What Once Was: Reclaiming Music Post-Heartbreak

There’s nothing that compares to the feeling of nostalgia: the sights, scents, and sounds that transport you to a different place and time.

Nostalgia is so individualistic that it would be foolish to attempt to describe what pushes anyone’s mental buttons except my own. It’s a sensory experience that is so personal that even with my oversharing tendencies, I can’t seem to articulate how it manifests within myself. Still, I’ll give it my best shot…

It’s the smell of hash browns sizzling on my grandpa’s stove, backed to the tune of the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Lucy and Linus”.

It’s the feeling of his ugly ‘70s shag carpet under my feet.

It’s the taste of the Haagen Dazs’ Cherry Garcia ice cream that he always kept in his freezer.

In the same way that your favourite homecooked meal brings you back in time, a song can emulate that feeling tenfold.

If there’s something I’ve learned from making friends who are just as crazy about music as I am, it’s that they will defend artists with their life solely based on nostalgic value. Although one could argue that LMFAO’s discography is mediocre, technicalities are gone with the wind when “Party Rock Anthem” was the first song you bumped and grinded to at your school dance. There’s no such thing as unbiased critique when it comes to the albums that were the gateways to our current musical tastes. I’m certainly guilty of this. I immediately get defensive when someone judges an album that defined my childhood or coming of age. I usually don’t have words

Paisia Warhaft

to defend my position, besides “HOW COULD YOU BE SO COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WRONG?”

People wouldn’t feel such a strong connection to the music they listen to if it didn’t play a role in their journey of self-discovery. A part of that path are the meaningful relationships we make along the way, each with their own soundtrack. But when a relationship comes to an end, what happens to the nostalgic music that remains?

Without getting into the nitty-gritty details of my dating history, I can only speak from a place of my own experience with love and love lost.

Maybe I place too much value on the music taste of my partners, but nonetheless, music has always been a source of connection in my past relationships.

My first boyfriend listened to a concerning amount of Yung Gravy but redeemed himself through our shared love of Young the Giant. A memory that still lingers is the night we saw them play live. The song “Superposition” came on, and he looked at me to mouth the lyrics “No matter what we do, I’ll be there for you”. I remember thinking, “This right here, ladies and gentlemen, is what romance looks like.”

On the other hand, my first queer love sent me into a new dimension of musical exploration. Her taste in music expanded my own, and I fawned over being with someone who could introduce me to sounds that I’d fall head over heels with. I never thought of myself as a “hopeless romantic” before, but that quickly changed when we spent our days soaking in the summer heat, listening to Blossom Dearie and Al Hirt serenade us in the background. Jazz aside, she showed me music that would help me grow into my queer identity over dates that fit the cottagecore archetype a bit too well. Think, Big Thief, The Moldy Peaches, Frankie Cosmos— you get the idea. At this point, I thought “how could life get better than this?”

Spoiler: it did get better, but after a long-winded and frustrating process of non-linear healing. And let me tell you - the music that lingered over the ghost of my past relationships didn’t make it any easier.

I’ve tried my fair share of coping mechanisms to mend a broken heart, but most of them ended up being like trying to reattach a limb with Scotch tape. Sure, a tub of ice cream, a sappy romcom, and some Instagram stalking can enforce your self-loathing in a way that feels appropriate for your current state of mind, but it starts to be unhealthy when it becomes routine.

Breakup or not, listening to music can be a sustainable coping tool to get through your woes. I say can because doing the aforementioned activities with Phoebe Bridgers on loop is probably going to make things worse. Confronting the music that haunts you is not a quick fix, and unfortunately, there’s no such thing as an ex-orcist.

Although it seems like the easiest decision to avoid nostalgia-producing songs like the plague, I’ve always taken the opposite approach. In fact, I tend to overanalyze each lyric like I’m the Editor in Chief of Genius. This was until I was humbled by a post-breakup phone call.

The song “Ghosting” by Vancouver-based indie band, Mother Mother, used to be my kryptonite. On the call, I shared an excerpt of the lyrics as a (failed) attempt to communicate where I thought our relationship stood.

I compared the narrator to my ex, as someone who cut off contact but knew that they remained the “ghost in my house” that was keeping me up at night. And pulling the white sheet off their head, well, I thought that was their way of telling me that they wanted to open up contact and be “out of hiding”.

Oh, silly me, thinking I cracked the code and we’d end up walking off into the sunset. To my discontent, the way she perceived the song was on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Their interpretation of the metaphor figured that taking off the sheets, and leaving them folded up, asserted that they were leaving the relationship “unhaunted” and finally closing the door that still remained cracked open.

…Damn, where was the ice for that burn when I needed it?

Despite wanting to demolish a Cherry Garcia pint after hearing the stone-cold truth, it was a necessary reality check. A song that we used to listen to together became a representation of our paths diverging. While I could continue the cycle of listening and contemplating what once was, I realized that it was time to start placing my own meanings to the songs, beyond the ones we previously shared. After all, if I gravitated to a song in the first place, why should I let melancholic nostalgia ruin it?

Tucking my old habits away, I kept listening, but this time, without placing the songs into a dusty memory box. I challenged myself to reframe the music as a fluid object, one that ebbs and flows with me as I do through life. Now when I hear something that reminds me of a past relationship, it’s no longer a reflection of us - it’s a reflection of me.

I encourage you to keep listening, too. To listen both intentionally and passively. Allow yourself to cry, to laugh, to reminisce. But most of all, create new meanings that reinforce where you are now, and where the future will take you.