About my least favorite song ever is that one about the guy who finds the diary. I can’t remember who sang it, but if I researched it I might accidentally hear part of it, and … Brrrrr…! It’s sung in an “Aren’t I sensitive? Please fuck me” voice that makes even an old-line non-violence advocate like me want to tie the crooner’s shoestrings together. But the story is about someone who finds his girlfriend’s diary and thinks the special man she’s writing about is him; then it turns out to be someone else. The unaddressed elephant-in-the-room main point to me, though, is: Reading someone else’s diary without permission shows a level of trustworthiness so execrably low that no one like that could possibly sustain a relationship under any circumstances.
The powerful one that stuck out in my mind was “Without You” from My Fair Lady, which stands out particularly among the available offerings in the show-tune genre. Eliza is severing relations with Professor Higgins, and tells him:
There’ll be spring every year
Without you.
England still will be here
Without you.
And there still will be rain
On that plain
Down in Spain–
Even that will remain
Without you.
and just generally goes on to tell him how little will really change without him.
*Somebody That I Used to Know *by Gotye is probably the most spineless break-up song ever:
But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing
I don’t even need your love, but you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough
Whiny: I Know It’s Over - The Smiths. Dirgey cadence, super self-pitying, great lyrics of envy and impotence, inarticulate woe-is-me wailing - a masterpiece of the genre.
Empowering: I Break Horses - Smog. Lo-fi, quiet acoustic song featuring the stately baritone of Bill Callahan. Seems like it would be whiny, but the narrator is clearly beyond the girl/relationship, establishing himself as a sort of maverick man: “I break horses. It doesn’t take me long - just a few well-placed words, and their wandering hearts are gone.”
Not break-up songs, but kind of related… These are songs by two different singers about another woman trying to steal their man with very different attitudes towards the situation: Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” (whiny/weak) and Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City” (strong).
In the “both” category: Pray for You by Jaron and the Long Road to Love.
The tune is whiny (as well as the lyrics in the first stanza) but hang in there for the chorus and later verses… very empowering, and the personal anthem of my divorce.
Hard to beat Wilson Phillips whinily telling you to get up off your ass and empower yourself in Hold On For One More Day. (Or are you comfortable with the pain? You’ve got no one to blame for your unhappiness; you got yourself into your own mess; are you going to let them hold you down and make you cry?)
The best, and the one I came in here to mention. I actually used that one once–good times.
Bread’s Diary isn’t empowering or whiny. It’s heartbraking, and completely devoid of pride. I’ve known (and hated) ‘well adjusted’ guys who would approach a breakup like that.
And Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” should be retitled to “Before he files a restraining order”. It’s never mentioned in the song but with a psycho like that I’d be willing to bet HE broke up with HER months, maybe years ago and she’s just in crazytown denial.
