Boyz II Men
‘End Of The Road’
Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number One on October 25, 1992
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there have been many chart hits about physical pain. Nobody’s ever written a banger about standing on an upturned plug, or getting hot chip fat in your eye, or having a There’s Something About Mary-style mishap with your zip.
And yet, emotional pain is a common subject for pop songs. At the time of writing, the entire Billboard Top 10 is dominated by the queen of breakup ballads, Taylor Swift. Back in 1992, the year’s ten best-selling singles included weepies such as:
‘Stay’ by Shakespears Sister (“If you try to go alone/Don’t think I’ll understand”)
‘Please Don’t Go’ by K.W.S (“I’m gonna miss your love/The minute you walk out the door”)
‘S.O.S.’ covered by Erasure (“What happened to our love? It used to be so good”)
‘I Will Always Love You’ by Whitney Houston (“Goodbye/Please don’t cry/We both know I’m not what you need”)
That list also includes ‘End Of The Road’ by Boyz II Men, a song where one of the Boyz announces that he would rather die than go through the pain of a breakup.
Personally, I agree with him. Stepping on an upturned plug is nothing compared to a breakup, which is always horrible, always, no matter the circumstances and no matter who is doing the dumping.
The question is: if breakups are so rotten, then why do we love songs about them?
I can’t sleep at night without holding you tight
We love breakup songs (and other sad love songs) because they speak to the trauma of our own romantic failures.
Or, at least, that’s the received wisdom on the subject. Various psychologists and therapists have written things like this:
…breakup songs can provide a kind of reverse empathy as you feel for another person going through what you are experiencing. This feeling can help you recognize your own feelings and also distract you from your own predicament.
Or, perhaps a sad love song can help us through the healing process, as argued by one of NPR’s music guys:
In a breakup’s aftermath, by the time you’re ready to expose your ravaged heart to an aching ballad, you’re not heartbroken so much as pre-healing…it’s your heart’s way of purging emotional toxins. It hurts, but it’s helpful.
But do these theories really explain the appeal of sad love songs?
Here’s the thing: everyone loves breakup songs, even kids and folks who’ve never experienced a major heartbreak. People who married their childhood sweetheart and lived happily ever after can still grok the sentiment of ‘End Of The Road’. It speaks to something innate in us.
So if these songs aren’t a form of therapy, then what are they?
Love me again like you loved me before
Earlier, I said that breakups hurt no matter who is doing the dumping.
That’s not true. That’s something you say to make yourself feel better after you’ve dumped someone. Being dumped is always awful, no matter how it happens. Even if you wanted out of the relationship, it’s still a rejection. It still hurts. It still feels like an icicle through the heart.
And this isn’t a metaphor! Social rejection can feel exactly like physical pain. Researchers demonstrated this by gathering a group of recently dumped people, sticking them in an MRI, and showing them images of their exes.
We further demonstrate … physical pain by comparing activated locations in our study with a database of over 500 published studies. Activation in these regions was highly diagnostic of physical pain, with positive predictive values up to 88%. These results give new meaning to the idea that rejection “hurts.” They demonstrate that rejection and physical pain are similar not only in that they are both distressing—they share a common somatosensory representation as well.
Put simply: being dumped hurts in exactly the same way as stepping on a plug.
And nobody likes being hurt.
I’m just in so much pain baby
Yesterday was Halloween, the day when people dress up as their greatest fears (or a sexy version of their greatest fears.)
Halloween also means horror movies. Horror is a genre that seeks to exploit a specific part of your brain: the fight-or-flight response, which exists so that we can respond quickly to sudden threats.
Tickling your fight-or-flight can be fun, if it’s done right. A good jumpscare gives you a sudden jolt of adrenaline, followed by the relaxing sense of safety when you realise you’re not in danger. According to one horror expert:
Because horror movies do such a good job at simulating threatening situations, this means our emotional responses to them are similar to those we’d experience if we encountered a real-life threat. As a result, horror movies are a risk-free way to vicariously experience threats and rehearse one’s responses to those threats.
Tragic love stories do something similar. Melodrama gives you a taste of loss, rejection, grief and other painful emotions—not enough to actually hurt you, but enough to allow you to roleplay heartbreak and think about how you would respond.
In other words: Boyz II Men allow you to safely microdose trauma.
And hey, that can be healthy! We’ve always needed art to help us connect with these big, scary emotions. Tragic romance stories are thousands of years old, going back to Greek bards telling the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and they themselves were probably just repeating a song that was handed down to them.
We all carry this huge ocean of feelings inside us. Sad love songs allow us to stand on the shore without worrying that we might drown.