Songs Like "Flowers" Bloom With Good Grief

Partnerships, friendships, romantic relationships, and marriages sometimes need to end. Mutually coming to that determination is rare, but through the years, pop and country songs have provided some wisdom for our grieving.

In 1960, Neil Sedaka made it clear that “Breaking up is hard to do.” He sings the part of the one who isn’t ready: "Don’t take your love away from me/don’t say this is the end/wish we were making up/starting anew,” all followed by a catchy “du be do be do.”

Sometimes what we want is not to end a relationship but to change it. Fifty-one million people have viewed Taylor Swift’s video, “You Belong With Me,” about a relationship moving from friend to lover: “Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find that what you're looking for has been here all the whole time.”

But what about a change in the opposite direction? I’m sure you’re familiar with that dreaded phrase men and boys hate, that a woman or girl might say when she breaks up with him: “I just want us to be friends.” I couldn’t find songs about a relationship trying to change in that direction – from lover to friend – but it’s a much-needed transition for divorcing couples trying to co-parent their children.

Tina Turner highlighted domestic violence in her 1984 hit song, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?“–a notion that was just emerging in our culture as a serious problem at that time. Four years after she extricated herself from a 23-year relationship with her mentor Ike Turner that had begun when she was 16, she sang, “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken/I’ve been taking a new direction/thinking about my own protection.”

There have been many he/she/they-done-me-wrong-songs–"Cry me a river, I’ve cried a river over you." And many hang-in-there-no-matter-what songs, like “Stand by Your Man,” which I always found particularly annoying. But by playing the roles of either victim, persecutor, or rescuer, we will be assured of having to replay, in the new relationship, the dynamics of the one just ending.

After Miley Cyrus and Australian actor Liam Hemsworth’s five-year relationship ended, the hit song she wrote and recorded about it, "Flowers," has broken records by reaching Number One on three different Billboard charts. Three years after their divorce, the song has ignited a social-media storm as fans question its true meaning and some assume that Cyrus must have been seeking revenge because she released "Flowers" on Hemsworth’s birthday.

As a grief advocate and mental health professional who believes that the arts help us grieve and live our best lives, I’m entering the fray. In "Flowers," I see evidence of wisdom not manifest in earlier break-up songs. Cyrus begins, “We were good, we were gold/kinda dream that can’t be sold, we were right till we weren’t, built a home and watched it burn.” Fans know that building a home and watching it burn did actually happen shortly before their breakup, and I’m aware that a loss of such magnitude changes people and the relationships they are in.

Miley sings of her reaction, “didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to fight, started to cry, but then remembered…” She reminds herself, "I can buy myself flowers, talk to myself for hours, say things you don’t understand, take myself dancing, hold my own hand.” And then, a line of wisdom of which I greatly approve, and which I have never heard in any song: “I can love me better than you can.”

I can’t say if Miley was doing an “up yours” motion to her former partner with the date of "Flowers" release, but I appreciate her teaching her fans the truth that our first obligation is to ourselves and we can only love someone else to the extent that we love ourselves.