I’m Horny for Songs About Heartbreak—Is It Just Me?

I liked a boy in my first-grade class whose face I remember down to the length of his eyelashes but whose name I’ve long forgotten. At that age, I assumed when you had a crush on someone they automatically liked you back. (Ah, youth.) I wrote him a note, found a piece of finely wrapped candy, and left both on his desk. I’d written some version of “I like you, do you like me,” but because my handwriting was so bad, he had to ask me what it said. Then he told me he did not feel the same and I stormed away.

I remember feeling sad and I remember feeling angry, but mostly, I remember feeling sad—because it kind of felt great. It was like I’d discovered a superpower: I could feel this terrible this deeply? Holy shit.

This is what I imagine my brain, today, looks like on sad music. Except now that I’m older and (at least a little more) sexually literate, the superpower has evolved into something even better: It can get me off! I can only describe the skin-tingling sensations I experience when I hear sad melodies and sad lyrics—like the piano at the beginning of Taylor Swift’s “Champagne Problems,” the keyboard in Rilo Kiley’s “Breakin’ Up,” or the strum in the Lumineers’ “Stubborn Love”; like Lorde singing, “Come home to my heart” in “Supercut” or Bob Dylan rasping, “You could’ve done better but I don’t mind” in “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”—as horniness.

I’ve never thought too much about it—just as I once assumed crushes were reciprocal, I assumed everyone felt some version of this. That is until, very recently, when I said “sad music is super horny” to some coworkers, who burst out in a chorus of laughter and questions. Not everyone feels like rubbing one out after listening to “Sleep on the Floor?” News to me.

To be clear, I’m not talking about experiencing heartbreak. I’ve had two major heartbreaks of note—one made me feel like I was the only person in the world who’d ever felt this type of nerve-shredding pain, and the other turned me into a binge-drinking maniac (she was kind of fun, though). That is not the heartbreak getting me hot and bothered. On the contrary, that type of heartbreak made me wish I’d been born and died a fly.

What type of heartbreak am I talking about? What a great question—one I didn’t think I’d ever have to answer until I dared utter the words “sad music hot!” in a room I thought was a safe space! (Don’t sex shame your friends!) But here I am, attempting to answer an innately difficult question: Why do I like what I like?

Here’s my first attempt: It’s an emotional release akin to an orgasm. Feeling so much pain reminds you that you’re magically and wondrously alive on this little floating rock amidst an infinite array of stars and supernovas. And feeling that alive when you’re not actively trying to survive a heartbreak is great! It’s amazing, even! And a much cheaper aphrodisiac than oysters! Mix that in with the sweet, sweet nostalgia that the saddest music also elicits, and honestly, if you’re not feeling horny, I feel a non-horny sad for you.

Did you hate that? It’s OK, because so did almost everyone else I tried to explain it to. So, in searching for a drop of validation—and to assure myself these emotions weren’t masking some deeper sociopathic tendency—I found some people to tell me I was totally normal and cool.

“I don’t think you’re a sociopath,” Dr. Laurie Mintz, a psychologist who’s a sexpert for Lelo and author of Becoming Cliterate, told me in a phone interview. “I kind of wondered if there was something in your past, maybe when you were masturbating or aroused when you were younger, or maybe you were having great sex with a partner and sad music was in the background.” I told her about my first sexual experience, which was, at best, exciting but frustrating and, at worst, a bit traumatizing. (Saving this story for my memoir but Venmo me $5 and I’ll tell you all about it.) The point is that I was listening to a lot of sad, angsty, and “fuck you” music like the Fray, All-American Rejects, and Taylor Swift’s debut, while Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” and Timbaland’s “Apologize” ft. OneRepublic were everywhere.