No wonder Rumours is so broken, and such a blood-letting listen filled with real passion beyond its pop veneer. That’s why this is still his best album, period, as well as divorce music’s greatest hit.Īll during the writing and recording of one of pop’s most diabolical albums, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham broke up, John and Christine McVie got divorced, and Mick Fleetwood found out that his wife had had an affair. Naked self-expression, loneliness, and the feeling of blame and disgust mark this record like a pox. This is the direst and biggest of all divorce albums, namely because it’s Dylan, America’s Bard, our Shakespeare uncautiously ruminating on the ruination of his marriage to his then-wife Sara, and how he-before this-had never truly touched on the autobiographical or the self-confessional. While Wynette’s vision was blunter and more of a contagiously melodic smash, never underestimates Jones’ gutsy torpor and display of disgust and self-loathing. Two albums, one busted up marriage, and an amazingly frank and unironic display of heartbreak and angst from both country music legends. With that, here’s a quick look at 12 standout divorce albums and what makes each uniquely bitter, more spiteful, and more forlorn than the next. Musical giants had to tackle that divide, sometimes poetically and sometimes coarsely. Legally joined lovers have come together and separated more times that you may think during pop’s 20th and 21st centuries. With this, however, we must be clear: Adele’s 30 follows a very delicate (and often harsh) path, that of the “divorce album” and its rich history.

“I’ll be taking flowers to the cemetery of my heart / For all of my lovers in the present and in the dark,” she sings at the start of the record, creating a sense of ennui and reckoning around the sensitive topic of separating a love and a marriage. Before you let the needle hit the vinyl on Adele’s 30 this afternoon you already know the drama that went into each emotion and deeply felt vocal-that although this new album is all about her and her journey to get to this age, that 30 concentrates on divorce, her divorce, and all the tumult and growth that went with it.

Love marriage divorce album