50 Best Rock Songs About One Sided Love
Best Rock Tracks That Capture One-Sided Love
There’s a strange ache that comes with caring harder than the other person. Not heartbreak exactly, but that dull pulse of knowing the thing you feel won’t echo back. It sits in the chest like static, the kind that builds when you replay conversations or scroll past someone’s photo too slowly. That’s where these songs live. They pull from that half-empty kind of longing—the space between what happened and what you wish did. Some of them come straight from the rock canon, others drift in from pop, rock, country, and R&B songs that ended up orbiting the same feeling anyway.
There’s no neat thread tying them together. Some tracks catch the quiet denial, some lean into the sting, some spin the whole thing into loud guitars and raised voices. They’re not clean narratives. They loop, they stall, they say things you’d never text. A few weren’t even written with unreturned affection in mind, but they sit in that mood so perfectly it doesn’t matter. The riffs stumble where the lyrics can’t. The hooks fill in the words you’d choke on if you tried to explain it.
It’s not pretty, but it’s familiar. The sound of trying to stay cool when everything feels uneven, of pretending to be fine while the song says it for you. These tracks hold that tension, the kind that hangs in the air when someone walks away and you stay rooted. Here are the best rock songs for one-sided love.
Top 10 Unrequited Love Rock Songs
1. 'Creep' by Radiohead
2. 'Jessie's Girl' by Rick Springfield
3. 'Layla' by Derek and the Dominos
4. 'Losing My Religion' by R.E.M.
5. 'Every Breath You Take' by The Police
6. 'Black' by Pearl Jam
7. 'I Want You' by Elvis Costello
8. 'Everything You Want' by Vertical Horizon
9. 'I Don't Owe You Anything' by The Smiths
10. 'Only in Dreams' by Weezer
Must-Hear Rock Songs for Unreturned Feelings #11 to 20
11. 'Iris' by Goo Goo Dolls
12. 'Maps' by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
13. 'Wicked Game' by Chris Isaak
14. 'Hey Jealousy' by Gin Blossoms
15. 'She Talks to Angels' by The Black Crowes
16. 'The Less I Know the Better' by Tame Impala
17. '3 Libras' by A Perfect Circle
18. 'Cornerstone' by Arctic Monkeys
19. 'Love Stinks' by The J. Geils Band
20. 'I Want the One I Can't Have' by The Smiths
Classic Rock Ballads on One-Sided Love #21 to 30
21. 'Vermilion, Pt. 2' by Slipknot
22. 'Shine' by Collective Soul
23. 'El Scorcho' by Weezer
24. 'I Hate Myself for Loving You' by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
25. 'Head Over Feet' by Alanis Morissette
26. 'Long Long Time' by Linda Ronstadt
27. 'To Love Somebody' by Bee Gees
28. 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' by The Police
29. 'I Can't Own Her' by XTC
30. 'Do I Wanna Know?' by Arctic Monkeys
The Best Alternative Rock Songs About Unrequited Desire #31 to 40
31. 'Across the Sea' by Weezer
32. 'Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus
33. 'Something I Can Never Have' by Nine Inch Nails
34. 'Surrender' by Cheap Trick
35. 'The Scientist' by Coldplay
36. 'Love Hurts' by Nazareth
37. 'Waiting in Vain' by Bob Marley & The Wailers
38. 'Chasing Pavements' by Adele
39. 'This Life' by Vampire Weekend
40. 'I Can't Make You Love Me' by Bonnie Raitt
Top Modern and Indie Rock Songs on One-Sided Love #41 to 50
41. 'You Don't Know Me' by Ben Folds
42. 'Goodbye My Lover' by James Blunt
43. 'Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)' by The Rolling Stones
44. 'Shiver' by Coldplay
45. 'All I Want' by Kodaline
46. 'Breathe (2 AM)' by Anna Nalick
47. 'Two Out of Three Ain't Bad' by Meat Loaf
48. 'I Want to Know What Love Is' by Foreigner
49. 'Love in Vain' by The Rolling Stones
50. 'Almost Lover' by A Fine Frenzy
© 2025 Carson McQueen
