Denial Side
“Woke Up New” by the Mountain Goats
No other song encapsulates the bitter end to a years-long cohabitation quite like “Woke Up New.” As Mountain Goats creator and frontman John Darnielle gently strums his acoustic guitar and emotes through whispery vocals about reflexively making too much coffee on the morning after the breakup, it’s hard to keep that bottom lip from quivering. The sparseness of instrumentation captures the hollow feel of one’s own voice echoing from the walls of a home stripped of half its soul. With lines like “And I wandered through the house/ Like a little boy/ Lost at the mall/ And an astronaut could have seen/ The hunger in my eyes from space,” this song belongs in the background when you’re digging through the trash trying to piece together torn photos. – Josh Goller
“How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” by Prince
Though sonically incongruous with 1999’s robo-funk, the stripped-down piano and falsetto vocals of Prince’s great B-side is nevertheless more apocalyptic and despairing than anything that made the final cut of his soundtrack to nuclear holocaust. “I always thought our love was so right/ I guess I was wrong,” Prince airily intones, once again proving that no one can moan in falsetto like him. He goes on to lament the titular rhetorical question, so desperate to have his lover back that even a phone call would suffice for comfort. Prince’s piano work is equally restrained-yet-impassioned, delicately moving through chords but playing with just enough oomph that his desire to just slam his hands down on the keys in cacophonous agony comes through with every note. Direct and simple, “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” is still Prince’s best and most forthright ballad of yearning and lost love, which automatically makes it one of the best breakup songs of all time. -Jake Cole
“Misery Is the River of the World” by Tom Waits
The permanent fallout from any self-respecting breakup should at least include an increased amount of cynicism. I’d like to think that “Misery Is the River of the World” is how such cynicism would sound: a classic Tom Waits collision of piano, calliope, clarinet, marimba, bells, gongs combined with barked out lyrics about the general baseness of humanity. A chunk of it might even be a twisted perversion of a Mother Goose poem. And that should be enough to warm any new cynic’s freshly broken heart. - Eric Dennis
“How Can You Like Him?” by Paul Westerberg
Whether being put in the dreaded “friend zone” or not even garnering a glance from the girl you’re head-over-heels for, sometimes the lack of recognition of your mere existence is akin to the heartbreak of splitting up. Paul Westerberg’s misanthropic and slightly stalkerish “How Can You Like Him?” hits on this theme of disillusion harder than most; not surprising from a guy who’s made a massive career out of said disillusion and misanthropy. There’s honesty and heartbreak that resonates as Westerberg’s scratchy voice sings the chorus, “How can you like him/ Any better than me?.” It’s a song that taps into that dreaded cognitive area of understanding, where regret and disdain are often undercut by an acceptance that maybe you weren’t the right person after all. - Kyle Fowle
