Now, let’s get a little vindictive, shall we? We’ve all heard the saying, usually from some smug-faced person who has never been heartbroken, trying to console you after you’ve been left by your soulmate, your one and only, your happily ever after, your (ok ok, you get my drift), and they inevitably spew forth this golden nugget: “Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” I mean, really? Who wrote that crap? (This guy, if you need to know). A much better quote is one from Nick Hornby’s novel, High Fidelity:

“What came first–the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?…People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands–literally thousands–of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”

Well said, Nick, well said. To further illustrate his point and in order to prove to you, my faithful audience, that sometimes it can definitely be better to not have loved, I offer the following ten songs of heartbreak that I think definitely prove loving and losing can suck more than never loving in the first place.

1. No One’s Gonna Love You – Band of Horses
Love Lost Lyric (LLL):
“We’re reeling through an endless fall,
we are the ever living ghost of what once was.
But no one is ever gonna love you more than I do.
No one’s gonna love you more than I do.”

2. Sometime Around Midnight – TATE
LLL: “And she leaves
With someone you don’t know
But she makes sure you saw her
She looks right at you and bolts.”

3. You Could Be Happy – Snow Patrol
LLL: “You could be happy and I won’t know
But you weren’t happy the day I watched you go.
And all the things that I wished I had not said
Are played in loops til it’s madness in my head.”

4. A Falling Through – Ray LaMontagne
LLL: “Why? Why did you go?
Why did you go away?
There’s nothing I can say
Nothing I can do
To bring you back again.”

5. Accidental Babies – Damien Rice
LLL: “Do you come
Together ever with him?
And is he dark enough?
Enough to see your light?
And do you brush your teeth before you kiss?”

6. Vuelve – Ricky Martin
LLL: “Si pudiera tan solo regresar un momento
Ahora es que te comprendo
Ahora es cuando te pierdo
Vuelve, Que sin ti la vida se me va”

7. White Blank Page – Mumford & Sons
LLL: “But tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart
Oh tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart”

8. Dreaming with a Broken Heart – John Mayer
LLL: “She takes you in with her crying eyes
Then all at once you have to say goodbye
Wondering, could you stay, my love?
Will you wake up by my side?
No, she can’t
cause she’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone”

9. Against All Odds – The Postal Service
LLL: “So take a look at me now,
because there’s just an empty space
And there’s nothing left here to remind me
Just the memory of your face.”

10. If It Kills Me – Jason Mraz
LLL: “And all I really want from you is to feel me
It’s a feeling inside that keeps building
And I will find a way to you if it kills me
It might kill me.”