The Most Streamed Artists After a Breakup
When the heartbroken make breakup playlists on Spotify, they turn to the same group of artists again and again. The artist who tops the list will likely not come as a surprise, but there are many other artists whom people seek out at their low points. Here are the top ten most popular artists on breakup playlists.
Taylor Swift tops the list of most-streamed artists following a breakup
A February 2026 report on breakup playlists on Spotify by JB.com found that Taylor Swift appears most often, by far. She appears on 325 playlists, with the most repeated song being “All Too Well.”
The song, which appeared on her 2012 album Red, also has a 10-minute version. Many of her fans have come to believe that the song is about her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal.
What other artists do people stream after a breakup?
While Swift is at the top of the list, there are many other artists that people repeatedly seek out for the breakup playlists. Billie Eilish comes in second place, appearing on 144 playlists. Her most repeated song is 2021’s “Happier Than Ever.” Olivia Rodrigo comes in the third place spot with 128 appearances. Her most repeated song is “Traitor.”
Adele, Lewis Capaldi, Lana Del Rey, Gracie Abrams, Ariana Grande, Tate McCray, and Conan Gray round out the list. While Capaldi is in the fifth place spot, his song “Someone You Loved” has the most streams, with over 4 billion.
“Breakup songs have become a genre of their own,” the CEO of JB.com tells us. “One of the industry’s lesser-known secrets is that major artists are often assigned songs and genres that meet market demand. This may sound strange given how emotionally connected we may feel to some of these tracks, but if it comes from a big pop artist, there is a good chance it was shaped by prior market research. Every genre and theme has its own data, and the people working with pop artists always consider these trends when making albums. That’s how the hits are made.”
Taylor Swift once said she had one album about heartbreak
While Swift has a number of breakup songs, she once said she only thought she had one true breakup album. Fittingly, it’s Red, which features “All Too Well.”
“Musically and lyrically, Red resembled a heartbroken person,” Swift wrote when she announced Red: Taylor’s Version. “It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end. Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past.”
She said that the album reminded her of talking through the end of a relationship with friends.
“Sometimes you need to talk it over (over and over and over) for it to ever really be … over,” she wrote. “Like your friend who calls you in the middle of the night going on and on about their ex, I just couldn’t stop writing.”
