Having a crush can be an emotional experience. Dealing with rejection from someone you like always involves pain and struggles, so listening to a song on the topic can help you. If you want some relatable music, try out these 21 best songs about being rejected by a crush.
Top Songs About Being Rejected by a Crush
“Love Yourself” – Justin Bieber
“Love Yourself” remains a popular song about getting rejected by a girl. Many people know Justin Bieber and recognize the message he sends through this song. The singer talks about a girl he used to love who made him feel used.
For example, the girl still uses the singer’s name to get into clubs. Even though the woman put the singer through so much, he recognizes what he went through and is better off without her abusive and mean ways.
“Treat You Better” – Shawn Mendes
Some people face rejection because of forbidden love, such as liking someone in a relationship. In the song “Treat You Better,” the singer feels he works better for the girl he loves over her current relationship.
The singer recognizes that the girl he loves isn’t happy, so she should get with the singer instead. He knows he has good qualities, like being a gentleman and treating people with respect.
“You Belong With Me” – Taylor Swift
If you want country songs about rejection, you can check out “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift. The story talks about how the singer loves a boy, but he currently dates another girl. However, the other girl and the boy she has a crush on don’t have matching personalities.
The singer expresses how she isn’t a cheerleader or constantly wearing girly clothing, but she’s a good match for the boy. The song has a sadder tone since the singer doesn’t end up with the boy, but after everything, she recognizes her value.
“Swing, Swing” – The All-American Rejects
“Swing, Swing” is one of the most solid rock songs about rejection by The All-American Rejects. The singer had a girl he loved, but she spurned him.
Since the girl rejected him, he feels alone and has so many emotions he needs to deal with concerning his love and feelings. The singer may feel like crying, but he won’t do it over the phone in front of the crush.
He also recognizes that he feels alone and still believes he can find someone in the future.
“Girl on Fire” – Alicia Keys
Instead of your standard approach to rejection, “Girl on Fire” takes a unique approach by showing leadership, strength, and beauty. In addition, the song describes a stunning and resilient woman.
The woman remains on top of the world and seems to be powerful. However, the singer points out how the woman feels lonely despite everything going for her. Since she feels lonely, she most likely doesn’t have someone romantic in her life.
Despite those points, the woman symbolizes that even people who seem perfect can go through hard times, so we should all work to build our confidence.
“I Wish” – Skee-Lo
You can also hear rap songs about rejection, such as “I Wish.” The song comes from the perspective of a man who faced rejection and wishes he could change himself. The changes include his height, being better at basketball, and having more money.
The singer feels stuck in his city and current situation. However, it appears to be from a high schooler’s perspective since he talks about going to prom someday.
Since the singer is still young, people can interpret it as the singer having a chance in the future when such shallow physical features don’t matter.
“This Is Me” – Keala Settle
The song “This Is Me” comes from the musical, The Greatest Showman. The song talks about a woman who gets told to hide away due to her ugly features. People view her as unlovable, so she faces rejection from society and the people she loves.
The singer looks past the words of others and recognizes her self-love. She and her friends can ignore the mean comments and looks of others to realize their worth, so the song offers inspiration to anyone who struggles with themselves.
“Sk8er Boi” – Avril Lavigne
The song “Sk8er Boi” takes an exciting approach by singing from the perspective of a boy’s current girlfriend. The singer discusses the story of her boyfriend’s crush on a girl. However, the girl was worried about what her friends would think if she dated him.
The two never worked out, so the boy had to deal with rejection for his skater lifestyle. However, he eventually becomes a rockstar and finds someone he loves. The song is a reassurance for people who deal with rejection since they’ll eventually succeed and find someone.
“I Will Survive” – Gloria Gaynor
“I Will Survive” remains a solid song that almost everyone knows. The singer discusses how she struggled at first when she wasn’t with the one she loved. She realized how her lover wronged her in multiple ways.
The lover sometimes tries to return to the singer, but the singer denies him. Finally, she realizes she doesn’t need the lover anymore, so she demands the lover never come around her again. She could get through those difficulties and move on with her life.
“Heartbreaker” – Pat Benatar
“Heartbreaker” is one of the best songs about getting rejected by a guy. Pat Benatar presents the perspective of a woman who dealt with a man she thought she loved. However, the guy kept tricking the singer and offering promises, and he never remained true to what he said.
The singer feels like the guy constantly breaks her heart and makes things difficult for them. However, once the singer realizes that the man is a heartbreaker, she wants nothing to do with him anymore.
The song shows people that they can move on from a crush or a previous lover and take control of their lives.
“Liability” – Lorde
Lorde laments the fact that she feels she will always be too much for any lover in this mournful piano ballad. “He don’t wanna know me, says he made the big mistake of dancing in my storm,” she sings after being rejected. Branded a liability by men she has been with, Lorde doubts her ability to ever be in a stable relationship. Instead, she goes home into the arms of the one person she knows will always love her and try to make her happy – herself.
“What Breaks My Heart” – Parachute
Frontman Will Anderson sings about a girl who never loved him in this heartbroken track. He feels he has accepted this and come to terms with the fact that they aren’t as close as they used to be and they’ll never be together – until he sees her with another man. Faced with the fact that after she rejected him his crush is clearly in love with another guy, he finally feels like his heart is truly broken. “But I still see just how perfect we can be, yeah/And that’s what breaks my heart,” he sings.
“wish you were gay” – Billie Eilish
Eilish wishes that her crush had a less personal reason for rejecting her. “I just kinda wish you were gay,” she shrugs. Faced with the fact that she’s been rejected not because her crush doesn’t like women but because he doesn’t like her, she finds herself feeling low and looking for some kind of 12 step programme to get over him.
However, in real life, there was a twist. Eilish revealed that the boy in question did actually later come out to her as gay.
“Daydreams” – Maisie Peters
This piano ballad from Maisie Peters starts off like something out of a rom com – her part-time barista boyfriend with a nose ring is waving at her from a taxi. But then it’s revealed that the boy in question is not her boyfriend, just a guy who isn’t actually that interested in her. “I could dress it up pretty, I could blame it on cities, but he doesn’t want me,” she sings. Finally coming to terms with her rejection, she returns to her daydreams.
“Heather” – Conan Gray
Gray pines after a boy who is in love with someone else in this gentle ballad. Watching the boy, it becomes clear to him that the object of his affections is fixated on someone else. An impossibly girl named Heather has stolen his crush’s heart and he wishes desperately that he could be her.
The song is based on Gray’s real-life experience, as when he was in school he did fall in love with a boy who was fixated on a beautiful girl. When the song went viral on TikTok, ‘Heather’ became a slang term for a perfect girl, used to describe anyone who was both beautiful and nice.
“Is There Something In The Movies?” – Samia
Samia isn’t rejected by her crush for another girl so much as she is for his ambitions. Wanting to hold onto her teenage love, she’s painfully aware that he’s going to run off to chase his dreams and leave her behind. “Is there something in the movies that’s better than my love?” she asks him. She can’t understand why she doesn’t measure up to his ideas of what his life should look like, when all she wants is him.
“doomsday” – Lizzy McAlpine
McAlpine can see her rejection coming – she just asks her crush to give her plenty of notice. She knows that she likes them far more than they like her and that it’s going to kill her when they finally reject her, but embracing the inevitable she decides the best thing to do is to start emotionally distancing herself. “I’d like to start planning my funeral,” she sings. “I’ve got work to do.” ‘doomsday’ is the first track on McAlpine’s sophomore album, five seconds flat.
“Escapism.” – RAYE
“The man that I love sat me down last night and told me that it’s over, dumb decision,” sings Raye in the first verse of ‘Escapism.’ She’s got one mission that night – to distract herself from her rejection by drinking, partying and running from her feelings. Over a pulsing beat she tells the listener that she doesn’t want to feel anything at all.
‘Escapism.’ is based on a real episode from RAYE’s life, in which rejection caused her to go on a hedonistic rampage, something she feels is not talked about enough in regards to women. In the music video for the track, she attempted to recreate that place in her life as faithfully as she could.
“peppermint smiles” – tiffi
Tiffi knows that the boy she loves doesn’t want to be with her, she’s just struggling to come to terms with it. Singing over an acoustic guitar, she relates how she was rejected for a beautiful girl with “bright blue eyes and peppermint smiles”. Sadly, she acknowledges that there was no way the object of her affections could have resisted this beautiful girl, but she wonders if he knows all the good things Tiffi could also give him. “I’ll never win,” she realises sadly. Tiffi wrote this mournful track when she was only twelve.
“Your Type” – Carly Rae Jepsen
“I know I’m just a friend to you/That I will never get to call you mine/But I still love you,” sings Jepsen in this upbeat pop track. Although she loves the man she’s singing about, she knows that she’s not the type of girl he’d ever think of as more than friend. It doesn’t matter – despite the rejection, she can’t help loving him anyway.
“Heartbreak Girl” – 5 Seconds Of Summer
5 Seconds Of Summer describe a girl who won’t ever think of them as more than a friend. She’ll call to cry about the boys who break her heart, but can’t seem to see that true love could be right under her nose. The boy group are tired of being rejected by her and hope that one day she’ll come to see their relationship as something more than just friendship.
Conclusion
No one wants to deal with rejection, but it naturally happens when you seek out love and relationships. Everyone faces rejection at times, so having a song you can listen to can soften the blow and help you through the situation.
Caitlin Devlin is a music, entertainment and lifestyle writer based in London. When she’s not creating playlists for Repeat Replay, she’s reviewing gigs and interviewing artists for Ticketmaster UK and thinking about what her Spotify Wrapped will look like this year.