Heartbreak Songs

"How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"? It's a question we've all asked at some point in our lives — though no group has asked it with more empathy than the Bee Gees — and there are many possible answers, including chocolate, time, and, perhaps most effective of all, sweet music. These are the songs that, mixed together in one therapeutic set of Essentials, represent the strongest heart-glue known to humankind. Allow the likes of Take That, Natalie Imbruglia, Roy Orbison, and ABBA to express your fractured love while simultaneously healing it.

Duffy and Leona Lewis prove themselves queens of heartbreak, in Next Steps.

It's tough when someone breaks your heart, right? But even if you take whoever's responsible for your pain out of the equation, you might still end up feeling like Duffy on "Breaking My Own Heart." Oh, yes, our heartbroken friends, love can be cruel: just listen as Leona Lewis confesses that she's had enough on "Broken," and empathize with Otis Redding as he realizes "I've Been Loving You Too Long." The Walker Brothers look for the exit on "Just Say Goodbye," while Tracey Thorn from Everything But the Girl belts out that refrain made from pure pain, "I Don't Want to Talk About It."

Deep Cuts? None cut deeper than the tracks you're about to hear . . .

No time to dry your eyes, our heartbroken friends, because the waterworks become a deluge here — Karen Carpenter's voice alone is enough to set most people off, and just a few bars of "Goodbye to Love" will have most of you bawling your eyes out; the cracks in Damon Albarn's heart appear in his vocal, as he edges through Blur's "No Distance Left to Run" like a man on the skids; and Andy Williams croons his way through "Solitaire" like he's the last lovelorn chap on earth. And the sole consolation? Look no further than Alexander O'Neal's "A Broken Heart Can Mend."

Don't despair, dear listeners. By the time you've blubbed your way through these heartbreak Essentials, two things will become blindingly clear. First, you'll understand that all these artists — including Madonna and ABBA, Normie Rowe and Jimmy Barnes — have been through the same emotional wringer as you, making them your companions in love's wreckage; second, you'll be so in love with the music that the pain you thought would never leave you is now that much less intense. Believe us, before long your heart will be stronger than ever before. So crank up some Cilla Black, belt out a bit of Bonnie Tyler, and let loose with a salvo of Stylistics . . . feels good, right? Broken hearts, unite!