Breakup songs are a wide genre for obvious reasons — just think back over your own breakups. There’s the one where you were the villain, the one you’re still sad about, the one where you really wish you’d said one final cutting thing as your freshly minted ex headed out the door for the last time, etc. And if you’re lucky, there’s at least one you feel like you handled perfectly.
Some of the best breakup songs have been given to us by movies, themselves a mainstay of post-breakup self-care right up there with ice cream and that friend who never liked your ex. Whether you’re mourning or gloating, chances are one of your go-to movies about the end of a relationship also features an unquestioned banger (or weeper, depending on where you are in the process). That song you put on repeat until you’re ready to take a shower and get back on the apps. Here are five classic breakup songs that owe their fame to movies.
Prince — Purple Rain
It’s really, really hard to imagine letting the late Prince go if you’d ever had him. The charismatic, 5-foot-tall power-ballad generator had a hypnotic hold over millions. But the version of Prince we see in “Purple Rain” — an angry, not-quite-adult man still learning how to break the bad patterns he was raised with — is exactly the kind of guy you need to learn to walk away from. If the cute ones were all in therapy, we wouldn’t need dating apps.
The title song is exactly what we all sometimes need to hear: “It’s not you, it’s not even really me, but it’s us.” From the first lines, “I never meant to cause you any sorrow / I never meant to cause you any pain,” we can see where Prince is going. Two people can experience attraction, friendship, and even love, but if they’re not offering each other what they need, it’s best to walk away. And if you’re lucky enough to have had an “it’s complicated” with an artist of Prince’s skill (there will never be another musician like him), you’ll at least get to walk away into the beautiful purple rain.
Lesley Gore — You Don’t Own Me
“You Don’t Own Me” first came out in 1963, and it was a departure for the young Lesley Gore. Most of her work up until then had been more or less what you’d expect from a pretty young singer in that era: bright, poppy songs about boys and the girls with whom she competed for boys. “You Don’t Own Me,” instead, is about the singer herself. It’s not necessarily a breakup song, in that she’s only laying out what behavior she will or will not accept. But we know from Gore’s cool, flawless delivery that she can and will walk away if she’s not respected.
“You Don’t Own Me” never fully faded, but its legacy got a big boost with the 1996 release of the star-studded revenge romp “The First Wives Club.” Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton play characters who team up to avenge their friend (played by Stockard Channing) and torment their sleazy ex-husbands. They’re about the right age to have heard “You Don’t Own Me” on the radio as young women, and the song is teased throughout the movie. Finally, the ladies close out the film by doing a victory lap to the song, singing together as they leave the scene of their triumph and dance out into the streets of New York.
Whitney Houston — Exhale (Shoop Shoop)
When “Waiting to Exhale” hit theaters in 1995, moviegoers got to see Black best friends who weren’t just there to help a white central character. Instead, they met four Black women who supported each other through difficult but glamorous lives. Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon weren’t accessories, victims, or afterthoughts — and they looked great. The film also gave us one of the greatest memeable images of all time: This is the movie in which Angela Bassett, cold and cool as a perfect martini, walks calmly away from a burning car.
Whitney Houston is mostly remembered for her peerless pipes, and who could blame anyone for being blown away by the sheer power of her voice in her prime? In “Exhale (Shoop Shoop),” Houston presents a much more understated delivery, showcasing her control and skillful phrasing: She didn’t need volume to have audiences eating out of her hand. The singer may be sad, and she may be hurting, but she’s got her own self-assurance and her friends to keep her going. And if all other comfort fails, Angela Bassett presumably still has her lighter somewhere.
Dolly Parton, then Whitney Houston — I Will Always Love You
Dolly Parton appears in the film “The Best Little W****house in Texas” as the proprietress of the titular good-time establishment, and she sings a song near the end of the movie. In the scene, her character breaks up with her love interest, played by Burt Reynolds. She believes the move is for his own good (she’s a stronger woman than many of us), and she sings him “I Will Always Love You,” an absolute weedwhacker to the heartstrings. Dolly’s version is gentle and mournful, one of the most aching performances in her wide, wide catalog as she sacrifices her own feelings for the greater happiness of someone still dear to her.
If you lived anywhere near a radio in 1992, you know what happened next. Whitney Houston covered the song in her film “The Bodyguard,” a fun but ultimately so-so film mostly remembered today for Houston’s reimagining of Parton’s original. Houston gives one of the most “in the style of Whitney Houston” renditions possible, showing off the range, expressiveness, and above all power of the single most impressive vocal instrument ever to come out of New Jersey. Parton, a canny businesswoman, enjoyed Houston’s chart-smashing version and got even richer from the royalties she earned off the track, though a talked-about duet never came to pass.
Barbra Streisand — The Way We Were
Barbra Streisand has been pigeonholed as a gay icon for much of her latter career. While that can be a fun and lucrative path for a glamorous performer at mid-career, it can also obscure the huge fame a performer like Streisand enjoyed earlier. A legit movie star in addition to a widely admired singer (here’s how she spends her millions), she appeared in a string of well-received films, both musical and … less musical. (Since it’s Barbra, they mostly all had at least one song.) One of the standouts of the latter category is “The Way We Were,” starring Streisand as a devoted young Communist in love with a fundamentally conformist hunk played by Robert Redford. Streisand’s character, unhappy with the compromises she would have to make, ditches the hunk for her ideals.
How you feel about this song depends a lot on how you process emotion. It’s sad and reflective, without any of the angry energy that powers many people through their saddest moments. The strings-heavy arrangement of the original recording feels dated now, but Streisand rises above the schmaltz, clear as a bell, looking back without going back. For the right kind of wistful nostalgia, this is a must-listen track.