Emo Vibes

Sentimental Moments That Stick

Recently I had a realization while listening to music: many of my favorite artists are men. And not just men, but men who are very in their feelings. It got me thinking about why that kind of emotional expression resonates with me so much.

Part of it might come from something I noticed about myself years ago. The moments that stay with me the most are rarely the flashy ones. They are the sentimental ones. Of all the gifts guys I have dated over the years have given me, the ones that stand out the most are the deeply personal ones.

In college, my boyfriend Ryan gifted me a painting I had casually mentioned liking while we were thrifting one day. He even taped a pair of diamond earrings to the back of it, which was a classy touch, but that wasn’t really the point. I had completely forgotten about the painting, but he remembered.

When I was in middle school, the boy who lived next door wrote a poem about me. It was honestly one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done. I wish I still had it, but it literally blew away in a tornado. True story. What’s funny is that I cannot remember a single word of that poem now, not one line. But I remember exactly how it made me feel. Seen. Special. Like someone had taken the time to translate their feelings into something creative and vulnerable.

Why Music Like This Resonates

My friend Ally recently introduced me to Sombr, a 20 year old kid whose songs feel like heartbreak journals set to music. I cannot stop listening. And my all time favorite artist, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, writes lyrics that resonate so deeply that sometimes I feel like I could have co-written them.

It made me wonder why I tend to connect more with emotional male artists than female ones, even incredibly talented ones like Taylor Swift, though I do love Midnights. The answer, I think, has less to do with the music itself and more to do with what it represents psychologically.

As a therapist, I think part of it comes down to how many men are socialized. Boys are often raised with a version of stoicism modeled for them: be strong, do not cry, and do not talk too much about feelings. Over time, that can lead to men suppressing or hiding emotional vulnerability. So when men do express their feelings openly, especially through music, it can feel powerful. Almost like you are hearing something that usually stays tucked away.

The Emotional Conversations We Never Hear

Listening to emotional male artists can sometimes feel like hearing the other side of a story we rarely get access to. Not the avoidant version. Not the “I’m fine” version. But the late night, headphones on, processing everything version. The version where men admit they miss someone, regret things they did not say, or wonder if they lost someone who mattered.

Generally speaking, men in our society do not express emotion as openly outside of the arts. I see this dynamic play out often in my work. So much of my counseling with young women involves them asking me to analyze and dissect a text message, a social media post, or a like on Instagram. They are searching for meaning, and there probably is some there. But because the communication is often vague and nonchalant, it leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Some men also appear more comfortable connecting physically and expressing themselves through intimacy. This can leave women feeling confused, because when physical connection happens without clear emotional communication, it raises the question: is this love, or is it simply lust?

Songs like Sombr’s Canal Street capture that feeling perfectly, the experience of trying to move on while still wondering if the connection meant as much to the other person as it did to you. Maybe that is why male emo-pop resonates so deeply for me. Because sometimes music gives us the emotional conversations we never got in real life. If nothing else, this type of music written by men offers a strangely comforting reminder: the feelings were probably there, even if we never heard them spoken out loud.

— LC
Proof that therapists also process their feelings through playlists.