There are a blue million songs out there that explore that sordid underbelly of the true love tune, the breakup song. From angry, punk-ish rants, to tear-in-my-beer country wallows, to defiant, I’m-a-get-over-you anthems, and back again, the breakup song is at least as popular a song to write, sing, and listen to as the love song is. This thread asks what you consider to be the best examples of the form.
I’ll get this thing going by posting one of my ten favorite breakup songs of all time (and the best song off the stellar album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got), Sinéad O’Connor’s “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance”.
*I liked the way my hand looked on your head
in the presence of my knuckles
but the beauty of this vision alone just like yesterday’s sunset
has been perverted by the sentimental
and mistaken for love
the felix of your truth will always break it
and the iris of your eye will always shake it*
That, and I don’t really know a better Angry Ex song than Alanis Morissette’s ''You Oughta Know."