'70s Breakup Songs That Take Every Boomer Back To Their First Heartache

Baby Boomers, the generation of Americans born in the 18 years or so after World War II, were coming of age or already in young adulthood when the 1970s arrived. It was a wonderful and explosively creative era for pop music, as soul, folk, hard rock, and various other exciting splinter genres emerged to captivate listeners. Just 1971 may have been the best year ever for music, but the entire decade gave the world timeless and perfect classic tunes that soundtracked the lives of Baby Boomers if not successive generations.

But along with the jams and celebrational songs came the ones about romantic loss, heartaches, and heartbreaks. There was just something about the 1970s that created an environment where composers were able to make some of the saddest and emotionally devastating it's-all-over-now songs ever. Those very records are what helped Baby Boomers wallow in their feelings for a while and also recover, because at least someone out there understood what they were going through. Here are the most gut-punching break-up songs of the 1970s — ones that just might cause a flood of unpleasant memories for the Baby Boomers out there.

Sometimes, after a particularly difficult romantic split, the only thing there is to do is feel one's feelings, and sit or lay around and lament their lot in life. Things can feel bleak and all-consuming just because the supposed love of one's life up and left, and Bill Withers understood that when he wrote and recorded the self-pitying "Ain't No Sunshine."

The song peaked at No. 3 the fall of 1971, and won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Song. It was part of the cultural fabric for months, and may have helped listeners see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and that healing is possible if one realizes that they're better off alone. 

Withers took inspiration from the 1962 drama "Days of Wine and Roses," starring Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon. "They were both alcoholics who were alternately weak and strong. It's like going back for seconds on rat poison," Withers told Songfacts in an exclusive interview. "Sometimes you miss things that weren't particularly good for you."

Stevie Nicks is adored by her fans for her open, honest songs about a number of subjects, including love and its complications. Both her solo work and songs written and performed with Fleetwood Mac are emotional salves for Baby Boomers and their descendants. Fleetwood Mac's 1977 mega-selling album "Rumours" is almost entirely about the end of relationships — most members were navigating breakups with other members of the group. Two years earlier, the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album provided a dry run for that template.

Before Nicks and her romantic and musical partner Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac, they'd performed as the duo Buckingham Nicks, which released one album in 1973 before getting jettisoned by the record label. That put stress and strain on the relationship, and the situation helped inspire a song during a visit to Colorado. 

"I was in somebody's living room, looking out over the snow-covered mountains and thinking about what to do with my life. Should I just go back to school, or should I go on pursuing a music career with Lindsey?" Nicks wrote in the liner notes for "Crystal Visions: The Very Best of Stevie Nicks." "I sat looking out at the Rocky Mountains pondering the avalanche of everything that had started to come crashing down on us." After teaming up with Fleetwood Mac and recording "Landslide," a song about the decision-making process that leads to a break-up, Nicks ultimately decided to stay with Buckingham — for the time being at least.

In the 1970s, numerous hard and heavy rock bands could show that they had a sensitive side by recording a new kind of song known as the power ballad. Built to wrench as much emotion as possible out of listeners, power ballads combined big guitar and drum sounds with vocals belted out by rock legends with strength and volume so as to make everyone listening on the car radio, or on headphones, or at the school dance, know exactly how they were feeling. On "Love Hurts," Nazareth vocalist Dan McCafferty really sold the emotional pain, which is likely how the song became such a go-to breakup song.

The cover of a largely forgotten Everly Brothers song from the early '60s was something of an unlikely hit. At the time of the release of "Love Hurts," Nazareth was known primarily in Europe and as a purveyor of extra gritty hard rock. Baby Boomers took a chance on Nazareth's pivot, and found that the song provided explanation and empathy during periods of romantic difficulty. So many heartbroken young Americans agreed with the tune's titular sentiment that "Love Hurts" hit the Top 10 in late 1975.

Singer-songwriters in the 1970s often led with emotion, and Carole King, an icon of heartfelt songwriting, released the album "Tapestry" in 1971. Long one of the music industry's most reliable hit writers, King saved her most introspective and heartfelt work for "Tapestry," such as the lead-off single "It's Too Late," A mid-tempo song dominated by King and her piano, it's at turns bittersweet and steadfast as the narrator admits to herself that a romance has come to the end. Compounding the sadness, they admit to themselves and their partner that the relationship is tragically but obviously beyond repair — that it's too late to change. Those are some hard truths if also realistic ones delivered from a mature songwriter who has experienced some life and plenty of pain.

King's point of view was so genuine that "It's Too Late" topped the pop chart, sold a million copies, and propelled "Tapestry" to blockbuster numbers. The album stayed on the charts for 302 weeks, thus helping to console the dumped for nearly six years.

Before they recorded anything, Daryl Hall and John Oates were roommates and bandmates. Smarting from being stood up for a date on New Year's Eve, Oates plucked out a chorus melody on an acoustic guitar. A couple of days after that, Hall came back to the apartment. "He had gone through a breakup of his own. So, he and I sat down and we kind of pooled our sorrowful resources, so to speak," Oates told American Songwriter. "We just pulled my chorus and his verse together. We picked very, kind of, you know, poetic but simple lyrics for the verse that really just somehow embodied loss."

That song became "She's Gone," and it's a little-known fact about Hall and Oates is that it was the rock-soul duo's first ever single. Released in 1974, it didn't hit the Top 10 until 1976. It couldn't help but resonate with listeners who'd either had their hearts broken or were in the middle of a terrible break-up. With quiet verses that build into wailing, plaintive choruses and a near emotional breakdown from Hall on the bridge, "She's Gone" is as forthright with emotion as the title is regarding its subject. This is a song about an individual finally realizing that his relationship is quite over.