MANY great songs are born out of heartbreak. But it’s a shame certain artists didn’t find lasting love and not have to inflict these albums on the world.
Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette, 1995
If Alanis had found true love 30 years ago we’d have been spared the ubiquity of this mediocre soft rock album and the subsequent years of wronged singer-songwriter tropes. With Mr Right she probably wouldn’t have minded if it had rained on her wedding day. Although as the song says, that is definitely Ironic. Even if it didn’t happen at her actual wedding.
A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead, 2016
‘Half of my life,’ sings Thom Yorke as his 23-year relationship comes to an end. Except it’s not so much sung as slowed down and played backwards at the end of a track because of course it is. This is the sort of nonsense smart fridges will come up with when they discover heartbreak. Just write some more actual tunes like Creep please, Thom.
Red, Taylor Swift, 2012
Parents would have a lot more money if Taylor Swift had been lucky in love around 2010, although you suspect she knows exactly what she’s doing. Swift is to getting dumped what Jeff Bezos is to next-day delivery, and teenage fans are the online shoppers. Why else would she deal with the death of romantic love with the sophistication of an eleven-year-old in tracks like We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together? She’s got a better business model than Amazon.
Face Value, Phil Collins, 1981
Did Collins’ first wife divorce him because she’d heard a demo of his appalling cover of the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows that manages to closely copy the original yet somehow be much, much worse? It’s likely. However the album was a commercial smash which launched an entire career of insipid love ballads full of horrible, tinny drumming. It also gave us that chocolate advert with the gorilla, but that’s scant consolation.
21, Adele, 2011
Supposedly a hugely relatable breakup album, this is actually all rather sinister. Lyrics like ‘I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited’ on Someone Like You sound like the start of a slasher movie. Rolling in the Deep’s gospel backing vocal – ‘You’re gonna wish you never had met me’ – is more of a direct threat. The best response to this album is to call the police and hope they start digging up Adele’s back garden just in case.
Rumours, Fleetwood Mac, 1977
One of the most famous breakup albums. However, dig beneath the hit singles and there’s precious little insight into the searing pain of lost love. It’s doubtful lyrics like ‘Bow bow bow, do doodle do do’ ever helped anyone through a period of heartbreak. Elsewhere, Never Going Back Again has all the emotional heft of the Postman Pat theme, not most people’s go-to track in a pit of emotional despair.
