Written by Alexa LoSchiavo. Graphics by Emma Morris.
Male Yearning: Where’d It Go?
“It’s never over, she’s the tear that hangs inside my soul forever.” It’s the age-old line we’ve all heard before, a true testament of male yearning. A song where Jeff Buckley lets his voice crack, his words shatter and his emotions seep into every part of the melody. There’s a sense of vulnerability and longing that colors his words, and everyone can feel it: the tried-and-true ache of yearning.
To yearn, to want something so desperately you put the words into a song and let them float into the world, suggests a vulnerability that scratches at the very depths of what music is about. The connection we seek through words is often found, inimitably, in music. The genre of male yearning, in my opinion, is when male artists create songs that remind us of a truth often untold: Men feel deeply and want to express it.
Music made in this context, though rare in 2025, is incredibly important for society at large. It exemplifies the fact that men can share their emotions in a raw, unfiltered way and pushes against the societal boundaries that say they can’t. Hearing these songs matters for boys and men alike, to see someone like them feeling the same things and being vocal about it through music.
But as streaming becomes just a click away and the art of raw vinyl pressing floats into the abyss, it seems we are losing something vital: the art of male yearning, the art of unfiltered emotion that is necessary yet increasingly rare.
So the question remains: Male yearning, where’d it go?
The timeline of male yearning in music is jagged and crooked. To find the start seems as impossible as the chicken-and-the-egg dilemma. Rather than make your head spin, let’s begin with a well-known, all-male band that shaped many an artist’s life: The Beatles.
The Beatles are known for upbeat, rock ‘n’ roll songs with dramatic guitar riffs that stick in your mind for days. But they’re also a band familiar with yearning. Their songs, often love songs, carry undercurrents of vulnerability. It’s that conscious feeling you get when you want something, when words aren’t enough.
At the start, their audience was mostly teenage girls, and critics used that fact to argue against the band’s significance. They called the music unserious or shallow. While part of that response stemmed from rock’s novelty in the 1960s, it also had to do with discomfort: Men were exploring emotional vulnerability in a new way, and the public wasn’t quite ready for it.
Their first album, Please Please Me, which critics once ridiculed for its “odd vulnerabilities,” contains songs that are poignant and heartbreaking. In “Anna (Go to Him),” the singer urges his lover to leave. In “I Saw Her Standing There,” he declares he’ll never dance with another.
You could argue The Beatles started the boy band vulnerability that later became attractive in both men and music. Their influence is echoed in other 1960s artists who sang about love like they’d never feel it again, Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” or Simon and Garfunkel’s “April Come She Will.”
Even lesser-known voices, like Bert Jansch or Jackson C. Frank, offered lyrics such as: “Yes and no are the answers written in my true love’s eyes.” The 1960s gave us folk and rock musicians who pressed yearning into vinyl with nothing held back.
As music entered darker emotional terrain in the 1980s and ’90s, yearning reached new heights. Artists pushed the limits of what could be said, layering sultry bass lines, electronic textures and haunting vocals.
This era is perhaps the archetype of male yearning, a sound that may never be repeated with such haunting clarity. Jeff Buckley is central here. His love songs consume the listener. He captures that intense longing, that unrelenting desire for access to someone who remains out of reach. In “The Twelfth of Never,” he asks, “You ask me how much I need you, must I explain?”
Other artists of that time answered just as emphatically. The Smiths famously leaned into raw emotion, both lyrically and sonically. Their music evokes a depression that follows doomed love, love that feels good while it lasts but isn’t meant to endure.
Songs like “I Know It’s Over” and “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” distill yearning perfectly, while “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “I Won’t Share You” hint at it with nuance. The Smiths suggest that need is not just emotional, it’s physical, visceral.
Radiohead, Thom Yorke’s solo work and The Cure also dissect yearning. They explore longing beyond romance, longing for home, for safety, for self. Radiohead songs like “All I Need,” “Creep,” “(Nice Dream),” “Black Star” and “Let Down” reference both love and deeper internal needs.
Yorke’s solo album The Eraser explores the devouring nature of longing. The Cure touches on these themes in “Lovesong,” “Plainsong,” “The Same Deep Water as You” and “In Between Days,” examining the thin line between selfishness and selflessness in relationships.
These artists brought a contemplative tone to male vulnerability. They asked: What does it mean to need someone so completely? Does it point to something missing inside yourself?
Today, it’s difficult to find a modern equivalent to that emotional vulnerability that swept the world in the ’90s. The shift to streaming and short attention spans has altered the landscape. Songs today trend toward fast gratification, indie sleaze or pop simplicity.
Still, some artists remain committed to raw emotion. Role Model writes about love and loss with a yearning that is playful and sincere. Hozier contemplates how love and need intertwine. Frank Ocean and The 1975 convey vulnerability in their own distinct ways.
The Mountain Goats and Tyler, the Creator also offer compelling glimpses of male yearning, proof that the feeling hasn’t disappeared.
The male yearning of the ’90s may have been a perfect storm of timing, emotion and trend. But there’s always hope. The revival of vinyl, a growing appreciation for artistic individuality and the hunger for something “real” may be the sparks needed for a new era.
Until then, I’ll be holding out hope, and listening to all the artists who draw us into yearning so effortlessly.
Alexa is a sophomore majoring in Writing and hopes to pursue a career in publishing and writing books. Outside of writing for District, she can be found writing about almost anything, reading in the park, or taking pictures of beautiful things.
