Salt in the wound or a slap in the face

Angry breakup songs reveal: Voice is the Key to unlocking the Gate

Feb 07, 2025

Hey heartbreakers,

Welcome back to The Romantic.

I’m Meg Oolders, acclaim-thirsty author, certified skeptic, and your conga-line leader on the strobe-lit dancefloor of romantic storytelling. Whether you’re writing love stories, reading them, watching them, living/dreaming them, or secretly despising their existence, this is the multi-genre mixtape for you.

The nice thing about penning love stories is there is an infinite jukebox of been-there feelings set to dig-that music in the world to pull from when you need a little inspiration.

Be it new love, old love, forbidden love, tainted love, hookups, makeups, runarounds, or breakups, the song you’re looking for has been written—a hundred times over. You just need to find it.

Or rather, it needs to find you.

You might think listening to music is a passive activity. One you just let happen to you without having to make any decisions about it.

Not so.

I know many of us writers ~~revile~~ misunderstand “gatekeepers” because we view these entities as arch nemeses in our quests to be discovered.

But how many times have you been listening to a “suggested” playlist (or even one you curated) and found yourself skipping songs? Listening for a few seconds before crinkling your nose in disapproval, tapping “next,” two, three, or four times, until a “good one” hits your ears.

And how many times have you just thrown the whole playlist out in favor of one better suited to your rapidly undulating tastes and preferences?

Or the kind of day you had?

Or your mood in that particular moment?

GATEKEEPER!!!

I’m kidding.

But seriously.

A song needs to hook us, just the way a story does, if we’re going to connect with it. And it needs to hold on to us, if it doesn’t want to end up REJECTED.

So, where’s the hook in a love breakup song?

As an author of young adult fiction, I’m no stranger to the allure of pop music in youth culture. And most of my YA playlists are comprised of “popular hits” of today, sprinkled with “popular hits” of my own day.1

So, when my nine-year-old daughter asked me to add the song Good 4 U by Olivia Rodrigo—very today—to her Spotify playlist, I assumed I could get on board with it as a fellow teen pop enthusiast.

However …

I did not care for the song.

“This girl is very angry,” I said.
“She is?”
“Yeah.”
“What is she angry about?”
“She’s upset because her ex-boyfriend is moving on with his life in positive ways and that bothers her because she isn’t.”2
“Do you not like the song?”
“Ehhh … it’s not my favorite. But you can like it.”

Cue self-reflection …

Was my inability to connect with this song (or its protagonist) a sign that I’m really a heartless curmudgeon who doesn’t understand the perils of heartbreak?

So, what’s my problem?

Why did Miss Rodrigo fail to hook me with her ~~story~~ song?

To answer this question, I started listening to a lot of breakup songs—paying particular attention to the ones fueled by rage, jealousy, and heartbreak-breakdowns.

Lo and behold, I found my answer in Alanis Morrisette’s 1995 ballbuster, You Oughta Know.

If you listened to both songs, you probably noticed some striking similarities in the lyrics.

Olivia: Well, good for you, you look happy and healthy. Not me, if you ever bothered to ask.
Alanis: You seem very well. Things look peaceful. I'm not quite as well. I thought you should know.
Olivia: You found a new girl, and it only took a couple weeks. Remember when you said that you wanted to give me the world?
Alanis: Every time you speak her name; does she know how you told me you'd hold me until you died?
Olivia: Maybe I’m too emotional. But your apathy’s like a wound in salt. Maybe I’m too emotional. Or maybe you never cared at all.
Alanis: Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity? I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner. But it was a slap in the face, how quickly I was replaced.
And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?

Here we have two women expressing many of the same grievances about their exes, and letting the ~~reader~~ listener know how they feel about being rejected.

But there’s a good reason I wanted to listen to Alanis’s song all the way to the end (and over and over again), while I wanted to “skip” Olivia’s after a few stanzas. And it’s the same reason an agent or editor might keep reading your book after the first ten pages, but stop reading another writer’s book on page one, even if both of your books are essentially telling the exact. same. story.

That reason is VOICE.

That’s Voice, with a capital V. The essential element of storytelling authors are eternally trying to “find.” And the element gatekeepers publicly decree is the most powerful tool for hooking them on your story … right out of the gate.

A slide from a workshop I led back in November about finding the emotional “hook” in the first lines of a story.

When deftly deployed, Voice-driven first lines can reveal a staggering amount about a protagonist and the world they inhabit. They can provide clarity AND curiosity, two things a reader needs to feel simultaneously grounded and intrigued when entering into a story.

To explain how a strong Voice might accomplish this, I offer the following scenario:

Your protagonist/narrator is in a crowded, noisy room. They have one chance to deliver their/your opening lines over a loud speaker and pull all those distracted ears (and fickle heartstrings) into the story and keep them there.

What would they need to say, and how would they need to say it, to make that happen?

You’ve been reading The Romantic! Did you have a good time? If so, please share this post with the friend you share playlists with.

An author’s take on breakups …

In love stories, a breakup between characters can serve as fuel for growth in any number of directions. While it feels like an ending, it is often best served as a turning point or even an inciting incident that propels a newly broken protagonist toward healing, evolution, and maybe even happiness. 💕

The two breakup songs featured today were strikingly similar in theme and sentiment.

The differences appeared in the words the protagonists chose to express their heartache, what those words—and how they were delivered—revealed about them as people, and what all of that made me feel for and about them in their respective relationships.