27 Best Songs About Love Triangles
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11. Unfaithful by Rihanna
Song Year: 2006
Unfaithful is another Rihanna song about love triangles.
It’s a slow, melancholy, melodic track written from the perspective of someone who is being unfaithful, and it expresses the complicated emotions that that person feels, knowing that they are guilty and are hurting someone they love.
The narrator in this story knows that their partner knows about their unfaithfulness and is simply not saying anything about it – which makes the narrator feel even more guilty about seeing this other guy.
12. Don’t by Ed Sheeran
Song Year: 2014
Ed Sheeran writes about a whirlwind romance with signs of red flags from the start, but he jumps into the relationship anyway.
In the second verse, he sings about how confused he is about her kissing another man. And the chorus is a plea to be kind to his heart and not take advantage of him.
Many people in a love triangle can resonate with this plea. By the third verse, he confronts her about cheating and realizes that she isn’t different from the women that have hurt him in the past.
13. Stacy’s Mom by Fountains of Wayne
Song Year: 2003
Stacey’s Mom is an iconic, humorous, pop-rock song about a love triangle between the narrator – a teenage boy, his girlfriend – Stacey, and Stacey’s mom, with whom the boy is secretly infatuated.
The song lyrics are the boy talking to Stacey, presumably in his head, about how beautiful her mom is and how he thinks he’s man enough to be with her.
14. Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood
Song Year: 2005
One of Carrie Underwood’s most popular songs is Before He Cheats, probably because many people can relate to feeling or finding out that their partner is with someone else behind their backs.
She describes various scenarios that she imagines with her (ex) man and his side chick, such as cozying up at a bar and helping her shoot pool.
Meanwhile, the iconic chorus describes Underwood keying, slashing, and bashing up his car, not only for revenge but also so that he thinks twice the next time he tries to cheat on another woman in the future.
15. Two Black Cadillacs by Carrie Underwood
Song Year: 2012
Perhaps due to the success of Before He Cheats, Carrie Underwood made another hit years later about cheating. This time, instead of the narrator destroying his car after finding out, she and the other woman decided to kill the man.
The chorus highlights the funeral, in which the preacher, the brother, and other loved ones are speaking highly of him, while the two women he was cheating with don’t care to cry because they know that he wasn’t as honest and true as he seemed.
16. Cardigan by Taylor Swift
Song Year: 2020
In the lyrics of Cardigan, Swift conveys how when a man chooses two girls at once, he will likely lose one of them.
Swift paints the picture of this man playing “hide and seek” and only giving the narrator his weekends, implying that there was another person in the mix.
This song has many other vivid literal and metaphorical imagery that makes it heart-wrenching to listen to, especially if you can relate to the narrator.
17. You Make Me Wanna by Usher
Song Year: 1997
You Make Me Wanna is one of Usher’s earlier hits, and it has a classic r&b sound that never gets old.
In the song, Usher sings about how he’s currently with someone, but he’s slowly realizing that he’s falling for one of his best girlfriends.
He reflects on how she’s the one he wants to call when he’s having problems and how she’s all he thinks about when he goes to bed, as opposed to the woman he’s with.
18. Leave Your Lover by Sam Smith
Song Year: 2014
Sam Smith not only sings about love triangles when it comes to cheating, as he does in Not the Only One, mentioned earlier, but he also sings about being on the outside looking in.
Leave Your Lover is an aptly named song title because the narrator in this story is actively begging the one he loves to leave their love and be with him instead.
It’s a slow, pleading song that sounds like something you might want to say, but you probably wouldn’t ever say it aloud.
19. Jessie’s Girl by Rick Springfield
Song Year: 1981
Jessie’s Girl is a popular, timeless song by Rick Springfield about falling in love with your friend’s partner and feeling powerless.
The iconic chorus conveys the desire to be with this person you clearly can’t be with, not only because they’re taken but because your friend takes them!
20. Kerosene by Miranda Lambert
Song Year: 2005
Kerosene is another song about finding out there’s another person involved in your relationship and resorting to giving up on love because you feel like it’s just not working out for you.
It’s called kerosene to depict the imagery of burning your past and leaving it behind, which is what many people want to do in this scenario.
Instead of a sad or even disappointed feeling, this song by Lambert has an assertive, matter-of-fact tone that’s eerie in its way.
