Have you ever felt what it’s like to fall in love with someone or to start liking someone? It’s an ecstatic feeling yet at the same time, it could be painfully beautiful too.
In the process of falling in love with someone, you get to notice the little details with the way their eyes smile with their mouths or the way they purse their lips when they’re confused. You become hyper-aware of every moment you spend together thinking about them and replaying them over and over again, making your heart flutter endlessly.
But loving someone also has its shadows, and maybe you find yourself crying and worrying about how the other person feels about you, wondering if they ever feel the same. There are days where you cry because of the apprehensions that come with confessing your feelings and falling in love or even maybe thinking they deserve to be with someone better.
No matter what you’re feeling or what situation you’re in, for someone who’s going through the love journey, especially unrequited ones, music has always got you covered.
Now, love and unrequited ones are common topics especially with the songs that come out these days. So, instead of being repetitive, here are 20 songs about unrequited love that you don’t hear often. Trust me that these are definitely hidden gems.
1. I Don’t Know How To Tell You This by Faith Ling
“I don’t know how to tell you this
Conscience, don’t tell me what to do
But I think my heart’s made a little space for you”
This calm and mellow song from Faith Ling expresses the struggle of liking someone and not being able to confess that feeling.
As the title suggests, it’s about someone not knowing how to tell the other person that they like them. It also talks about being afraid of how the other person would react once they would confess, since the person doesn’t know if the love is requited or not.
2. Sway by Keepitinside, Lanie
”But behind all this masquerade
You will find a boy who’s just being afraid
Of loving you”
Here, Keepitinside talks about how the person’s wearing a facade as he faces the other person, but in reality, the person’s just another person who’s afraid to love and to express their love.
To forget and ignore the pain and apprehensions he’s feeling he wants to just spend the time and enjoy the moment with the other person, asking him to stay and dance together.
3. The Moon Song by Walker Burroughs
“But the cold, cold truth remains, even if we feel the same,
Oh you and I, we’re billion years away”
Burroughs sings and compares two lovers as a moon and a star that are a billion years away from each other, even if they seem to be near each other.
It talks about how the person sees their love as a beautiful moon, that seems unreachable as the moon looks down on Earth where the person lives and stays. The song ends with a line that expresses this as the cold truth of their story.
4. I Don’t Wanna Be Okay Without You by Charlie Burg
“But I only think of you Will we be together soon?”
Charlie Burg delivers an emotional and heartfelt performance with this song that expresses how the persona wants to be together with the person they love.
Saying “I don’t wanna be okay without you,” the person can’t live without the other person, and can’t get them out of their mind.
Constantly waiting and chasing throughout the song, the person asks ”Will we be together soon?”
5. She Was by Serotonin
“She was my dream, someone I can’t reach
Across the room, I see her smile so perfect”
Serotonin expresses and relays the meaning clearly and directly about how the person is reminiscing about someone she likes and how this person is unreachable. She’s the person’s dream but also someone who’ll continue to remain as such.
Though a relatively long song, this song has repetitive and short lyrics as it focuses on expressing the emotions through the melody and the music itself. After thinking about someone as a dream, the song concludes with the persona’s decision to let go.
6. I Should’ve Kissed You Then by Peej
“Remember when you said, fear should never stop you I should’ve kissed you then”
This song talks about one’s struggle after missing the chance to confess their feelings to the other person. It expresses how that moment repeatedly playing in the persona’s mind and all the what-ifs that come with it.
It expresses feelings of regret, knowing that taking the chance would have helped him end the struggle he’s going through and stop him from continuously bottling up his feelings.
7. Spaces by Martti Franca
“Love me even if it is to fill the spaces
Love me, even if I know it’s just to feel alive for awhile then you ‘re gone”
Martti Franca explores a different side of unrequited love, focusing on the desperation of the person for the other person to love them even a little.
Franca expresses how the persona is content even if they would just be used to fill the empty spaces in their life or if they would just play a small role, even consenting to cheat as the persona’s blinded by their desperation. Here, the persona believes that something and anything would be better than nothing at all.
8. Call Me When You Hear This Song by New West
‘Every time you hear this tune
Just know I still think of you Can we get together soon So you can say I love you too?
This song talks about an unrequited love that blooms from a past which the person has a hard time moving on from. The persona hopes for their past lover to call again to pick up where they left off and try again, still not ready to say goodbye.
There are reasons why they broke off and the person respects the other person for this but the song concludes that the persona would continuously wait for the call to come and never move on.
9. Love Me Please by OCTAVIO the Dweeb
“I’ll love you the way that your mother does Protect you the way that your father has Ifs so easy If you choose me”
As straightforward as the title gets, OCTAVIO’s track expresses how the persona wants the other person to love them back. The persona talks about the things they love about the other person and asking the person a chance to prove and show their love.
The song wants to convince the other person that the persona is worth giving a chance, promising to love the other person to the fullest once that chance is given to them.
10. Friendly Neighborhood Poltergeist by Rory Wembley
“Been staring at you for days But you never seem to look my way
My “I love you’s in your alphabet soup seem to go to waste”
As someone who’s seen as a poltergeist, the persona starts to like someone who doesn’t look at them the way they look at the person.
It’s about how the persona makes subtle moves in hopes of the other person noticing them. But like how they’re always treated, what the persona does remains unnoticed which hurts the person real bad saying they don’t want to die twice.
11. Tired of Loving You by Corey Hommel
“‘Cause I am so sick of waiting There’s not much lean do
Oh I’m tired, oh I’m tired
Of loving you”
A message not always talked about in an unrequited love song, Corey Hommel expresses the burnout and tiredness someone feels from loving someone who can’t love them back.
As each day passes by, the person continues to get tired and drained from waiting for the two of them to be together. It’s about going past the stage of passionate love and instead replaced with a loving that relied so much on waiting and hurting.
12. Starting To by Wavelength
“And oh, I don’t know if I’ve learned yet, what it means to love someone in this way, but I think I might be starting to”
This lovely song by Wavelength talks about a person who is starting to open up and be vulnerable to the world as they start to feel something for the other person.
Because it’s the first time that the person has experienced something like this, they don’t know what to do and requests for them to take things slow so that things don’t go wrong and they don’t mess things up
13. Butterfly Rain by Tori Templet
“If I told you how I feel
Would it change how you see me
I wish I could
I wish I would
Say everything”
Tori Templet’s song lets its listeners fall in love with the concept of falling in love as it expresses how loving someone makes everything seem better even if you don’t know how they feel.
Like every unrequited love story, the person also asks if confessing would change the way things are yet also wishing they’d have the courage to tell the other person this. Altogether, it expresses different emotions one feels when in an unrequited love situation.
14. Astronomy by The Likes of Us
“Just like the moon, I light up because of you Spin me around in a waltz with the stars Galaxies far are spiraling just for a view My world revolves around you”
Another romantic song that would make you feel in love, the person in this song talks about celestial objects a lot as they compare how their whole world revolves around the person they love. The person sees themself as a moon that lights up because of their lover.
Though not an openly unrequited love song, one can still interpret it so, that maybe your world revolves around them but their world doesn’t revolve around you.
15. Things I Could Never Say To You by Noni
“Foolish of me to long for something That was never gonna be mine from the start In the first place”
A sad song you’d probably cry to, the person in Noni’s song expresses the sadness and regret that comes with missing the chance to tell a person how you feel.
It’s about how the person had to let the other person go but the person can’t seem to move on from them.
It’s about loving and longing for someone whom you know won’t be yours, and at the same time, that person not knowing how you feel about them.
16. Wasting Time by Valiantes
Another romantic tune, this song by Valiantes expresses how one wants to spend even the most uneventful and boring moments in life with their loved one. It’s about appreciating the little and trivial things in life.
The person also expresses how there are many things that they want to do, but to them, what matters more is spending or wasting time with the person they love.
17. New Ways To Miss You by Comfort Club
“Whatever’s left of us I’ve come to find
You’ll always be the one that’s on my mind, mind, mind”
Comfort Club delivers another angle of unrequited love which other songs have also expressed: the unrequited love from not being able to move on from the past.
Like the title suggests, the person in the song continues to find ways to miss their past lover as every little thing or detail reminds them of the past. The person expresses how the past lover is still the one who’s been in their mind.
18. Just Because by Lizzy McAlpine
I know why the flowers grow Not because they’re watered right Not because they see the light Just because I love you “
Another song that would make you believe in the power of love, the person in Just Because measures and expresses their love by making it the reason for every trivial thing that happens in our everyday living.
The song expresses that flowers grow and raindrops fall, the reason behind every phenomenon is the fact that the persona loves the other person to which they are addressing the song.
19. Still Feel It All by Maro
“It’s been five years and I still feel it all Oh It’s been five years Why can’t I let you go?”
As long as five years seems, the person in this song by Maro expresses how they have liked someone yet nothing has changed and they still feel it all after five years. The person can’t seem to let go as they still feel nervous every time the other person is around.
The persona also continues to wonder that after five years, would the other person’s feelings change and if they would ever want to be together.
20. I Can’t Make You Love Me by stories, Kenton Chen
“‘Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t”
One of the saddest songs on the list, this song expresses and conveys the message of acceptance in an unrequited love relationship. It talks about how the persona would be giving up the fight knowing that they can’t force someone to love them.
Before completely letting go, the persona asks for just one more night for them to pour all their love before they let go of everything.
That’s 20 songs and hopefully, you give some of them a listen.
Beyond the twenty listed here, thousands of other songs are available out there which you can relate to when experiencing unrequited love. Not just unrequited love, but topics of all sorts, whether it be love, self-empowerment. and many more.
Music has always got you covered. Now, sing and vibe to these tunes as you reminisce about your personal experiences of unrequited love.