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There’s nothing quite like pop music to capture the feelings we can’t reach ourselves – so thank God for the sadbanger, a subgenre that manages to get at the biggest and seemingly most contradictory. These are the songs that make you cry and dance at the same time, that can make you suddenly vulnerable at moments of euphoria, or that induce excitement and hope just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, they are often about failed relationships: situations that invariably give rise to bittersweet emotions that can be so hard to articulate.
On her new album The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift has given us a notable new entry to the sadbanger canon with “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”, a song about going through the motions of her monstrously successful Eras tour, dancing, sparkling, and putting on a brave face for the fans, despite feeling “miserable” inside. For me, it’s the standout track on the album.
If you like it too, here’s a top 17 of the best sadbangers. From Daft Punk to The Weeknd, Perfume Genius to Cher, they’re for crying on the dancefloor, dancing in your bedroom, and everything in between.
17. Cyndi Lauper – ‘When You Were Mine’ (1983)
A song originally by Prince gets the synth treatment in this cover, which taps into a feeling of prom-night anguish and diary-entry romance. Over a pulsating drum beat, it explores the ambivalence of seeing a former lover with someone else: “I know that you’re goin’ with another guy / I don’t care ’cause I love you baby that’s no lie / I love you more than I did when you were mine.” It’s reminiscent of a good stomp on the dancefloor with your closest friends – and the feelings you wouldn’t share even with them.
16. CHVRCHES – ‘Leave a Trace’ (2015)
Released during a golden era of electro-pop, CHVRCHES nail vulnerable euphoria with this song, which channels pent-up feelings and appears to fulfil the “need to feel released”. “Take care to bury all that you can / Take care to leave a trace of a man,” goes the chorus, which carries a sense of both injustice and relief.
15. The 1975 – ‘Somebody Else’ (2016)
Most songs by the 1975 have something of a bittersweet tinge. Perhaps it’s the early 80s sound, or perhaps it’s their invocation of reckless youth – but “Somebody Else” is some of the band’s most evocative and heartbreaking work. The lyrics are uncharacteristically simple – “I don’t want your body / But I hate to think about you with somebody else” – and succinctly capture a petulant yet visceral feeling of jealousy and regret after a relationship comes to an end, all while trotting along with a catchy beat.
14. Kelly Clarkson – ‘Since U Been Gone’ (2004)
With Breakaway, Kelly Clarkson released perhaps the most singable album of the 21st century so far – and “Since U Been Gone” is its signature break-up banger. It’s a rage-fuelled storm through the defiant part of a break-up, in which Clarkson declares she’s “so moving on” – that “you had your chance / You blew it”. Still, there’s a note of sadness underpinning it all that captures the anguish of that delicate time.
13. Ariana Grande – ‘One Last Time’ (2014)
Too often written off as a generic pop song, Ariana Grande’s “One Last Time” is a powerful ballad-cum-banger, which gained all the more emotion when she sang it at the charity concert organised after the terrorist attack at her concert in Manchester. The soaring chorus is fuelled by the last shred of hope in a relationship with someone who’s moved on: “I know she gives you everything / But boy I couldn’t give it to you,” goes the bridge, before Grande belts: “One last time / I need to be the one who takes you home.”
12. Daft Punk – ‘Instant Crush’ (2013)
This gentle slow-burn from Daft Punk laments the purgatory of the friend zone – with a shuffling beat kicking in at the chorus, we’re caught in the rumination of loving someone unavailable. With Daft Punk’s trademark offbeat synths and vocoder, it goes round and round, feeling static but volatile, somehow embodying a huge amount of sexual tension. As good for punching a pillow as it is two-stepping in a festival field.
11. Perfume Genius – ‘On the Floor’ (2020)
Michael Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, wrote this song about an intense crush, particularly through the lens of being a closeted teen – but it’s just as powerful as a reminder of any kind of unrequited or hidden love. It skips and dances along with light, upbeat energy, while the lyrics tell a different story: “On the floor / I pace, I run my mouth / I pray and wait / I cross out his name on the page.” A masterly lesson in writhing, dancing and crying from the king of romantic longing.
10. Pet Shop Boys – ‘Always On My Mind’
Pet Shop Boys’ oeuvre of synthy dance-pop is laced with super-romantic songs made all the more special for their queerness – and “Always On My Mind” (originally a country song first recorded in 1972, made famous later that year by Elvis Presley) is the most tragic and euphoric of them all. After a drum introduction, we are granted release in a stratospheric synth entry and the declaration “Maybe I didn’t treat you / Quite as good as I should”, before we reach the refrain that seems to beg for forgiveness: “You are always on my mind.” Camp, heartbreaking and, crucially, a stone-cold banger.
9. The Killers – ‘Mr Brightside’ (2004)
“Coming out of my cage / And I’ve been doing just fine” – so goes that infamous opening line that’s not fooling anyone. “Mr Brightside” has become a song for the end of the night, for sharing in that universal experience of imagining someone you love with someone else. Brandon Flowers’ impassioned cries and a guitar solo everyone knows by heart make this song a classic for the ages – a bona fide bittersweet ode to lost love.
8. Lorde – ‘Green Light’ (2017)
Lorde’s 2018 album Melodrama was an understated break-up record, full of quiet seething and thunderous emotions. Alongside other juggernauts “Supercut” and “The Louvre”, “Green Light” is a sparklingly original piece of songwriting that accelerates through a moody verse before soaring up a key and into a pacy chorus of anguish (“’Cause honey I’ll come get my things, but I can’t let go”). It’s an ambivalent rhapsody of obsessive post-break-up mania, and deserves every accolade it got.
7. Niki & the Dove – ‘Ode to Dancefloor’ (2016)
The chronically underrated Swedish synth-pop outfit were masters of the sadbanger, and “Ode to Dancefloor” – the final track of their 2016 masterpiece Everybody’s Heart is Broken Now – is the ultimate in shimmering poignancy. It’s a tribute to the intimacy that only happens in darkened rooms with pounding music, full of grief for fleeting encounters that could have been something special. “Oh, time, time, time/Is not a friend of mine/I can’t believe we meet like this/Just to have to say goodbye,” sings Malin Dahlström, before ending with the refrain: “My love for you / Will never ever go out” over twinkling synths. It’s like listening to a last-night-of-holiday sunset.
6. Abba – ‘When All Is Said and Done’
Never underestimate the existential power of Abba. “Thanks for all your generous love / And thanks for all the fun,” goes this big-hearted goodbye track, “Neither you or I are to blame / When all is said and done.” There is something so uniquely poignant and mindful about the acceptance carried in these lyrics, which are buoyed by a steady bassline and chugging beat. Proof that joy and sorrow are two sides of the same coin, in three minutes of music capable of reducing you to a puddle.
5. Taylor Swift – ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’ (2024)
“I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday,” sings Swift on this strong new entry to the sadbanger canon – “It’s an art.” She certainly makes it one here, on a disco-synth bop that is as gutwrenching as it is catchy, where Swift sings about performing on her record-breakingly successful Eras tour just after the end of her six-year relationship. “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, ‘More’/I was grinning like I’m winning, I was hitting my marks/Cos I can do it with a broken heart,” she sings – but while the lyrics are empowering, the music says something different. Namely: no level of success can help with this feeling.
4. Sugababes – ‘About You Now’ (2007)
There is a powerful sense of wistful longing to this nostalgic banger from Sugababes, the first of the band’s singles to feature Amelle Berrabah. The song’s title lyric seems to come with a sigh – “Can we bring yesterday back around? / ‘Cause I know how I feel about you now.” On the surface, it’s a sugary pop ditty with a catchy chorus – but something about that chord sequence, and the helplessness of the lyrics, cuts deeper.
3. The Weeknd feat. Ariana Grande – ‘Save Your Tears’ (2021)
This synth-pop stomp by The Weeknd, refigured with vocal powerhouse Grande following its original release in 2020, became the bestselling single globally in 2021, racking up 2.15 billion streams. It’s got an 80s mid-tempo feel and a lachrymose melody, with that descending vocal line – “save, your, tears for another day” – dripping in resignation. It’s a song for wallowing, screaming, and aggressively, but crucially rhythmically, banging on the steering wheel.
2. Cher – ‘Believe’ (1998)
Both an empowering battle cry and a cry for help, the lyrics of this megahit are a rollercoaster of emotions. Cher goes from sadness to defiance to stoicism to that most iconic of choruses: “Do you believe in life after love?” She may not have the answers, but it’s an example of a track whose catharsis can heal your woes in itself.
1. Robyn – ‘Dancing On My Own’ (2010)
This is, without a doubt, the pinnacle of the genre. From the moment that first synth barrels in, you’re transported back to your most vulnerable and your most euphoric, that feeling of being in a crowded room but only able to see one person. It’s full throttle from the very beginning, but by the time it gets to the chorus, you’re flying: “I’m in the corner watching you kiss her” is the most simultaneously heartbreaking and rousing line in pop history.
