Are Angry Female Breakup Songs Meaningless? Or Are These Women Righting Romantic Wrongs?

The magic of music, heartbreak, and a woman’s love

My first breakup happened to coincide with Alanis Morissette’s volcanic eruption onto the American music scene.

It was early 1996 and I’d just spent the better part of a year trying to twist myself into knots for my boyfriend, who started physically and emotionally abusing me the moment we moved in together. An accidental pregnancy shook me to my core, forcing me to the realization that what he did to me, he would do to our daughter. And after the miscarriage, I pulled together every scrap of courage I had left and walked out of that house with nothing but a bulging suitcase.

You can bet your ass I scream-sang the lyrics to You Oughta Know every time the song came on the radio. I’d never experienced anything so cathartic and validating as Morissette’s rage. “…And I’m not gonna fade as soon as you close your eyes — and you know it!”

That first breakup was a pivotal moment for me. I’d found just the right medicine: angry female rockers singing empowering breakup songs.

Tori Amos got me through college:

“You gave him your blood And your warm little diamond He likes killing you after you’re dead… Sometimes you’re nothing but meat”

Christina Aguilera got me through the romantic injustices that carried me into my thirties:

I never saw it coming All of your backstabbing Just so you could cash in on a good thing before I realized your game I heard you’re goin’ ‘round playin’ the victim now But don’t even begin feeling I’m the one to blame ’Cause you dug your own grave

I wanted to be the kind of woman who sang songs like this. Righteously angry. Able to call out the wrongs that I had endured, even if I hadn’t been capable of that in the moment those injustices were unfolding. Aware of my own value without the need of male validation.

And knowing deep down that despite every abuse an ex had inflicted, that he was ultimately sorry and that his life was a little less bright without me.

Oh, how the years have changed my perspective.

I’m not sure which female singer belted out the very first angry breakup song. I tried researching it, but couldn’t find anything definitive. Several songs come to mind, including Lesley Gore’s It’s My Party (1963), Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ (1966), and Gloria Gaynor’s ultimate breakup anthem I Will Survive (1978). And don’t forget Billie Holiday’s You’ve Changed (1958), known for being one of the saddest breakup songs, but featuring gently rebuking lyrics that reveal a vein of anger beneath the sorrow.

And then there’s the band that arguably created the unofficial discography of the breakup song: Fleetwood Mac. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks recorded their heartbreak to the tunes of the number one hits that were the soundtrack to many boomers’ and Gen Xers’ lives.

My favorite of the bunch is one of the less well-known: a quiet, haunting, unpretentious song that builds in passion — and perhaps even a touch of rage — as its sonic landscape reveals itself. Yes, I’m talking about Silver Springs.

By the time the song begins its climax with the first of three repeated refrains beginning with, “Time cast a spell on you, but you won’t forget me / I know I could’ve loved you, but you would not let me,” we are ready to throw ourselves full-throttle into the anger, passion, and frustration of this woman scorned.

What woman hasn’t experienced this? Opening her heart to a man, only to have him respond by coldly opting out, suddenly completely disinterested?

I don’t know any female who isn’t familiar with that particular feeling.

As familiar as I am with it, believe it or not, this Fleetwood Mac fan had never heard this song until recently, when it started making the rounds on social media. I fell instantly in love with the song and its story.

But there’s one thing that’s changed after all these years of listening to the breakup songs of angry women. I no longer find them particularly empowering.

In fact, I suspect we’ve been lying to ourselves all this time.

It feels so wrong to say this, considering how many times I’ve screamed Morissette’s lyrics alongside her…but Alanis was wrong. He does not think of us every time we scratch our nails down someone else’s back. He forgot about us the moment he tumbled into bed with that new lover.

Yes, Tori, he likes killing us after we’re dead. And in our misogynistic culture, that’s seen as normal male behavior. Not to mention the part where he was the one who killed us in the first place.

He doesn’t care that we don’t feel resentment toward him, Christina. And it damn well doesn’t matter that we’re a fighter now. We shouldn’t have to be forged into an archetype of violence and domination just because so many men treat women with violence and domination.

Sorry, Taylor, he doesn’t care if we are never, ever, ever getting back together. For god’s sake, we’re in his contacts as “Red Dress,” or “Big Tits.”

Carrie, he’s not worried about what we’ll do with that Louisville slugger — and it sure as hell isn’t going to make him stop and think before he cheats on the next girl.

And, god forgive me for disagreeing with Queen Stevie, but it wasn’t that he wouldn’t let us love him. He didn’t want our love. He found our love worthless. Of course he’ll get away from the sound of the woman that loves him. He left. Because he hated that sound in the first place.

I’m sorry to say in middle age, I have come to the realization that these songs don’t exist to expose men’s callous relationship behavior and the regret that lies just beneath the surface.

They exist simply to make women feel better about living in a world wherein it’s socially acceptable to use us, abuse us, and throw us away.

These raging melodies are all that we have left in the end.

As I’ve recently begun a whole new love affair with female-empowering breakup songs even though I’ve long ago come to the conclusion that they ultimately mean nothing, I’ve been listening to Silver Springs a lot. My Alexa device has got it locked and loaded.

I’ve discovered my favorite version of the song is the live recording from 1997. Maybe that’s not surprising, considering that was only a year after my first big breakup with one of the most abusive boyfriends I ever had. Or maybe because, in my totally humble opinion, it’s just the most passionate version they ever recorded.

And then one day, thanks to all the digital tracking out there that’s following my every move, YouTube dropped the video of that fateful recording into my feed. Have you seen it? Let’s just say that the sight of Nicks staring intently at Buckingham while belting out those lyrics gave me the chills. And that was two decades after their breakup.

I decided to research the song a bit and read what Nicks has revealed about the song in interviews. She shared the way she and Buckingham crossed swords during their breakup with their respective vengeful breakup songs, and how much it irked each one of them to hear them and play them onstage. She said the message of Silver Springs was simply, “I’m so angry with you. You will listen to me on the radio for the rest of your life and it will bug you. I hope it bugs you.”

It’s a surprisingly inelegant, un-nuanced backstory for such an elegant, nuanced song, but she certainly makes her point.

And something else, I realized: She accomplished her goal, didn’t she?

She did haunt Buckingham with the sound of the voice of the woman that loved him. He never did get away from that sound. And what’s more, it’s widely acknowledged that part of the reason that song has the level of depth and emotion that it does it because of Buckingham’s instrumental and vocal contribution. The man she wanted to “bug” with that song had to perform it with her, and he put some of his best work into it.

Silver Springs actually had the impact it was meant to have. You might even say it helped heal a romantic injustice.

Which means…maybe I got this wrong not once, but twice…

As you can imagine, these songs mean more to me than just anthems. I’m a writer, too. I understand the necessity of working my complicated feelings out by putting them into words, and then stories.

I can’t remember a time when I did this with the same motivation as Nicks. I was always tempted to send an angry poem to my early boyfriends, but I never did. I knew they would only laugh at me. And perhaps I just don’t have the same level of self-esteem as Nicks, because I never once thought that I could write anything that would have any effect on an ex, whatsoever, let alone something that would “bug” him for the rest of his life.

I guarantee you most of my exes don’t even remember me. What would my words matter?

And after writing a heartbroken poem for my last ex, a rewrite of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah that I hoped he would receive as an olive branch (even though I wasn’t the one who had behaved so cruelly), only to find out that he’d read it and had no response, that’s when I lost faith in any of my words — or even my feelings — to have any effect on a man, whatsoever.

That’s the moment I lost all faith in those songs that had carried me through so many breakups. That’s when I knew the subjects of the songs, like the subject of my words, didn’t care in the least. And didn’t that make it all meaningless?

Except now I have new information. Stevie Nicks affirmed the value of her own love in one of her songs and made the man who didn’t want it —along with the rest of the world — hear her validate her own experience again and again, and even sing along.

Which makes me wonder whether or not it matters if a certain someone senses every time Alanis Morissette scratches her nails down someone else’s back. She dared to suggest he should care, and the rest of the world, filled with women who’ve been tossed aside for a newer model, sang along with her.

Maybe the guy who loves to kill us after we’re dead in Tori Amos’s Blood Roses doesn’t care about women…but we recognize him better now and have learned to protect ourselves and each other from his pathological violence.

And yes, we never should have had to become fighters in order to survive the experience of heterosexual relationships, but maybe it’s a blessing to have become “that much stronger.”

And if their words turned out to be meaningful, after all…then what about mine?

I have been learning to tell my story over the past few years, after a lifetime of others pressuring me into silence. And the more I tell it, the more people listen.

My words are emblazoned across the cyberverse, here for anyone to see. My story belongs to me…and it gets stronger every time another person reads it.

So maybe it doesn’t matter that most of my exes don’t remember me and wouldn’t care about the pain they inflicted on me if they did. This isn’t about them, after all.

It’s about me and my story.

© Yael Wolfe 2023

Yael Wolfe is a writer, artist, and photographer. You can find more of her work at yaelwolfe.com. If you love her writing, leave her a tip over at Ko-fi.

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