The Girls Are Healing: Common Themes in Music from Divorced Women

The life lessons Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves, Adele, and Shakira have taught me.

With recent album releases, from Ariana Grande to Kacey Musgraves, I am fascinated by how these distinct musicians seem to be interconnected by themes of heartbreak and healing.

As someone with reservations about marriage, I find myself gravitating towards divorce albums. I am nowhere near marriage and yet I have a divorce playlist featuring songs by Miley Cyrus and Adele.

But it is the release of Grande’s “eternal sunshine” and Musgraves’ “Deeper Well” that has made me think about the common themes explored by artists who have experienced divorce in recent years. 

Both Grande’s and Musgraves’ discography seem to tell a tale in three acts with their last three albums. As I discussed previously, Grande outlines heartbreak and grief in “thank u, next” and experiencing love after the fact in “Positions.” “eternal sunshine” explores the fallout of that relationship which ended in divorce.  

For Musgraves, it’s almost inversed. She falls in love in “Golden Hour,” gets divorced in “star-crossed,” and finds healing in “Deeper Well.” Their journeys are different, but ultimately their music over the years gives the listener a peek into their experience with love and loss.

As a young woman who is very career-driven, I am interested in the messages these hard-working, successful women send through their music. Experiencing this specific music feels like I’m listening to an older sister tell me about the lessons she’s learned as she enters her 30s and experiences things like marriage and divorce.

Themes of love and loss are not a new phenomenon in music. Nonetheless, there seems to be a pattern in recent years with music from Grande, Musgraves, Adele, and Shakira, all recently divorced storytellers taking us through their journeys. (Shakira technically never married, but she had two children with her decade-long partner.)

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Here are the common themes I’ve noticed:

1. Saturn Returns 

I feel indifferent towards astrology but it’s interesting how both “eternal sunshine” and “Deeper Well” touch on the concept of Saturn return. In Grande’s “Saturn Returns Interlude,” astrologer Diana Garland explains that Saturn return occurs around age 29 and describes it as a time “for you to get real about life and sort out who you really are”.

In “Deeper Well” Musgraves says, “My Saturn has returned, when I turned twenty-seven everything started to change.”

Saturn return essentially marks a wake-up call and transitional period in life, and for Musgraves, it marked a marriage at 27 and a divorce at 31. Her Saturn had returned. It’s a similar story for Grande, who got divorced at age 30.

Meanwhile, Adele details her divorce in “30”, which is around the age she separated and divorced from her husband. Adele has a tattoo of Saturn, explaining to Vogue that her divorce was a result of her Saturn return.

It seems like Grande and Musgraves feel the same way about their divorce. These three women are all similar in age and going through similar, life-changing experiences. Perhaps there is some truth to Saturn returns.

2. Anxiety and Fear

Grande and Musgraves both deal with anxiety. They flat out tell us this in songs like Grande’s “imperfect for you” and Musgraves’ “Jade Green”.

However, these women aren’t just anxious by nature. Both are anxious and cautious about entering new relationships after experiencing a seismic heartbreak.

In “safety net” from “Positions” Grande questions “Is it real this time or is it in my head?” about a newfound relationship, directly referencing a song from “thank u, next.”

In “Too Good to be True” Musgraves pleads to a new partner: 

“Please don't make me regret

Opening up that part of myself

That I've been scared to give again.”  

In their respective albums about experiencing love after loss, Grande and Musgraves both explore the fear of entering a new relationship.

In Shakira’s “Nassau” from her album “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran” she talks about fearing another deception and not wanting to get hurt again.

In an interview with Apple Music, Shakira spoke to Zane Lowe about how she thought romantic love would be there for her forever.

“That’s one of my broken dreams,” the singer said. “I don’t know if I’ll find it again.”

In Shakira’s case, it is an alleged affair that ended her relationship. Understandably, the singer would fear entering a new relationship after mourning such a loss.

I think all these women had to mourn their respective relationships, whether it was due to a betrayal or simply because marriage wasn’t what they dreamed it would be.  

3. Love is the Antidote

Even though love was the source of pain for these women, there seems to be a consensus that love can also be healing. That love can be romantic, platonic, or between mother and child.

For Shakira, the love for her children served as “anesthesia to the pain,” as told in “Acróstico”, a song featuring her two sons.

Shakira also spoke to Lowe about how her friends kept her together when facing the darkest moments of her life.

“I might not grow old with a partner, but I will grow old, maybe, surrounded by good friends,” said the singer.  

Friends also seem to be what Adele relied on to get through this difficult period of her life. In “Hold On”, it is her friends instead of an actual choir who sing “just hold on” towards the end of the song. In her interview with Vogue, the singer explains this is what her friends would say to her.

For both Shakira and Adele, platonic love was instrumental in their healing journey. Platonic love being just as valuable as other forms of love is an important takeaway.

Shakira, however, also acknowledges how romantic love can be healing in “Nassau”. In the song, she talks about how a new love “appeared to heal the wounds” her previous partner left.

Meanwhile, in “Anime Eyes”, Musgraves admits she’d almost given up on love but a new partner “showed [her] how to love without trying.”

It’s an interesting development from what she said in “easier said”, a track from her divorce album:

“It ain't easy to love someone

I've been trying and I found out

That it's easier said than done”

Going back to feelings of anxiety, Grande talks about feeling anxious and distressed in “imperfect for you” but ever since she met her partner, she no longer feels that way. It’s a sentiment she has expressed in past songs like “love language” where she says her partner is “the medication when [she’s] feeling anxious.” 

It feels like a paradox, but romantic love seems to be healing even if was the source of the pain these women are healing from.

4. Love Was Worth It

The most important lesson I’ve learned from listening to this music is that despite the tremendous pain that comes with falling in love and having it end in divorce, the girls would do it again! There may be fear and anxiety along the way, but the girls are still capable of loving and being loved.

In the final track of Adele’s divorce album, “30”, the singer claims the following: 

“Love is a game for fools to play

And I ain't fooling, what a cruel thing

To self-inflict that pain”

The fallout of falling in love is a self-inflicted wound. Adele seems to take accountability for the heartbreak she experienced. If she hadn’t fallen in love, she would never gotten hurt in the first place.

She sings about this sentiment for six minutes, but she ends the entire album by saying “I'd do it all again, I love it now like I loved it then.”

It’s an interesting way to end an album about divorce. Adele admits she is a fool for love because she is willing to experience it again despite the consequences.

In “Nothing to be Scared Of”, Musgraves similarly explores the idea that you shouldn’t be afraid to fall in love because “if a train is meant for me, it won't leave the station and pull away.”

I interpreted this as Musgraves coming to terms with her ex-husband not being the person she was meant to be with, and that the heartbreak she experienced is not an overall reflection of love. It simply didn’t work out because it wasn’t meant to be.

It is the final track of “Deeper Well”, an album that demonstrates she survived what she went through in “star-crossed”. Being on the other side of divorce, she can now safely say that there is nothing to fear when it comes to love.

These women all seem to arrive at a similar place of optimism. Neither seems to feel jaded towards love. And maybe it’s because it was all worth it.

Although she doesn’t think she’ll experience romantic love again, Shakira discusses this sentiment with Lowe.

“It’s worth to love,” the singer said. “Love is the most amazing experience a human can live, and no one should take that opinion away from you.”

It is better to experience love even if it leads to pain than to never experience love at all. You shouldn’t let one person change the way you feel about love just because they hurt you. Despite what these women went through, in their unique circumstances, it seems like neither has given up on love.

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I am about ten years younger than these women. I don’t know where life will take me, but I do know I can keep the lessons I’ve learned from this music in my back pocket as I navigate my adulthood and my inevitable Saturn return.

I believe in the healing power of music and learning lessons not just from personal experiences but from observing what other people go through. Listening to this music makes me feel equipped to handle any heartbreak that might come my way.

Maybe one day I will get married, despite my anxieties, but at least I’ll know that a potential divorce will not destroy me. It’ll be tremendously painful, but I can survive, as these women did.