Playlist: The Saddest Songs Ever, According to Queer Cancers

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
Jun 26, 2023
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Feature image by CSA Images via Getty Images

“Happy” Cancer season!!!! Remember when I made all my friends mad at me by asking them to pick just ONE song as the most romantic song of all time? Well, I’m back as an agent of musical chaos, baby! This time, I made a lot of people with a lot of feelings have…a lot of feelings.

Specifically, I asked a bunch of Cancers (and broadened the poll to include anyone Cancer risings and moons) to pick the saddest song ever. People became a little too stressed about sticking to one song, so I did amend the rules slightly, as I did not want to be the cause of a Cancer’s meltdown — especially not in their own damn season!

I ended up receiving soooooo many songs covering a wide range of Cancer Sadness™ — from grief to heartbreak to loneliness to pain to death to loss to yearning to breakups to regret. You name it; Cancers will cry about it!

While listening through these decidedly somber tunes, I narrowed them down and tried to arrange them in a way that made narrative sense to me, an overthinking Taurus moon. This resulted in perhaps the greatest crying playlist of all time? See for yourself, and have a good cry along the way. It’s just under 90 minutes, which I think is the perfect amount of time to be in your feels. Scroll down for the Spotify playlist.

This post was originally written in 2022 and updated/republished in 2023.


cancer season playlist

  1. “Swim Good” by Frank Ocean
  2. “Something in the Way” by Nirvana
  3. “I Bet On Losing Dogs” by Mitski
  4. “The Glow, Pt. 2” by The Microphones
  5. “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac
  6. “Promise” by Julia Nunes
  7. “Your Love Is Killing Me” by Sharon Van Etten
  8. “Sullen Girl” by Fiona Apple
  9. “Kiss” by Scout Niblett feat. Bonnie “Prince” Billy
  10. “Cry, Cry, Baby” by Nina Nastasia
  11. “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” by Whitney Houston
  12. “Hurt” by Johnny Cash
  13. “Ride” by Lana Del Rey
  14. “Bones” by Mod Sun
  15. “I Want You” by Mitski
  16. “All Alright” by Sigur Rós
  17. “Dark Come Soon” by Tegan and Sara
  18. “If U Love Me Now” by MUNA
  19. “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” by Ella Fitzgerald
  20. “One More Hour” by Sleater-Kinney

You don’t have to have any Cancer in your chart to know the power of a good cry-song. What’s on your Cancer season playlist?

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya profile image

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya has written 989 articles for us.

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