Wish You Were Here: 15 Best Songs About Missing Someone (2024)

• Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, "One Sweet Day"

  

  “Sorry I never told you / All I wanted to say.” Sometimes there are things we wish we had said to our loved ones. Mariah Carey wrote “One Sweet Day” in remembrance of her friend and producer David Cole as well as those who died in the AIDS epidemic. The longest-running Hot 100 No. 1 before “Old Town Road,” Carey’s historic team-up with R&B group Boyz II Men will surely go down in the books as one of the immortal collabs of all time. Listen here.

• Beyoncé, "I Miss You"

  A deep cut from 4, “I Miss You” is an 808-driven R&B ballad co-written by Frank Ocean, who mellows Beyoncé’s untamed aggressiveness heard on “Run the World (Girls)” and conjures up a heartfelt vulnerability in her poised vocal performance. “I noticed his tone, his arrangements, and his storytelling,” Beyoncé said of hearing Frank Ocean on a car ride to Brooklyn. “I immediately reached out to him — literally the next morning. I asked him to fly to New York and work on my record.” The first of Ocean and Beyoncé’s three collabs, “I Miss You” made possible the follow-ups “superpower” and “Pink + White.” Listen here.

• Drake, "Marvins Room"

  In 2011, no rapper could pull off a low-key, emo song about drunk-dialing your ex-girlfriend quite like Drake, who is not too proud to declare “I need someone to put this weight on.” Drake is sensitive enough to notice “since you pick up, I know he’s not around,” and he’s not one to hide his jealousy of the “good guy” that she’s happy with. Macho and possessive, yes, but also vulnerable and endearing. Listen here.

• Janet Jackson, "Miss You Much"

  

  Janet Jackson is no less a dancer than a singer. The lead single to Jackson’s groundbreaking Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 album, “Miss You Much” stands out from this list of mostly saccharine slow jams as a dancefloor banger, pining-for-your-lover-but-make-it-funky style. A classic Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis production, the song was a successful follow-up to Jackson’s breakthrough album Control, topping Billboard’s Hot 100 and Hot Dance Club Songs. The cherry on top is Miss Jackson’s iconic “chair routine” in the music video, which inspired Britney Spears’ choreography in “Stronger.” Listen here.

• The Rolling Stones, "Miss You"

  The Rolling Stones’ 1978 song “Miss You” is a Hot 100 chart-topper and a song that promises to get you out of a funk with its funky guitar riff, a bluesy harmonica solo and a wordless chorus that you just can’t help humming along to. Listen here.

• Robyn, "Missing U"

  “Baby, it’s so real to me / Now that it’s over.” With “Missing U,” Robyn’s first solo single after Body Talk, the Swedish singer sent a message to her fans that she had missed them. As the opening track on her 2018 album Honey, “Missing U” continues Robyn’s sadcore dance beat as heard on “Dancing On My Own.” But this time the synth instrumentals are cold and sparse, the lyrics even more relatable, evocative of the “missing space you left behind.” This song is for those who need to wallow in a heartbreak and mourn what could have been before moving on. Listen here.

• Sinéad O'Connor, "Nothing Compares 2 U"

  

  “It’s been seven hours and fifteen days / Since you took your love away.” There’s probably no post-breakup monologue more sincere than Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” with nothing but bleak and brutal honesty wrapped in heart-wrenching one-liners. Originally written by Prince for his side project the Family, O’Connor’s version is funereal but dignified, mournful of a love that died like the flowers her mother planted in her backyard. The Irish rocker’s rendition topped the Hot 100 for four weeks in 1990 and later inspired an Aretha Franklin cover. Listen here.

• The Beatles, "For No One"

  The 10th track from the Beatles’ 1966 Revolver, “For No One,” was allegedly for Paul McCartney’s then-girlfriend Jane Asher. A minimal baroque number featuring clavichord accompaniment and a sublime French horn solo by Alan Civil (who also played on “A Day In The Life”), the song is a hauntingly good short story about “a love that should have lasted years.” The melody is wistful and poignant, ending just as abruptly as it started. Listen here.

• blink-182, "I Miss You"

  

  The second single from blink-182’s untitled fifth album, “I Miss You” was inspired by unrequited love and Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas. “The song’s more about the vulnerability and the kind of heart-wrenching pain you feel when you’re in love and when you’re a guy and you’re trying to tell a girl, ‘Don’t waste your time coming and talking to me because, in my head at least, you probably already gave me up a long time ago,’” the band’s guitarist Tom DeLonge said of the song’s meaning. Listen here.

• Cynthia Erivo, "Fly Before You Fall"

  They say, romanticize your life. What better way to do it than to a movie soundtrack? Beyond the Lights is one of the “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back” type of romantic films. “Fly Before You Fall” by British singer-actor Cynthia Erivo, from the movie’s soundtrack, is the song for you to get introspective to when you’re caught in loss and regret, awaiting your denouement or learning to let go. “Here and now, you’re afraid,” Erivo sings. “Don’t you worry. I’ll teach you to fly before you fall away.” Listen here.

• The National, "I Need My Girl"

  

  There are moments in adulthood when you might feel that you’re not getting any wiser despite increases in age. The National’s “I Need My Girl” is the song for you. Taken from their 2013 release Trouble Will Find Me, the song stands out as an album highlight with a melancholic guitar lick and Matt Berninger’s raspy, achingly candid vocals. The lyrics are personal and sobering: “I know I was the 45 percenter then / I know I was a lot of things / But I am good and I am grounded.” Listen here.

• Incubus, "I Miss You"

  When we struggle to put feeling into words, music can help where speech fails us. Incubus’ “I Miss You” is a song for those who are separated from their loved ones and need to let them know “I care and I miss you.” Taken from Incubus’s album Make Yourself, “I Miss You” was produced by R.E.M./Nirvana producer Scott Litt, who later also worked on the band’s Morning View, preceded by the single “Wish You Were Here.” Listen here.

• Bill Withers, "Ain’t No Sunshine"

  Love is like a drug. Like all addictive substances, quitting love requires great determination. Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” is about the feeling of loss and idleness when love is absent. When he was still a factory worker, Withers wrote “Sunshine” after watching Days of Wine and Roses, a movie about two people’s struggles with love and alcohol. Withers’ performance bore resemblance to the great bluesmen that sang about drunkenness and desires decades before him. The song was his first hit and peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100. Listen here.

• Aerosmith, "I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing"

  

  In 1998, Aerosmith scored their first U.S. No. 1 hit with “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” a power ballad penned by tunesmith Diane Warren, who co-wrote the sonically identical “Just Like Jesse James” for Cher nine years ago. The Aerosmith hit was released as a single from the soundtrack of sci-fi disaster film Armageddon, which was a Billboard 200 No. 1 album. It’s a solid record that sold millions, and the song was much loved for its classic rock cheap thrill and its sizable chorus that would become part of many people’s first dance memory. Listen here.

• Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"

  The title track from Pink Floyd’s 1975 follow-up to their massively successful Dark Side of the Moon, “Wish You Were Here” is often considered a tribute to the band’s former frontman Syd Barrett, who had left the group seven years prior. The often-told story of an out-of-shape Barrett’s visit to the recording session, unrecognizable to his ex-bandmates, has become part of the epic rock meditation’s ineffable pathos and grandeur and even part of Barrett’s legacy. Written collectively by David Gilmour and Roger Waters, the song features Gilmour playing a two-bar motif on a twelve-string guitar. “How I wish, how I wish you were here,” Giomour sings about the crushing loneliness that came with fame. “We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year.” Listen here.

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