“Interestingly, a great many of the popular songs in break-up-themed playlists are pop songs and the artists, for the most part, are big celebrities,” Cook continues, suggesting that we often turn to familiar, beloved artists when we’re going through a rough time.īelow, TIME has pulled together a list of some of the most popular breakup songs on those Spotify playlists, as well as some under-the-radar favorites that might just come in handy when dealing with a broken heart. Vincent, Lorde, Kesha and P!nk, to name just a few.Īs Cook notes, you can pretty much slot breakup songs into two categories: “raw, tender tracks that tap into the fragility of the human heart” (think: Adele), or “dismissive, I-don’t-care-I’m-so-over-you type of songs” (here’s where Clarkson would come in). There’s The Weeknd‘s appropriately dejected songs from his new EP My Dear Melancholy, for instance, and some powerful tunes from the past year by pop queens St. Gavin: I definitely have written songs in weird places, yeah.While some classics remain timeless in their appeal - songs like Beyoncé‘s “Irreplaceable,” Adele‘s “Someone Like You” and Kelly Clarkson‘s “Since U Been Gone” remain the top three most popular additions to breakup-themed playlists on Spotify, for instance - 2018 and recent years have their own new music to throw into the heartbreak-and-recovery mix. Maskin: Didn't you write “If U Love Me Now” sitting under a table? But a couple months later I got an idea for something and it just so happened that it fit over the tracks that we had originally worked on. It was just something we did to get the gears moving. For our most recent record, we were playing a game in the studio where basically you have the synth and you have your drum machine and everybody has five minutes on a timer to add a part. Katie Gavin: Probably the five minute game. What’s the strangest way one of your songs has come to be? It seems as if the process of creating “Silk” was pretty seamless. Naomi McPherson: That's the trick they play on you!
I was like, "This guy is cooler than me.” You know? I remember one of my earlier makeout sessions was with this boy who played a piano version of “Everything in Its Right Place” by Radiohead and then he quizzed me on what song it was. Josette Maskin: “Silk” is a redemption song for young, queer makeouts. Which makes me wonder, what’s the first song you ever made out with someone to? You wrote “Silk Chiffon” with the hopes that it could be a song that kids have their first queer kiss to. On Writing A Queer First Kiss Song & Their Adolescent Make Out Music It's a manifestation tactic.”īelow, MUNA reflects on Snow Patrol, the songs Gavin thinks should play at her bandmates’ weddings, and Neutral Milk Hotel’s Anne Frank obsession. “Someone said they said, ‘Life's so fun enough times until actually believed it,’ and I think that's what we're doing as well. “I love seeing people make jokes about how they listen to it on repeat when they get up in the morning because I used to do that with songs,” says Gavin. The song’s serotonin-filled energy has been infectious enough to make it the band’s first hit on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart, and to inspire legions of fans to playfully share lyrics like, “Life's so fun, life's so fun / Got my miniskirt and my rollerblades on,” all over social media. “So to make just a simple, happy love song is like, ‘Yeah, I'm capable of this. All of it is deliberately “a bit cheeky and self-aware.” “Even just us having Phoebe on the song - we’re both artists that are known for sad music,” McPherson says. The music video is a millennial pink-tinted sendup to the queer camp classic film, But I’m A Cheerleader, and their recent performance on The Late Late Show with James Corden was prom-themed. MUNA’s performances of the song have been just as convivial. “Silk Chiffon,” which debuted in September and features Bridgers, is a queer anthem celebrating the soft, often silly side of being in love for the first time. MUNA’s choice to embrace joy is a radical one. “We've done so much work on ourselves as individuals and as a band where it's just like, ‘I want to have f*cking fun.’ We're all going to f*cking die, but I would really just rather stop being such a sad sack.” “If you listen to our first two records, that sh*t ain't that happy,” Maskin tells Bustle. But when former USC schoolmates Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson set out to write MUNA’s latest single, “Silk Chiffon,” they decided they’d had enough with the melancholy. In 2017, the three bandmates experienced a collective post-tour “severe depression.” They wrote the sad girl missive “Number One Fan” (which includes the lyrics, “So I heard the bad news / Nobody likes me and I'm gonna die alone / In my bedroom”), and later signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ aptly titled label, Saddest Factory Records. The members of MUNA are no strangers to sadness.