If your significant other has just broken up with you and you're looking for music that expresses your miserable mood; or if you're the person ready to call it quits in a relationship and are looking for inspiration; or if you simply like music about people being kicked to the curb and having broken hearts, then check out this list recommending Ne-Yo's "So Sick," Lauryn Hill's "Ex-Factor," John Legend's "Used to Love U," and more of the Best R&B Break-Up Songs ever.
What Goes Around ... Comes Around, Justin Timberlake
This song's very similar to another breakup song by JT, "Cry Me A River," but he denies the similarities were intentional. Anyway, both tracks are beautifully melancholy tracks about relationships that have fallen apart and getting even with the person who broke your heart.
Can't Let Go, Anthony Hamilton
This song is painful in two ways: one, it's sad that in the song, Anthony has lost the woman that he obviously loves so much. But it's also sad in the way that it epitomizes how some people can't or won't allow themselves to get over the grief and move on.
So Sick, Ne-Yo
It doesn't get more real - or sad - than not changing your answering machine message so that you can still hear the voice of the person who broke your heart.
Killing Me Softly, Roberta Flack
Not even a version of this song by Lauryn Hill and the Fugees could erase from people's mind's Roberta Flack's sorrowful tale of "strumming my pain with his fingers."
Ex-Factor, Lauryn Hill
"Ex-Factor" is like a modern-day "Killing Me Softly." Some people think the pain and confusion in Lauryn's voice on this song foreshadowed the emotional breakdown that she went through a few years afterward.
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, Al Green
The title says it all; this is the kind of song that you want to listen to while drowning your sorrows in a bottle of scotch. Painful though the song is, it's also arguably the most shining moment in Reverend Al's long, glorious career. The Bee Gees may have done the song first, but Al did it best.
Not Gon' Cry, Mary J. Blige
Believe it or not, this song was actually written by a man: singer-songwriter Babyface. A taste of the lyrics:
"While all the time that I was loving you
You were busy loving yourself
I would stop breathing if you told me to
Now you're busy loving someone else
Eleven years out of my life
Besides the kids I have nothing to show
Wasted my years a fool of a wife
I shoulda left your ass a long time ago."
Used to Love U, John Legend
This song, off of Legend's Get Lifted album, is about breaking up with a golddigger, but taking the blame. Or as Legend puts it in the song: "No, no, it's my fault - 'cause I can't afford you."
Un-Break My Heart, Toni Braxton
Toni Braxton's finest moment as a singer came when she managed to reach the lowest of lows emotionally. Damn, this song is so sad it can make people cry for hours at a time.
Goodbye, Lyfe Jennings
Cover © Sony/Columbia.
"Because sometimes breakin' up is easier than makin' up."
This underrated, little-known song is on Lyfe's second album, The Phoenix, which dropped in 2006.
This underrated, little-known song is on Lyfe's second album, The Phoenix, which dropped in 2006.
Tyrone, Erykah Badu
Maybe the coldest, yet funniest dismissals ever of a triflin' man:
"I'm gettin' tired of your sh*t
You dont never buy me nothin'
See everytime you come around
You got to bring Jim, James, Paul & Tyrone."
