What counts as a “sad song“? It doesn’t have to be a ballad sung by a soft voice. Nor does it have to be one that makes you weep every time you hear it. A sad song is one with an emotional soul—a song that unravels something in you. Maybe it helps you process your own feelings by bringing them to the surface or articulates a feeling you thought you’d been alone in. Through a special alchemy, the right sad song can give its listener a cathartic release that actually feels really good.
Some sad songs on this list, like Noah Cyrus and PJ Harding’s “Dear August” or Julia Stone’s “We All Have,” hold a glimmer of hope that befits this moment, as the pandemic stretches on and a return to normalcy can feel like a blur in the distance.
This collection of recently-released tracks provides a window into different experiences of sadness and struggle—whether it’s growing apart from a friend or a lover, feeling alienated in a new environment, struggling with mental health, or something else entirely. These new tracks by Arlo Parks, Julien Baker, Olivia Rodrigo, Hayley Williams, and more will have you in full headphones-on, looking-out-the-window-mode, à la Lisa Simpson. Check out the list below for some of the best sad songs (so far) of 2021.
“Black Dog” by Arlo Parks
“Let’s go to the corner store and buy some fruit / I would do anything to get you out your room / Just take your medicine and eat some food.”
“Black Dog” perfectly captures the brutal helplessness of watching someone you love go through a painful struggle with their mental health. Parks, a 20-year-old British singer-songwriter and poet, recently released her stunning debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams. Along with tracks like “Hope” and “Hurt,” Parks crafts a beautiful and very real portrait of depression and hope in the midst of isolation.
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“Favor” by Julien Baker
“Doesn’t feel too bad, but it / Doesn’t feel too good, either / Just like a nicotine patch / It hardly works then it’s over.”
Indie supergroup boygenius—Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus—reunited for this track, a single off Baker’s new album, Little Oblivions (out now). Discussing “Favor” in a press release, Dacus said, “I love the song for its stark but sensitive picture of friendship, what it looks like to recover from broken trust. Makes me think about how truth only ever breaks what should be broken, and how love is never one of those things.”
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“Immune” by Jensen McRae
“What will we say to each other when the needle goes in? / What will be to each other if the world doesn’t end?”
Jensen McRae’s “Immune” was born in the most 2021 way ever: first as a viral tweet parodying Phoebe Bridgers and then a real song that moves beautifully beyond its jokey origins. The song imagines the moment we’ll finally all get vaccinated, and the swarm of feelings and release that might accompany the experience.
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“Drivers License” by Olivia Rodrigo
“I know we weren’t perfect but I’ve never felt this way for no one / And I just can’t imagine how you could be so okay, now that I’m gone.”
The teenage Disney star Olivia Rodrigo’s record-breaking hit captures that tender, deeply-felt woundedness that accompanies your first real heartbreak.
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“Big Bang” by Cherry Glazerr
“I still call you when I need escaping / You go on and on and on and on and on / Catching everything I’ve thrown at you / Forgetting all the bad shit that I’ve done / I don’t wanna make you my lifeline / Love, I don’t wanna make you mine.”
Clementine Creevy, frontwoman and founder of Cherry Glazerr, described “Big Bang” as a euphoric song about the heartache of “growing apart from someone who was close to me in my life.”
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“Waverly (Anjimile Version)” by Samia
“There’s a restaurant in the East Village / Where all the waiters are celebrities / My first love waited hours in the back / Making brazen advances towards Waverly.”
Samia’s The Baby Reimagined offers remixes and reimaginings of her 2020 debut full-length album. It’s a fantastic collection, and Anjimile’s take on “Waverly” is a standout. The stark specificity of Samia’s lyrics along with Anjimile’s rich, emotionally-layered voice creates a deep nostalgia for gatherings with friends that hits especially hard in these times.
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“Dear August” by Noah Cyrus and PJ Harding
“Dear August / Tell me that there’s light / At the end of all this starless night.”
This catchy folk-country song is a call for hope in the throes of personal struggle. In a press release, Cyrus explained, “I was going through a lot. I suffer from anxiety and depression. We were in this cloud of darkness where it’s very easy to fall into bad habits… The song reminds me you will get to the light at the end of the tunnel. It may not be perfect, but you’ll get there.”
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“Sanguine” by Widowspeak
“How long will you hold on for? / When the body keeps the score? / And it marks you / The marks you carry make it clear.”
Molly Hamilton’s bittersweet voice reverberates through a lullaby-like guitar twang to produce this bewitching, melancholy tune.
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“HYD” by Hayley Williams
“When the air is quiet and the sky is blue / I can’t help be reminded of you / How your eyes are shut so you cannot see / Just how very close I keep you to me.”
Hayley Williams wrote and played every part on Flowers for Vases / Descansos, an intimate folk album she recorded while in lockdown in 2020. “HYD” is a haunting song that processes lingering feelings for a past love. In a statement about the album, Williams said: “2020 was really hard but I’m alive and so my job is to keep living and help others to do the same.”
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“Reason to Believe” by Vagabon feat. Courtney Barnett
“If I listened long enough to you / I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true / Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried / Still I look to find a reason to believe.”
Laetitia Tamko and Courtney Barnett’s voices mesh to create a lush, melancholy harmony on this cover of Tim Hardin’s “Reason to Believe,” inspired by Karen Dalton’s version of the song.
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“Ten Feet Tall” by Charlie Hickey
“I thought I was ten feet tall / Thought I was above it all / But I was just standing on your shoulders / Just blowing smoke / Out of your window / You made me from sand / And now your tide is coming in.”
Phoebe Bridgers sings backup on this young South Pasadena artist’s nostalgic folk rock song, a single off his debut EP Count the Stairs (out now, produced and co-written by Marshall Vore). Hickey told Consequence of Sound that the song is about feeling alienated by the college party scene: “I was watching everybody partying with their brand new best friends and having a seemingly effortless good time and wondering why I couldn’t just be happy.”
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“Drink The Lake” by IAN SWEET
“I’ll start, I’ll start / Sayin’ your name, sayin’ your name / Backwards so I’ll forget it.”
Jilian Medford (aka IAN SWEET) described this song as a “pop anthem” about “ways to try to forget someone.” You’ll find yourself bopping your head along, drinking in the lovely dissonance between the pop beat and the lyrics. “Drink The Lake” is a preview of the artist’s upcoming album Show Me How You Disappear (out March 5).
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“Missing Out” by Syd
“Tell me something, babe / Just tell me it was worth it / I know I didn’t deserve it / I didn’t deserve nothing / I needed lovin’, babe / And you gave me a version / It wasn’t always perfect / But now it’s nothing.”
Syd (Sydney Bennett, fka Syd tha Kyd) of The Internet returns with her first solo track since 2017, described as an “anti-Valentine’s Day ode.”
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“Cuff Your Jeans” by Claud
“Call your phone you never answer / Missing out on endless banter / You’ve never been that good at small talk / But I’d love to chat your ear off.”
The bedroom pop artist (and first musician signed to Phoebe Bridgers’s label, Saddest Factory) explained, “’Cuff Your Jeans’ is a song about yearning. I wrote it after having a fever dream about trying to get on a train to see my friend but missing it over and over and over because there was always some obstacle in my way.”
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“We All Have” by Julia Stone feat. Matt Berninger
“We all have the lightness to be okay, okay, okay for now.”
Produced by St. Vincent and featuring Matt Berninger of The National, “We All Have” is a comforting beacon of hope for hard times, off Stone’s upcoming album Sixty Summers (out April 16). In a statement, the singer-songwriter explained:”This song is about how everything transforms and moves; even though you feel so shitty at one point, it might shift into something new.”
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“I Believe in You” by Hand Habits
“Now that you made yourself love me / Do you think I could change it in a day? / How can I place you above me? / Am I lying to you when I say / That I believe in you?”
Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) gives a tender, shattering rendition of Neil Young’s “I Believe in You” featuring backup vocals by SASAMI, Palehound’s Ellen Kempner, King Tuff’s Kyle Thomas, and John Andrews. The track is off their new EP dirt, out now.
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Anna Grace Lee
Anna Grace Lee is an editorial fellow at Esquire, where she covers pop culture, music, and entertainment.
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