Theme
Songs about longing
Interpretations from our editorial team that explore this theme.
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Sara Bareilles
Home
A plea addressed to someone lost, literal or symbolic, that doubles as an open letter about hope, division, and the exhausting work of waiting for the people we love to come back
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Kehlani
Folded
A pride-swallowing invitation back, where folding a lover's laundry becomes the gesture that admits she was wrong to push them away
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The Smiths
Shoplifters of the World Unite
A glam-rock call to arms that turns petty theft into a misfit's manifesto, half political joke and half declaration of romantic devotion
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OneRepublic
Come Home (feat. Sara Bareilles)
A plea sent out from someone tired of conflict to a person, or a wider audience, asking them to choose connection over the noise of war and ego
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Charlie Puth & Jung Kook
Left and Right
A breakup song about the way an ex's presence keeps reappearing in every direction the narrator turns, no matter how much time, distance, or alcohol he puts between them
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Milky & Mall Grab
Just The Way You Are
A house-music love note that turns devotion into a chant, asking a partner to stay exactly as they are while the beat keeps rolling
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Tame Impala & JENNIE
Dracula (JENNIE Remix Instrumental)
A nocturnal romance where two people who feel alive only after dark beg the morning not to come for them
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SS501
내 머리가 나빠서
A one-sided love confession from someone too fixated to look away, even when the person he loves is looking at someone else
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RAYE
WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!
A theatrical, half-pleading, half-exasperated soul number about waiting for a future husband who has not yet materialised, addressed equally to him, to God, and to herself
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The Goo Goo Dolls
Iris
A man begs to be seen as he really is by the one person he loves, even if it costs him everything else
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T-ara
DAY BY DAY
A K-pop ballad of post-breakup yearning where the singer counts the slow, identical days she spends missing someone who has already vanished like wind
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BIBI
BUMPA
A bilingual club track where a lovesick verse in Hindi crashes into a Jason Derulo party-rap, turning longing into a dance-floor instruction
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Teddy Swims
Lose Control
A confession of dependency dressed as a love song, where wanting someone has curdled into needing them just to feel intact
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HANRORO
Let Me Love My Youth
A frozen heart asks spring to claim it, trading a brief, blooming youth for the certainty of being chosen at least once
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Zara Larsson
Ruin My Life
A breakup song that flips the usual script: she doesn't want her ex back to feel safe, she wants the chaos back because the calm is worse
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Big Thief
Not
A song that tries to name an unnameable feeling by listing everything it isn't, circling a center that language can't reach
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Mitski
Nobody
A disco-bright confession of loneliness so total it loops the word itself into a chant, asking not for love but for the bare proof that another person is there