This past autumn, Taylor Swift dropped The Tortured Poets Department, and those of us who’d been worshipping at her altar our entire adult lives prepared for a gut-wrenching account of the final days of her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn.
Instead, we got 31 tracks mostly about her alleged two-month fling with The 1975’s Matty Healy.
Some fans were stunned, but it just takes a quick glance at all our 2024 Spotify Wrapped lists to see that the drama resonated. So if it seems odd that a history-making pop culture icon was airing all the dirt on a situationship, you haven’t been paying attention. That girl you can’t stop thinking about who texted you every night…and then ghosted? Yep, that was a situationship. The guy who only makes out with you when he’s drunk. Ditto. It’s for sure how Carrie Bradshaw would have described her early relationship with Big. These “almost” relationships are everywhere, and the discourse around them has captivated our culture and invaded our personal lives.
Remember back in 2023, when we watched Ken fawn over an uninterested Barbie in Greta Gerwig’s bubble-gum pink cinematic universe and the word was a finalist for Oxford’s word of the year? That was arguably the year of the situationship. Now, 2024 has proven to be the year of the situationship album—and it’s not just Taylor who’s found inspiration in these frustrating would-be connections.
"If 2023 was the year of the situationship, 2024 was the year of the situationship album"
When Tay’s Eras Tour confidants Sabrina Carpenter and Gracie Abrams dished on their own thwarted flings this year, they raked in millions of Spotify streams, topped the Billboard 200 chart, earned multiple Grammy nominations, and landed on my personal year-end music review. And in this breakout moment, I understand why the situationship album hits differently from the average breakup record (a pop culture mainstay since the dawn of recorded music).
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When I connected with someone who was just out of a committed relationship last year, I knew the risks. That didn’t stop me from confessing my feelings during a drunken night out. “I’m emotionally unavailable,” the person told me…but only after we kissed. Cue a monthslong spiral. We didn’t talk about our feelings and the boundaries stayed blurry. As Sabrina sings on her Short n’ Sweet standout, “Sharpest Tool”: “All the silence is just your strategy, ’cause it leaves you so top of mind for me.” So there they were, on my mind but out of reach. It was brutal, and the song’s lyrics (“We had sex, I met your best friends. Then a bird flies by and you forget”—hello, the soundtrack to my life!) became cold comfort.
While I was wallowing, I could have used some of Gracie’s no-fucks-given attitude toward these casual but intense connections. In The Secret of Us, she confesses that she “was a dick” to past lovers. A graduate of the Swiftian school in rightfully showing her crazy, she snarks: “I told you things that I never said, you’re the golden boy and my worst regret.” This kind of uncertainty and emotional whiplash defines the dynamic and makes the music hit that much harder. The magic of the situationship album is that it embraces the messiness and chaos that come with the push and pull of emotional ambivalence. These artists may wallow, but they also unleash rage because they never had anything to lose in the first place.
"the situationship album embraces the messiness that comes with emotional ambivalence"
That pop’s foremost It Girls have fallen prey to the pitfalls of a situationship makes me feel a little better about my own drama. Was my sort-of ex the villain? Was I? It depends on whose side of the story you’re hearing, of course, and these records have shown me that my own entanglements were far from black and white. So, listening to these women process their pain from all angles has helped me do the same.
Pop culture depictions of these flings aren’t new—Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke slouched through one back in the 1994 slacker classic Reality Bites—but over the past few years, they’ve become so universal that those who haven’t experienced one are still desperate to relate to the onslaught of art they inspire. One girl even sent out boyfriend applications for a three-day unrequited love affair just so she could break it off and better understand Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR.
And although the situationship album is having a major moment right now, our best and brightest singers have always grieved what could’ve been. Nothing is more freeing than raging in razor-sharp prose against treatment we don’t deserve. Years before Taylor, Sabrina, and Gracie unleashed their truths on their records, artists like Liz Phair and Best Coast gave us a glimpse of their own cursed romantic scenarios. In 1993’s Exile in Guyville (arguably the ultimate situationship album) Liz tells the story of unrequited love on her terms when she asks, “Whatever happened to a boyfriend? The kind of guy who tries to win you over. Whatever happened to a boyfriend? The kind of guy who makes love ’cause he’s in it?”
Listening to the album 30 years after it was released, we still don’t know the answer to that question. We replay what really happened in our minds, comparing reality to the fantasies of what could’ve been. But that’s the thing about these twisted dynamics. They’re born of miscommunication in a world—and dating pool—that feels more disconnected than ever. When our parents ask us why we’re still single, all we can do is remind them that times are different now. In 2024, we crave intimacy amid a straight-up toxic (and mostly online) hookup culture that makes it harder than ever to form genuine connections.
"these songs have done what all the best songs do: helped me feel less alone"
For me, Crazy For You, the 2010 Best Coast record about craving attention from some loser guy who took your money, smoked all your weed, and didn’t give you the time of day, is a salve in a moment when dating feels like the seventh ring of hell. Each song is deeply one-sided (just like every situationship-related meltdown I’ve ever encountered). As lead singer Bethany Cosentino moans about the what-ifs and pleads with her subject to give in, she might as well be talking to a wall. But then, like a hurricane or a gnarly cold, the suffering ends. Bethany grasps that her connection isn’t real in the song “Our Deal.” “I wish you would tell me how you really feel, but you’ll never tell me, ’cause that’s not our deal,” she muses.
Over the past year, these songs have done what all the best songs do: helped me feel less alone. My heart was pulled in all kinds of directions, but it found a new way to beat once I released the sadness, yearning, and anger. In 2024, I filled my playlists with albums about thwarted connections and frustrated chemistry, and as I look forward to 2025, I’m making room for a new record in my rotation.
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