Emptiness can feel inescapable when it strikes, draining all significance from the world and leaving nothing but a bleak show of its despair.
Whether you’re dealing with heartbreak, grief, mental illness or some other strange wave of greyness, our list of pop and rock songs about emptiness covers it all, giving a voice to an inexpressible lack of emotion.
Songs About Feeling Empty
1. Christiana Perri – The Lonely
Centred around the crushing feeling of loneliness, The Lonely by Christiana Perri captures the deep-rooted feeling of emptiness which halts you in your path.
Perri highlights the stifling truth about being socially vacant and unfulfilled, underscored by a bitter insight into the dismal void it spawns; “2am; where do I begin, crying off my face again … Broken pieces of a barely breathing story.”
Threading cinematic melodies within its orchestral pop soundscape, this powerful, bluesy track holds a number of powerful sentiments within its lyrics, each displaying a breathtaking blend of crippling emotion contrasted by utter emptiness;
“I’m the ghost of a girl that I want to be most, I’m the shell of a girl that I used to know well.”
2. Zevia – Why Do I Exist
This atmospheric pop track by Zevia carries a subtle grungy ambience beneath its sweet, warming melancholy. Why Do I Exist is like a blissful lullaby for the suicidal, artfully embedded with a sparse, haunting harmony to mirror the emptiness encapsulating the narrator’s lyrics.
Zevia details the zombie state of perpetual depression and loneliness; every short, unelaborated musical element mimicking the lack of energy and ability to express the abyssal depths of your inner void;
“Pale lips, bags under my eyes, alone after midnight, too numb to cry, no friends, at least I can pretend that everyone loves me, except that’s a lie.”
3. Daughter – Youth
Daughter’s iconic indie pop track, Youth, is anchored in a soul-nourishing ambience backlit by the feeling of emptiness in the wake of world-shattering heartbreak.
Whilst anchoring their track in the theme of youthful escapism, their bright, free-spirited message is cast upon a bleak shadow of simply trying to feel alive again;
“And if you’re still bleeding, you’re the lucky ones, ’cause most of our feelings, they are dead and they are gone, we’re setting fire to our insides for fun, collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home.”
This tragic self-destructive flair is hardly hidden within the lyrics; instead Daughter expose the striking truth about trying to move on with your heart carved to shreds by abandonment;
“Shadows settle on the place that you left, our minds are troubled by the emptiness … Well I’ve lost it all, I’m just a silhouette, I’m a lifeless face that you’ll soon forget.
4. Letdown. – Empty
Letdown.’s 2022 release, Empty, mixes a slight nu-metal feel within its contemporary pop sound, cutting a jagged edge upon an emotive track about crippling under the weight of emptiness.
Letdown. masterfully conjures the pure, hopeless disorientation of feeling suspended in nothingness, displaced in a chasm of eternally reaching darkness;
“Nobody can help me, I’m not cold I’m empty, somebody heal me, hold me, make me know me, hate me, nobody can love me.”
One of Letdown.’s most cutting lines is found rooted within his chorus, unintentionally putting the spotlight on how toxic masculinity and superiority complexes feed into the feeling of emptiness;
“You don’t know the hell I’ve been through, you don’t know the price I paid, every bit of man I once was, every bit of love that I could have.”
5. Olivia O’Brien – Empty
Olivia O’Brien’s radio-pop hit harbours an unsuspectingly bleak lyrical message beneath its bright beat. Empty is about feeling the social pressure building unstoppably on top of you, pushing you deeper into a hole of addiction in a catastrophic attempt to evade the inescapable truth.
This is an anthem for anyone walking the cliff edge between holding on and giving up, its lyrics written with stylistic open-ends, letting you attach your own life story within each line;
“Yeah I’m empty inside, I just don’t feel alive, and I don’t wanna live but I’m too scared to die … Wish I could erase my memories, so I could stop feeling so empty, I wish this shit wasn’t so tempting but it’s hard to resist when there’s plenty.”
Padding the chorus is a profound message of being emotionally blinded by a drug-induced haze, inadvertently plunging you deeper into the emptiness which spurred the addictive habits in the first place;
“I wonder if I’m good enough or maybe I’ve had too much to drink, to smoke, to swallow, I’m drowning up my sorrows.”
6. Wxse ft. Lul Patchy – I Feel So Empty
This is another track with a strangely optimistic harmony underlying its despairing message. I Feel So Empty bases its harmony in a stunningly fresh Latin inspiration, its clean jazz chords radiating a clear feeling of early morning positivity.
Wxse layers only two cyclical verses upon his blue-skies beat, flooding each line with a lo-fi effect as if separated from true reality, almost as if the narrator is speaking from another sphere, displaced and stranded in his own far-flung world.
The endless revolution of these two minimal verses summons a striking flair of disorientation in itself, reflecting the utter lack of words over an emotion comprised completely from absence;
“I feel so empty, don’t know how to feel, somebody come get me, I feel kinda sick. Empty, don’t know how to feel, somebody come get me.”
7. Sadness – Useless
Saving the best for last, DSBM band Sadness’ breathtaking track, Useless, captures the most gutturally bleak and heart-torn moments of emptiness that could ever be depicted.
Threading desperate glimmers of hope with torrents of hopelessness, Sadness summon a soundscape as majestic as it is depressing.
Every rich distortion is crushed, stagnated as if trying to bound faster in speed but merely crawling forth instead, its melodic highlights screeching and wavering imperfectly to mimic the trying and incessant failing, forming the basis of perceived insignificance.
This is a track for when you’re long past the point of masquerading your emptiness and there’s no energy left to maintain the front of coping.
Even for the most vacant and far-gone, Sadness’ masterful illustration of human imperfection manages to mirror the desolate depths of emptiness, both amplifying it and cancelling it out through its comfortingly accurate portrayal.