Even if you’re the strong and silent type, there’s nothing like the catharsis of listening to a song – slushy or otherwise – to help you through a break-up. But which are the best break-up songs? Here is our list of the ten best, plucked from the worlds of classical and jazz music.
‘Donde lieta usci’ from Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
This aria from Act III of Puccini’s La bohème is sung by Mimi just after she and Rodolfo agree to part. Rodolfo attributes the break-up to their frequent arguments. In reality, he is terrified by Mimi’s sickness, the prospect of losing her and his inability to care for her, owing to his poverty and humble living conditions. Translating as ‘from here she happily left’, the song’s title suggests an amicable break up, but the pain underpinning it is clear from the gut-wrenching music.
‘You Don’t Know what Love Is’ – Dinah Washington
Though written by Don Raye and Gene de Paul, this 1941 break-up song was made famous by Dinah Washington, whose bright, clear voice lends a poignant touch of innocence to its message about the cost of love. Since then it has been interpreted by artists ranging from Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. Many would call it a sad song; for me it’s more multifaceted: as much a tribute to the optimism of love as to the pain of losing it.
‘Addio del passato’ from Guiseppe Verdi’s La traviata
It’s one of those classic ‘just-too-late’ moments: Violetta, the consumptive heroine of La traviata, is about to die. She receives a letter from the father of her lover Alfredo, saying that the latter has discovered why she lied about her love for him and that he is coming to her. But she knows that there isn’t enough time. This aria is her sobbing farewell to Alfredo and the happiness she experienced with him.
‘These Foolish Things (Remind me of You)’ – Billie Holiday
This break-up song, in which the narrator is surrounded by reminders of a lost lover, was not immediately popular. Eric Maschwitz – then head of Variety at the BBC – wrote the lyrics in 1935, allegedly inspired by the cabaret singer Jean Ross, with whom he had had a youthful love affair. He dictated the words over the phone to the composer Jack Strachey, who wrote the music. Then….tumbleweed. Nobody showed any interest, until, in 1936, the famous West Indian singer and pianist Leslie Hutchinson (better known as “Hutch”) discovered the song on top of a piano in Maschwitz’s office at the BBC. He liked it and recorded it, creating an instant hit. Since then, scores of jazz musicians have made their mark on the song, most famous of them being Billie Holliday, whose version drives home the haunting quality of the words.
‘Addio, fiorito asil’ from Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly
You could say this song about break-up is the operatic equivalent of dumping someone by text. Having abandoned Butterfly, and taken her child into the bargain, Pinkerton has now come to bid his former lover farewell. But he realises, on arrival, that he can’t face it. So he makes do with saying goodbye to the house where they spent many happy times together. The music suggests that he feels pretty bad about it. But for some reason it’s hard to feel too sorry for him.
‘Cry Me a River’ – Julie London
Written by the American songwriter Arthur Hamilton for Ella Fitzgerald, this song was meant to debut as part of the score for the 1955 film Pete Kelly’s Blues. In the event, however, the song was dropped from the film and ended up being debuted by the singer Julie London – whose sultry voice had a completely different flavour from Ella Fitzgerald’s. As a BBC Legends episode put it: ‘Some singers sing as though they are addressing a crowd; some sing as though they are in a bar with a lot of people—[London] sings as though she’s in one room, with you—and that’s the difference.’ It was just the right flavour for this mournful song about heartbreak, which is perhaps why, despite being interpreted by many singers over the years, not least Michael Bublé, London’s version remains the most famous.
‘When I am Laid’ from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas
This aria from Purcell’s 1688 opera Dido and Aeneas finds Dido, distraught at Aeneas’s betrayal, preparing to stab herself. But what makes it so uniquely effective? Perhaps it’s the yearning melody, or the chromatically descending ground bass, or that sense of distilled despair in the text. For all its surface simplicity, Dido’s lament is full of musical sleights of hand. Those leaning appoggiaturas in the vocal part, the ornamentation in the strings: all conspire to make this one of the most tragic songs of heartbreak in the history of English opera.
‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ – Etta James
Etta James, the singer who first recorded ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ in 1967, wrote in her autobiography Rage To Survive that she heard the song outlined by her friend Ellington ‘Fugi’ Jordan when she visited him in prison. Despite writing the rest of the song with Jordan, she then gave her songwriting credit to her then-partner, Billy Foster, citing tax reasons. Still, James is synonymous with this song, whose heartbreaking lyrics (‘I’d rather be blind, boy /Than to see you walk away’), have been widely interpreted as autobiographical. Some have even read them as a metaphor for James’s heroin addiction.
‘Ich hab ein gluhend Messer’ from Gustav Mahler’s ‘Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen’
Written around 1884–85 in response to Mahler’s unhappy love for the soprano Johanna Richter, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen telescopes the process of getting over a lover into twenty minutes of impassioned song. This third movement from the cycle is probably the most visceral. It likes the pain of lost love to having a metal blade piercing one’s heart. With its driving music, full of tonal instability, it is pretty agonised and agonising stuff. No less than you would expect from a composer widely considered to be one of classical music’s greatest drama queens.
‘Mon Dieu’ – Edith Piaf
Speaking to that universal desire to cling onto love, even if only for a little while longer, this 1960 song ranks amongst the most famous in Edith Piaf’s repertory, which is saying something. Yet, when its composer Charles Dumont originally presented it to Piaf, the chanteuse was not impressed. ‘The music is very beautiful, but the text is completely impossible. What is the name of the song?’, Piaf allegedly asked. ‘Toulon-Le Havre-Anvers’, answered Dumont. ‘Grotesque’, said Piaf. ‘Completely ridiculous and stupid. Who wrote this?’ ‘Michel Vaucaire’. So in the middle of the night Piaf called Vaucaire and asked him to bring her a new text the next day.
He duly obeyed, gave his new version to Charles Dumont who played it and sang it – much to Piaf’s approval. ‘Toulon-Le Havre-Anvers’ had become ‘Mon Dieu’.