Callie is back with a collection of songs designed to sympathize with the immediate aftermath of a breakup. Feel those feelings, shed those tears, and mourn to your heart’s content with this playlist — the first phase is the most painful, but also essential. (Phase 2 coming next week.)

  1. “About Today” – The National. Matt Berninger has one of the most somber voices in music. It’s hard not to feel solemn and introspective while listening to a song by The National, even if the lyrics aren’t particularly sad. However, “About Today” does not fall into that category. It is profoundly sad. It’s the kind of song that makes you feel like you’ve been transported to a strange planet, void of knowable life forms, to live out the rest of your days in solitude.
  2. “Love is All” – The Tallest Man On Earth. As Kristian Matsson knows, re-living emotional pain through art can be cathartic. The embattled singer wrote “Love is All” during the dissolution of his marriage, so there are unmistakable hints of both guilt and blame, both aching regret and hope for a new life ahead. Even in mourning, there are lessons to be found — and heartbroken humans somehow find a way to regenerate.  
  3. I Don’t Feel It Anymore (Song of the Sparrow)” – William Fitzsimmons. Duets can often make breakup songs feel corny, but these two voices fit together seamlessly. They blend with the acoustics in an extremely gentle way, taking the sharpness away from the hurt, accusatory lyrics (“I want back the years that you took when I was young”) and transforming the song into a resigned variety of suffering. It’s the “I wish I were numb” stage of grief.
  4. “From the Dining Table” – Harry Styles. I never knew before, but as it turns out, all I’ve ever wanted is for Harry Styles to sing about waiting by the phone and casually sleeping with his ex’s doppelgangers. His voice is both sultry and coquettish, both young and mature, which gives him the ability to convey nuances of emotion, loneliness, and anxiety in very subtle yet powerful ways. Plus: the bridge, in which Harry sings, “Maybe one day you’ll call me and tell me that you’re sorry too,” is almost too relevant for anyone with a post-breakup internal monologue.
  5. “Marvins Room” – Drake. Just as Drake has created a perfectly enduring love song (see: “Honeymoon Phase”), the relatable king of versatility also boasts the perfect breakup song. It makes sense; if you love hard, you feel those losses in a big way. Drake, rap’s quintessential sentimentalist, captured the nostalgia and late-night loneliness that leads to drunk voicemails.
  6. “Don’t You Remember” – Adele. Adele has made her name as the bard of heartbreak, so it’s probably no surprise to find her on this playlist. She has the uncanny ability to embody an entire lifetime’s worth of emotion in one single refrain or one warbled note. In this particularly painful track, our heroine is desperate to understand how her lover fell out of love. It’s a sobering and honest representation of how — after we are rejected, oftentimes through no fault of our own — many of us tend to blame ourselves and pick our insecurities apart.
  7. “White Blank Page” – Mumford & Sons. “Tell me now where was my fault / in loving you with my whole heart” is simultaneously the worst and best lyric I have ever heard. (The worst because OW. The best because, well, OW!!!!) This is one of the few breakup songs I’ve heard that manages to express the unique brand of “swelling rage” that comes with betrayal. The pain and sorrow are there too, but the anger takes center stage in this folksy power ballad — as it often can at the end of a meaningful relationship.
  8. “Title And Registration” – Death Cab for Cutie. It would almost be laughable to have a breakup playlist without the ultimate angsty band, Death Cab for Cutie. Only Ben Gibbard could take something so innocent and ordinary, like a car’s glove compartment, and turn it into something sore and tender — where “disappointment and regret collide.”
  9. “New York” – St. Vincent. It’s difficult to hear Annie Clark hear about losing her lover, especially when she describes it as losing a “hero” and a “friend.” It’s an ingenious, horribly accurate way of describing a breakup — because the worst ones, as many of us know, feel far more serious than they seem on the surface. When Clark sings, “you’re the only motherfucker in this city that can handle me,” she gets at a distinctly profound feeling of absence — when you feel adrift in a place that you used to call home.
  10. “Hard Feelings/Loveless” – Lorde. This one-two punch illustrates loss and rebirth simultaneously. On one hand, Lorde vocalizes the crushing, desperate realization that an important relationship cannot be repaired: the electronic instrumental break in “Hopeless” somehow sounds like heartbreak; the biting cynicism of “Loveless” feels familiar to anyone who has watched someone they love transform into a stranger. On the other hand, Lorde is already trying to channel her excess love inward, to take the love that she wanted to give to someone else and use it to love herself more kindly.