Heartbreak
Side B2
The second half of the mixtape nobody asked for.
Every breakup gets an A side. It's the one everyone hears about — the version you tell your friends, set to the songs that make the story make sense. This is an essay, and a playlist, about the B side: the version that plays after everyone's stopped asking how you're doing.
The B side doesn't have a narrative arc. That's sort of the point. It's not about closure or growth or any of the things a well-told breakup story is supposed to deliver by the end. It's just the seven songs that were still on rotation two months later, when the story had technically ended but the songs, stubbornly, had not.
If the A side is what you'd play for someone else, the B side is what you play with the door closed. I'm publishing it anyway, because I think most people are secretly more interested in the B side, if they're honest. It's the one that actually sounds like the person, rather than the version of the person telling the story well.