50 Best Sad Songs About Being Alone
Songs that Echo the Feeling of Being Entirely Alone
There’s a strange kind of quiet that hits when you’re by yourself and everything around you keeps moving. Not alone in a cinematic way, no deep sighs on scenic overlooks, but the type where your phone stays face down for hours and even your playlists feel too loud. You walk into your own apartment and forget what it’s supposed to feel like. There’s no reason to talk, no reason to pretend, and the right song doesn’t fix it. It just fills the air so it doesn’t hum back emptiness.
These tracks get into that space without trying to pull you out of it. The vocals feel slightly too close. The instruments sound like they’re echoing off bedroom walls. Some of them lean pop, others sit heavy in folk or trap or lo-fi loops that drag like late nights that blur into early mornings. They don’t offer answers. They barely hold themselves together. And that's what works. They feel lived-in, not written for sing-alongs but for that cold walk to nowhere in particular. They aren’t sad in the big, movie-ending kind of way. They’re smaller, sharper, quieter.
There’s something in these songs that mirrors the stretch of hours you stop keeping track of. They hit when you're under fluorescent kitchen lights with nobody to talk to or when you’re scrolling for faces that won’t reply. Every track pulls from a different corner—pop, rock, country, and R&B songs that don’t flinch from the ache. Here’s the list that plays when the silence starts pressing in.
Top 10 Lonely Songs
1. 'All by Myself'—Celine Dion
2. 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry'—Hank Williams
3. 'Eleanor Rigby'—The Beatles
4. 'Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely'—Backstreet Boys
5. 'Only the Lonely'—Roy Orbison
6. 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams'—Green Day
7. 'Tired of Being Alone'—Al Green
8. 'Lonely'—Akon
9. 'Creep'—Radiohead
10. 'Dancing on My Own'—Robyn
Songs About Solitude #11—20
11. 'Another Lonely Night'—Adam Lambert
12. 'The Outside'—Taylor Swift
13. 'Wake Up Alone'—The Chainsmokers featuring Jhené Aiko
14. 'Scared to Be Lonely'—Martin Garrix & Dua Lipa
15. 'The Lonely'—Christina Perri
16. 'Lonely Day'—System Of A Down
17. 'How to Fight Loneliness'—Wilco
18. 'Lonely Avenue'—Ray Charles
19. 'So Far Away'—Carole King
20. 'With Or Without You'—U2
Songs Expressing Loneliness #21—30
21. 'Sad Song'—We The Kings featuring Elena Coats
22. 'Glimpse of Us'—Joji
23. 'Back to Black'—Amy Winehouse
24. 'Skinny Love'—Bon Iver
25. 'Nothing Compares 2 U'—Sinéad O'Connor
26. 'Liability'—Lorde
27. 'The A Team'—Ed Sheeran
28. 'Easy On Me'—Adele
29. 'Let Her Go'—Passenger
30. 'I'm With You'—Avril Lavigne
Music About Isolation #31—40
31. 'Astronaut'—Simple Plan
32. 'Invisible'—Hunter Hayes
33. 'Blue Moon'—Beck
34. 'I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)'—Whitney Houston
35. 'Cry Me a River'—Justin Timberlake
36. 'Lonely'—Britney Spears
37. 'Alone Again (Naturally)'—Gilbert O'Sullivan
38. 'Everybody Hurts'—R.E.M.
39. 'Solitude'—Black Sabbath
40. 'Hurt'—Johnny Cash
Songs About Being By Yourself #41—50
41. 'Someone You Loved'—Lewis Capaldi
42. 'The Sound of Silence'—Simon & Garfunkel
43. 'Nobody'—Mitski
44. 'When Lonely Hits Your Heart'—Loretta Lynn
45. 'King of Pain'—The Police
46. 'Alone'—Heart
47. 'Runaway'—Aurora
48. 'To Build a Home'—The Cinematic Orchestra featuring Patrick Watson
49. 'Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)'—Elton John
50. 'Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want'—The Smiths
© 2025 Carson McQueen
