Riddance, Abrams picks apart her attachments, wondering whether she feels enough, if what she feels is right or if she’s allowed to feel it at all. ‘I Should Hate You’ a track to scream in the car, sounding like the busting of the bottle where you shoved all your negative feelings about someone.
“I never was the best to you,” she sings over and over on ‘The Best’, giving words to the trickier side of the situation where you don’t feel quite as righteous in your sadness. Instead, this is an album for the person who has all of the answers in the situation and holds all the cards but wishes they weren’t being so villainised for dealing them.
The Boatman’s Call – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (1997)
“The Boatman’s Call cured me of Polly Harvey,” Nick Cave wrote of his landmark record. PJ Harvey had just called him up and savagely dumped him over the phone. In the wake of that loss, the musician found that he couldn’t bring himself to write any of his full band, roaring and bloody punk songs.
“The break up filled me with a lunatic energy that gave me the courage to write songs about commonplace human experiences (like broken hearts) openly, boldly and with meaning – a kind of writing that I had, until that date, steered clear of,” he said, finally turning his pen to his own life and his own heart.
That isn’t to say that these songs are simple or easy ballads, though. They’re still laced with the kind of rich imagery and literary streak that colours all of Cave’s work, but the feeling at the centre is more recognisable. If you’re in need of a heartbreak album that doesn’t feel quite so wallowing, this one is for you as it maintains a certain level of punk authority amidst the softness.
Stranger In The Alps – Phoebe Bridgers (2017)
If what you need is to dive off into the deep end of utter sadness, Phoebe Bridgers is always there waiting. On her debut album, Stranger In The Alps, she writes tales for every flavour and colour of heartbreak from the loss of a friend, recovery from abuse, negative self-image, unrequited love and back again. All painted with her signature lyrical style, which she deems “kind of poetic on accident,” the record is one to put on, lie on the floor, and wallow.
The moments of lightness come through catharsis here. ‘Motion Sickness’ stands out as one to sing loudly, to get some anger out. Recounting her experiences with abuse and age-gap relationships, it’s a bitter and frustrating number about lack of justice and utter exhaustion. On the flip side, songs like ‘Scott Street’ and ‘Would You Rather’ deal with the strange in-betweens and the millions of moments of heartbreak that come with loving the wrong person. From start to finish, it’s a cry fest.
The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We – Mitski (2023)
Across her discography, Mitski has plenty of songs to weep to. She has a real way of capturing pain at its purest and putting it into the perfect words; see ‘I Bet On Losing Dogs’ or ‘A Pearl’.
But on her latest album, she dedicated the entire thing to trying to articulate heartbreak in all its messiness and self-doubting grief. Drawing an extended metaphor with ecological disaster, Mitski turns her relationship into a dying earth that she’s a kind of refugee. Whether forced out or fleeing, it still hurts.
The album to’s and fro’s between betterment and upset. ‘The Frost’ sums it up quite plainly as she sings, “You’re my best friend / Now I’ve no one to tell / How I lost my best friend.” Elsewhere, ‘I’m Your Man’ deals with the specific heartache of having to crush the pedestal a lover has put you on, while ‘When Memories Snow’ sees her fighting against her mind and its cruel desire to remind her of everything little thing. There is light, though. When you’re ready to begin picking yourself back up, hit play on ‘I Love Me After You’ or ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ for a dose of self-love.
