Most Beautiful, Poetic, And Emotional Unreciprocated Love Songs
Most us us can identify with how it feels to have unreciprocated love, which is why it’s so easy to sympathize with others who are growing through that. It is one of the most emotional song topics.
For a long time, I’ve been passionate about understanding how music makes us feel such strong emotions. If you find yourself wondering the same thing, you might be interested in this blog post about how music makes us emotional.
I Can’t Make You Love Me by Bonnie Raitt
This is an 80s class. It’s slow, and feels like it should feel outdated, but it doesn’t feel that way because of such an emotional performance by Bonnie Raitt. When she sings “Cause I can’t make you love me…” it feels like a desperate and real weep. As a listener, you feel almost present in that moment through the empathy and emotions evoked by this song.
In some sense unreciprocated love is simply a sad symptom of being in a toxic relationship. This song is a good example of that.
Just My Imagination by The Temptations
The high notes at which this male group sings, gives it great energy. They harmonize each other beautifully. The song itself is easy to relate to. I have also enjoyed letting my imagination run away from me. It was sweet in the moment, but it obviously ends each time, and is bittersweet.
Kissed By A Song by Alex Genadinik
This is a song about the feeling you get when carried away by a song, and waking up from it. It’s like falling in love and losing that love each time. The feeling of getting lost in a dreamland because of a song only lasts a minute or less. Each time it’s like an unreciprocated love, and each time, you wake up from it wanting to fall into this kind of love again, not knowing when it will come back.
In some sense, it’s the ultimate song about a crush because you can have all the feelings you want associated to a song, but those feelings will always be fleeting.
In this song, the song itself is a metaphor for the love. Hence it’s a love song to a song.
I’d Lie by Taylor Swift
If you ask Taylor Swift’s fans, they will say she is the best poet, singer-songwriter, and attribute extra-human qualities to her. But if you are objective, most of the songs can be quite middling in quality if you are not a teenage girl. But not this one.
This song is more poetic than most of her songs, and it’s about unreciprocated love, which is perfect for this list of songs.
The lyric “if you asked me if I love him, I’d lie” is clever, but what won me over in this song is the lyric “I don’t think that passenger seat has ever looked as good to me.” It is poetic because it tells you how much she wants to be next to that guy even if it means letting him lead and being vulnerable – without actually saying that. That’s a very good piece of poetry that’s sorely missing from much of modern music.
Liability by Lorde
This melancholy song is sad, but it’s so fun and playful. The melody itself jumps from low to high notes with a lot of creativity. The singer’s phrasing is also unique and interesting because it effortlessly goes breathy to energetic, often within a single line of lyrics.
The phrasing (how each line is actually performed and phrased by the singer) and the melody of this song are great examples of songwriting. The lyrics are good, but not great. They focus on unreciprocated love felt by the heroine of the song. The lyrics are enhanced by the melody of this song much more than many other songs. This song is made by the musicality of this song. It’s incredibly engaging.
