{"id":72870,"date":"2025-08-16T00:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T00:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/72870\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T00:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T00:39:12","slug":"the-cringiest-love-songs-that-make-us-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/72870\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cringiest Love Songs That Make Us Cry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consider this a sister piece to the list of “The Worst Songs That We Love So Much”<\/a> that ran yesterday, with a slightly different conceit. I asked some of my music and culture writer friends to confess their soft spots for\u00a0songs that reek of corniness and cheese\u2014the ones that might make them cringe a little, but still feel like a knife to the heart. I was looking for love songs that could easily soundtrack a teenage rom-com or land on an algorithmic playlist where Ed Sheeran and Coldplay were held up as the pinnacle of romance. Maybe the melody is syrupy sweet, or the writing overwrought\u2014I’d take melodramatic ballads, saccharine pop, or anything soaked in ’80s and ’90s nostalgia. It didn\u2019t matter to me if they provoked tears because of pure sentimentality rather than visceral, sonic, or lyrical power; some songs are devastating simply because they remind you what it felt like to be the one that got left behind. <\/p>\n

As I wrote earlier this week: August is the month of bittersweet reflection, caught in the tension between the low-key end of summer and the anxiety about what comes next. (It\u2019s the emotional equivalent of the twilight of a relationship\u2014when you know something is wrong, or the end is near\u2014but want to savor what\u2019s left just a little bit longer.) Some of these songs capture that feeling exactly. Please enjoy, and tell me yours too.<\/p>\n

Phil Collins – “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)”\u00a0<\/p>\n

MTV, Phil Collins, and the year 1984 all colluded with my father to ruin my life via this power ballad, which was playing on the television when he (my father) told me my parents were getting divorced. Thanks to its stupid global popularity and Phil’s powerfully wrecked delivery, “Against All Odds” proceeded to haunt me for the next 40 years\u2014on playlists in elevators, restaurants, airports, and internet provider hold music\u2014reminding me of one of the lowest points in my childhood and plunging me back into emotional devastation every time. And now theeeerrre’s just an empty space… \"\ud83d\ude2d\" – Julianne Escobedo Shepherd<\/p>\n

The Carpenters – “We\u2019ve Only Just Begun”<\/p>\n

The Carpenters\u2019 1970 hit \u201cWe’ve Only Just Begun\u201d is wedding-clich\u00e9 canon like Pachelbel, but damn if it doesn\u2019t put a lump in my throat the size of a balled-up linen napkin. I want to say it\u2019s because I can\u2019t hear about the start of something without thinking about how it ends, but the truth is I\u2019m helpless against such a perfectly crafted sales pitch. Which is why, when I listen to the song now, it\u2019s usually in its pre-Carpenters original form, when it was merely the audio portion of an influential advertisement for a bank<\/a>. I put the minute-long spot on loop and think about Don Draper\u2019s Carousel, wondering how I can trust myself to know what\u2019s real. – Mark Richardson<\/p>\n

John Mayer – “In Your Atmosphere” (live version)<\/p>\n

This song has wrecked me for years and I\u2019m not exactly sure why. I love to listen to it when I want to make myself very depressed. John Mayer sadly explains how he can never again return to LA, the site of a love affair gone wrong, and then imagines what it would be like if he did. I have not gotten behind the wheel of a car in more than a decade and plan never to operate a motor vehicle in the dystopian car orgy that is Los Angeles, but when John sings, \u201cI\u2019d get lost on the Boulevard at night without your voice to tell me, \u2018I love you \/ Take a right, the 10 and the 2 is the loneliest sight,\u201d I want to drive a car off a cliff. Then we get to the devastating bridge, which is at the end of the song, radically: \u201cWherever I go, whatever I do, I wonder where I am in my relationship to you \/ Wherever you go, wherever you are, I watch that pretty life play out in pictures from afar.\u201d Even typing the lyrics out makes me upset. Fuck you, John.\u00a0 – Rachel Handler<\/p>\n

Hayley Williams – “First Thing to Go”<\/p>\n

Hayley Williams is an icon, but I\u2019ve never really followed her work. This is a breakup song from one of her pandemic solo albums, FLOWERS for VASES \/ Descansos, a not especially amazing record that I had to listen to for work, not long before I found photos of my recent ex living (in Miami) with his new girlfriend (14-year age gap). Did I mention it was the pandemic? Work from home used to mean no one would see you cry. And no, I\u2019m not going to re-listen yet\u2014this one’s my own personal cringe time capsule, and it’s staying sealed for now. – Anna Gaca<\/p>\n

Panic! at the Disco – “Into the Unknown” (From Frozen 2)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Real heads know that emo bands of the aughts have been doing some of their best work<\/a> in the realm of children’s entertainment. I don’t know what this Frozen 2 song is about, nor do I know what Frozen 2 is about, but I do know that if I’m tired enough when I hear this song, I’ll cry during the chorus, whether from laughter or (unfortunately) pleasure or vague encroaching fear about what it is to be alive. – Jia Tolentino<\/p>\n

Foreigner – “I Want To Know What Love Is”<\/p>\n

I love power ballads. I just love an emotionally vulnerable song that also rocks. I always imagine this song being sung by an alien who is being introduced to human emotions for the first time on earth. The thing that’s cringe about this to me is that it’s so deeply obvious. But what can I do, it’s the one! – Molly Lambert<\/p>\n

David Gray – “This Year’s Love” (live version)<\/p>\n

To remind myself whether this song could actually make me cry, I searched \u201cDavid Gray\u201d in my Gmail and found it: an email exchange from 2008, with the first real love of my life (a fellow music nerd, if you can believe it). One of us had passive-aggressively sent the other a video of the live rendition of “This Year’s Love” right before what would\u2019ve been our first anniversary. At the time, we were on \u201ca break,\u201d brought on by the new complications from him having to move back home\u2014an ocean away. The break was meant to help us from resenting each other over things out of our control (the distance, the time zones). Instead, it only deepened our emotional anguish. I didn’t have a fancy phone back then,\u00a0and you had to pay to Skype. So occasionally, I\u2019d\u00a0listen to this song and think of him\u2014my perfect Swiss man and our perfect year together\u2014willing David Gray\u2019s weepy, aching plea to turn into something that felt like hope. Yes, this year\u2019s love, it better last. The break eventually ended and, a year or two later, he cheated on me. After we broke up, I spent a stint looping this little blip of a song in our lives and cried and cried and cried. Now I avoid it altogether.\u00a0– Puja Patel<\/p>\n

Donna Lewis – “At the Beginning” (ft. Richard Marx)<\/p>\n

I was an only child\u2014an emotional one\u2014and I was left to watch many a VHS on my own growing up. Unless I\u2019m hallucinating, somewhere bookending the tape for Fox\u2019s Anastasia (the best not-Disney animated film of the 1990s) was the music video for \u201cAt the Beginning\u201d by Donna Lewis featuring Richard Marx. There was an Aaliyah song at one end, and this ancient-sounding (read: \u201880s) power ballad at the other\u2014and both explain a lot about my personality.<\/p>\n

Boy, that Donna Lewis shit hit five-year-old me in chest\u2014and it still does. The song feels like sprinting down an endless castle staircase towards arms of the white man you\u2019re destined to spend forever with. (In Anastasia, like most of those films, the hero was one\u2014and kind of an asshole, too). This thought exercise also forced me to learn that Lewis is, in fact, the shaky-voiced diva behind \u201cI Love You Always Forever\u201d\u2014another fucking bop\u2014and Marx co-wrote Luther Vandross\u2019s \u201cDance With My Father.\u201d Apparently, making people folks cry for a check was their specialty. – Mankaprr Conteh<\/p>\n

Celine Dion – “Think Twice”<\/p>\n

This was a massive hit in Europe (it stayed at No. 1 for seven weeks in the U.K.), but a flop in the U.S., where it peaked at No. 95. I\u2019d feel a lot more embarrassed about having my tears dragged out with something that was once sonic wallpaper along the lines of \u201cI Will Always Love You,\u201d or \u201cMy Heart Will Go On,\u201d but in the U.S. it retains a kind of deep-cut mystique. The humid synths and sliding guitar of the intro openly manipulate. We are immediately taken to a world of melodrama, and this song sounds like something Nomi Malone in Showgirls would listen to, wistfully staring out at the trailer park she lives in while snacking on chips she should be sharing with her seamstress trailer-mate. Anyone who considers Dion to be anything less than soulful should listen to her singing life into a relationship on the verge of collapse in \u201cThink Twice.\u201d Especially during the song’s soaring climax with its momentarily a cappella, \u201cNo! No! No! No!\u201d She demands you \u201clook back before you leave my life,\u201d and only the stone-hearted could deny her. – Rich Juzwiak<\/p>\n

India Arie – \u201cHeart of the Matter\u201d<\/p>\n

Like most people alive today, I do not like Don Henley. He sings with unbearable, unearned sincerity, and on \u201cHeart of the Matter,\u201d he sounds like a small-town divorced gym teacher risking vulnerability in a church basement. The India.Arie cover is preferable, inasmuch as Don Henley isn\u2019t on it. And yet, if I hadn\u2019t been emailed this song by an ex 18 years ago, several months after I ended things; if it hadn\u2019t been the only communication we\u2019d had for months; if I hadn\u2019t overcome my mortification at the gesture to wind up blubbering over my laptop at the crooned lines \u201cI\u2019m learning to live without you,\u201d I could never abide it. But my will was weak, and my heart was so shattered. \u00a0– Jayson Greene<\/p>\n

Ed Sheeran – “Thinking Out Loud”<\/p>\n

I once dated a woman who refused to believe, to the point of accusing me of lying about it, that I enjoyed this song. Months later, when I told a stranger that I enjoyed this song, he accused me of being the least punk rock person he’d ever met, then went home and subtweeted me. But what I hear in Sheeran’s hesitant cadence is an acknowledgment that the future is difficult to dream about\u2014as a different poet of the heart once observed<\/a>, what makes love the exception to “nothing is forever”? And yet: People fall in love in mysterious ways. Maybe it’s all part of a plan. Dare to be vulnerable, and dream\u2014on this, me and Ed are brothers-in-arms. My wife hates this song, by the way. – Jeremy Gordon<\/p>\n

Augustana – “Boston” (Version 2)<\/p>\n

Written by major-label-signed high schoolers for whom going to college in a different state was the most profound thing a person could do, allegedly recorded in a Los Angeles Apple Store<\/a> (per AllMusic), and used as a season finale needle-drop for the WB series One Tree Hill\u2014it’s hard to imagine a song with more strikes against its “credibility” than “Boston” by Augustana. And yet, somehow, they stumbled onto something profound: “I think I need a sunrise \/ I’m tired of the sunset.” Even typing that gave me a little shiver. – Adlan Jackson<\/p>\n

Electric Light Orchestra – \u201cMr. Blue Sky\u201d<\/p>\n

On Dec. 21, 2012, I was convinced I was going to die. It was the final day of the Mayan calendar, which meant the world was going to end. I thought the Mayans were geniuses. I was watching a lot of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel and reading a lot of internet forums that were strongly anti-NASA. The year before, in 2011, I had followed televangelist Harold Camping’s Rapture predictions very closely, and I just knew the Mayans were going to be the ones to get it right. I had a few theories about how the world would end. Realistically, the Yellowstone Caldera was going to explode, plunging the Earth into a second Ice Age. Or maybe there would be some kind of tsunami. Obviously none of that happened\u2014and thank god, because if it did, I would have died a virgin.<\/p>\n

Anyway. I have a weird, hazy post-12\/21\/12 memory of listening ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” on my iPod Touch and just bursting into tears. I wasn’t going to die at 16! “Mr. Blue Sky,” with its vocoders and synths and huge string crescendos, and a lot of cowbell, is one of the most ridiculous songs in the ELO catalog. It is also extremely romantic and sexy. It has one billion streams on Spotify. Sun is shining in the sky!!! There ain’t a cloud in sight!!! Don’t you know it’s a beautiful new day??? I am so happy I’m NOT DEAD. – Sophie Kemp<\/p>\n

Death Cab for Cutie – “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”<\/p>\n

I was standing in the crowd at Brooklyn Paramount on Sunday night, exaggeratedly sighing at the hoisted phones capturing Ben Gibbard singing this basic-bitch weeper, when suddenly I was the basic bitch. What was happening? (I promise, I was there awaiting “Crooked Teeth.”) The idea of a solitary death followed by an eternity of emptiness\u2014and that someone would sacrifice themselves to the same fate just to keep you company\u2014was far more remote in my late 20s when the song came out. Was I … suddenly hearing it as though for the first time? I cringe at the thought. I cringe at the audience, where boyfriends performatively gripped their girlfriends. But the song: still somehow a keeper.\u00a0 -Caryn Ganz<\/p>\n

The Lumineers – “Ho Hey”<\/p>\n

Not only did I listen to this song\u00a0constantly on Pandora, I was also obsessed with the Lennon and Maisy Stella YouTube cover (iykyk<\/a>). This is what happens when you attending a Texan high school where the popular kids are outdoorsy Christian hipsters and you\u2019re yearning for love. Kindly requesting the anti-stomp-clap crusaders back off this one. – Cat Zhang<\/p>\n

Bon Jovi – \u201cAlways\u201d<\/p>\n

In the canon of \u201990s power ballads sung by dudes with raspy voices, Bon Jovi\u2019s \u201cAlways\u201d is soft enough to make Bryan Adams\u2019 \u201c(Everything I Do) I Do It for You\u201d sound like Black Flag. But it was once the epitome of broken love to a 12-year-old whose parents had just separated, a kid who could only dream about the \u201cforever and a day\u201d dedication Jon Bon Jovi sings about. Today, looking back at the soapy music video\u2014one of the most ridiculously \u201990s artifacts ever created, with voyeuristic camcorders, a goofy-ass rave scene, and Jack freaking Noseworthy\u2014tears roll down my pockmarked face for different reasons. Was the music industry so flush with cash that they could regularly ball out on mini-movies like this? Has anyone looked as hot as Carla Gugino does here? Were we, as humans and a society, ever this young? I know the answers, and they make me want to crawl up into a ball till the end of time. – Ryan Dombal<\/p>\n

Lady Gaga – “Gypsy”<\/p>\n

A lot of songs make me cry, so I had to think long and hard to land on one that wasn’t either an iconic adult contemporary ballad or some Sufjan-adjacent, gay millennial tearjerker slop. The last time I was surprised by a song making me burst into tears was when I was listening to Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP from top to bottom during a long, solo drive down Interstate 35 in early March 2020\u2014a moment I remember for obvious reasons. Maybe it was the beauty of Texas at dusk or maybe it was a bubbling anxiety that the world was about to change forever, but when I got into the throbbing crescendo of the album’s penultimate track, “Gypsy” (specifically the moment when Gaga wistfully pleas for someone to “see the world with me<\/a>” in a robotic falsetto), I cried at 70 miles an hour before laughing at myself the moment “Applause” began. Being a Little Monster is a gift and a curse. – Bobby Finger<\/p>\n

John Denver – “Take Me Home, Country Roads”<\/p>\n

Growing up in West Virginia\u2014especially as I got into louder and angrier music as a teenager\u2014John Denver\u2019s love letter to my home state did nothing for me. Then, in 2021, my parents picked up roots, sold my childhood home, and moved to Texas. It was my great grandparents\u2019 house before that, so there were full generations of family memories in those rooms. There\u2019s no home to go back to, and now this ubiquitous American standard crushes me every time I hear it. – Evan Minsker<\/p>\n

Ludacris – “Runaway Love” (ft. Mary J. Blige)<\/p>\n

She was the teacup in the school\u2019s play of Beauty & the Beast, and I waited outside her rehearsal to ask if she\u2019d like to go on a date to the pizza spot across the street. Still in costume, she told me I was too late: Earlier that day she got a new boyfriend. My friend. The one who couldn\u2019t even hit a layup without tripping over his own feet. It was the first time I experienced rejection, so\u2014as one does\u2014I went home and got in my feelings to Ludacris\u2019 \u201cRunaway Love.\u201d Yeah, it delivers a tense message about way, way more serious things\u2014teen pregnancy and childhood abuse\u2014than getting turned down by one of a million childhood crushes. But thanks to Mary J.\u2019s bruised croons and Polow da Don over sad-ass guitar, it still hits me a little to this day when I\u2019m in the mood to be really melodramatic. – Alphonse\u00a0Pierre<\/p>\n

BIGBANG – “Blue”<\/p>\n

K-pop can be bold and bonkers but it\u2019s also a home for Big Feelings. On \u201cBlue,\u201d the flamboyant party-starters BIGBANG move from all-caps to cursive in a lovesick EDM\/trap ballad (I guess?) that also is a showcase for the worst kind of teenage poetry. \u201cWe have withered and our hearts are bruised from longing,\u201d G-Dragon sings in Korean, as the loneliest piano in the world plays. Who among us cannot relate? But the song is really about six beautiful sad boys telling each other it\u2019ll be okay, and that gets me every time. – Owen Myers<\/p>\n

Frances Ruffelle and Daniel Bryant – “A Little Fall of Rain” (Les Mis\u00e9rables original cast recording)<\/p>\n

When you have been friend-zoned by the person you’re convinced is your soulmate, of course it hurts as badly as being shot through the heart by the French army while attempting to climb a barricade during the 1832 Paris Uprising. And of course all you want in that moment is to die dramatically in their arms\u2014singing a duet where you confess your love, and they pretend to feel the same as you for just long enough … as the life drains out of you. Thank you, Les Miz!\u00a0 – Amy Phillips <\/p>\n

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper – “I\u2019ll Never Love Again” (Film Version)<\/p>\n

Do you hate A Star Is Born (2018)? If you say yes, I don\u2019t believe you. I\u2019ve basically never met anyone who didn\u2019t at least like this sad, poignant, crowdpleasing film. If you claim to hate it, I have to assume you went into this film expecting to\u2014and didn\u2019t let yourself get totally entranced by the toxic but deep relationship between Jackson Maine and Ally. If you did love A Star Is Born (2018), then I don\u2019t really need to explain the sheer power of this song. \u201cI\u2019ll Never Love Again,\u201d the film’s grand finale\u2014performed by Ally at Jackson’s funeral\u2014sorry for the spoiler but it’s a seven-year-old movie!\u2014is borderline exploitative in the best way: Whitney-level hugeness, Gaga\u2019s indefatigable belt, and a surprise ghost cameo from Jackson himself. If you haven\u2019t cried listening to this song at least once, I feel bad for you! – Shaad D’Souza<\/p>\n

Vin Diesel – “Stay” (Rihanna cover)<\/p>\n

In this crucial cultural artifact\u2014recorded in the liminal spiritual space of the bardo, one assumes\u2014we discover Vin Diesel possesses a somber reedy legato, just like a bassoon. Pathos abounds: He stands alone, eyes closed against the cruelty of light; he jumps an octave and cannot sustain the notes, yet attempts it another six times; he is, for some reason, wearing a sport coat and jeans. At the end, he wishes a happy birthday to someone who may or may not exist. What am I, made of stone? – Estelle Tang<\/p>\n

Rascal Flatts – \u201cBless the Broken Road\u201d<\/p>\n

I was generally aware of \u201cBless the Broken Road\u201d as a syrupy country-pop ballad prior to 2020, when the masked hip-hop artist RMR went viral with “Rascal”\u2014an explicit, autotuned remake<\/a>, that somehow made the song edgy. I spent my early pandemic days walking my dog blasting \u201cRascal\u201d in my AirPods, feeling like a cool guy. But I realized that my favorite thing about RMR\u2019s song was the piano melody that he was crooning over\u2014an elegant little progression that I craved more of. <\/p>\n

I can\u2019t relate to much of what Gary LeVox is singing about here. I did not set out on a narrow way many years ago, or feel like those who had previously broke my heart\u2014high school girlfriends exhausted with my dork shit\u2014were secretly fated, or any kind of divine intervention nudging me toward true love. The song’s melodrama, a tale of heartbreak to happiness, is too gloopy even for the Hallmark Channel. And yet, the piano melody legitimately chokes me up. When LeVox will belts the chorus\u2014\u201cAnd every LONNNG-LOST DREEEAM \/ Led me to WHERRRE YOUUU ARE!\u201d\u2014I think about my life, my marriage, and the moments of serendipity that shaped my closest relationships. I let myself get swept away, embracing a new level of dorkiness. Like great pop music often does, \u201cBless the Broken Road\u201d transcends its cheesiness with undeniable craftsmanship. I love this song, and I will happily let its tendrils wrap around me for a long time. God bless the anonymous rapper that led me to it. – Jason Lipshutz<\/p>\n

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