Why we turn to breakup songs
BENGALURU: Do you remember Cher in Believe from a decade or so ago? Cher sang, “Do you believe in life after love, I can feel something inside me say, I really don’t think you’re strong enough, no... But I know that I’ll get through this, ‘Cause I know that I am strong, I don’t need you anymore.” For a year or so, it was quite the anthem and even now, when it comes on, either in its original form or in remixed avatars with new beats, remastered tracks and other tricks of the trade, it does not fail to bring people out to sing along or dance a little.
Song and dance aside, what is life after love anyways? How do you deal with the sudden and abrupt end to love? Does it become a question of strength about who bounces back quickly and how? And does it always end up being about who needs whom? Cher sings those lines over and over as if to make oneself believe it was possible, while at the same time almost being quite sure it was not possible.
This is a lament that comes up every few years, if not more frequently than that. Whether you are listening to the many versions of Somebody I Used To Know, or older classics like Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U or last year’s Nothing Breaks Like A Heart, there are many songs about loss of love, in addition to talking about cracks and scars, and tears and fears, talks about needing and wanting each other, wanting to not fall apart, hold their strength, and finding oneself again.
Can you love someone without letting yourself be vulnerable, to allow your strength to be someone else’s and to let your strength be dependent on theirs? Can love just remain something you add on to your life? Is it really strength or even love, to remain strong enough on one’s own, while being in love with someone else?
Breaking up is hard only because love tends to get us so intertwined, so interdependent and so inter-connected. If one did not let oneself love as fully, or be loved as deeply, breaking up would not be too difficult, would it? If a relationship had little more than transactional value, maybe there would be no mourners for its loss. Where it really hurts is that despair where one had imagined a mutuality, a reciprocity, and had just never thought they were not as significant to the other.
Like last year’s Nothing Breaks Like A Heart says, “And this broken record, spin endless circles in the bar,” we may never ever stop hearing breakup songs. This lament, this cry for strength and recovery, this wish to believe in a life after love even with a broken heart, even if nothing compared to that one and you are barely somebody they used to know – this will be with us in our DJ requests, call-ins to our FM radios and our playlists over and over again, decade after decade. The author is a counsellor with InnerSight.