Theme
Songs about longing
Interpretations from our editorial team that explore this theme.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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
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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