50 Best Rock Songs About Broken Hearts
Heartbreak Rock Songs That Cut Deep
There’s a certain type of silence that hits after someone leaves. It’s not clean or dramatic, more like a half-empty room where the echo lingers too long. You hear a song and suddenly the whole thing floods back, the late-night fights, the mornings that felt colder than they should have. Rock has a way of taking that wreckage and turning it loud, bending the noise until it almost feels like relief. Some tracks were written with heartbreak front and center, others twist into that shape because of how they sound, fitting into the mess even if the lyrics wander elsewhere.
It’s never a neat kind of pain. Some nights it’s a slow, miserable crawl through soft acoustic ballads, other nights it’s thrashing alone in your car while guitars snarl in the dark. The best pop, rock, country, and R&B songs don’t smooth those edges, they leave them jagged enough to sting. These songs hold on to that confusion, where grief sits next to rage and memories keep replaying when you wish they’d fade. A few of these tracks are literal heartbreak anthems, others slip into the playlist like ghosts, never saying the thing outright but making you feel it anyway.
There’s no single mood for a broken heart, so this list sprawls a bit. Some songs collapse into themselves, some burn white-hot, some almost laugh at the wreckage. If you need a soundtrack for the kind of hurt that refuses to settle down, these rock songs are the ones to play when the walls start closing in. Here are the best rock songs for broken hearts.
Top 10 Heartbreak Rock Songs
1. 'Love Hurts' by Nazareth
2. 'Don't Speak' by No Doubt
3. 'Go Your Own Way' by Fleetwood Mac
4. 'I Hate Everything About You' by Three Days Grace
5. 'Since U Been Gone' by Kelly Clarkson
6. 'Nothing Compares 2 U' by Sinéad O'Connor
7. 'Broken' by Seether featuring Amy Lee
8. 'Every Breath You Take' by The Police
9. 'Somebody That I Used to Know' by Gotye featuring Kimbra
10. 'The Scientist' by Coldplay
Powerful Rock Songs About Lost Love #11 to 20
11. 'I'll Be There For You' by Bon Jovi
12. 'I Can't Make You Love Me' by Bonnie Raitt
13. 'Love Bites' by Def Leppard
14. 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' by Bonnie Tyler
15. 'Black' by Pearl Jam
16. 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by Joy Division
17. 'Heart-Shaped Box' by Nirvana
18. 'It's Too Late' by Carole King
19. 'Angie' by The Rolling Stones
20. 'She's Gone' by Daryl Hall & John Oates
Essential Rock Heartbreak Tunes #21 to 30
21. 'This Ain't a Love Song' by Bon Jovi
22. 'Glycerine' by Bush
23. 'Way Down We Go' by Kaleo
24. 'Maps' by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
25. 'Harden My Heart' by Quarterflash
26. 'I'm Not OK (I Promise)' by My Chemical Romance
27. 'You Oughta Know' by Alanis Morissette
28. 'Already Gone' by The Eagles
29. 'I Miss the Misery' by Halestorm
30. 'When You're Gone' by The Cranberries
Top Rock Breakup Ballads #31 to 40
31. 'Keep on Loving You' by REO Speedwagon
32. 'Since I've Been Loving You' by Led Zeppelin
33. 'Hurt' by Nine Inch Nails
34. 'Layla' by Derek and the Dominos
35. 'Yesterday' by The Beatles
36. 'The Winner Takes It All' by ABBA
37. 'All I Wanted' by Kansas
38. 'November Rain' by Guns N' Roses
39. 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' by Yes
40. 'I Don't Love You' by My Chemical Romance
Rock Songs About Relationship Endings #41 to 50
41. 'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away' by The Beatles
42. 'Crying' by Roy Orbison
43. 'Brokenhearted' by Karmin
44. 'I'm Going Down' by Rose Royce
45. 'Can You Die from a Broken Heart' by Nate Smith & Avril Lavigne
46. 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing' by Aerosmith
47. 'Gives You Hell' by The All-American Rejects
48. 'Stop Draggin' My Heart Around' by Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty
49. 'My Immortal' by Evanescence
50. '45' by The Gaslight Anthem
© 2025 Carson McQueen
