Cynicism is a growing phenomenon in music. True love songs are hard to come by these days. Deriving its name from Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” Yellow Diamonds is a series of lyric breakdowns in which VIBE Senior Music Editor Austin Williams celebrates songs that sound like love found in a hopeless mainstream.
During my Yellow Diamonds interview with R&B producer D’Mile, he and I settled on the fact that romantic songwriters are as drawn to his production as he is to their lovestruck lyricism. One of those songwriters is Ella Mai. When I asked the beatmaker if either of the two tracks he produced on Mai’s new album, Heart On My Sleeve, could be considered a love song, he referenced “Break My Heart.” Immediately recognizing how antithetical to the question the song’s title sounds, he assured me, “Just listen. You tell me.” At a pre-release press event for the album, I did listen. He was correct. Not only is “Break My Heart” a love song, it’s the most ingenious of its kind throughout the entire project.
In Mai’s own Yellow Diamonds interview, published on the eve of Heart On My Sleeve’s release, she echoed her collaborator’s sentiment. As she answered a question I asked about which love song she was most proud of on the record, she agonized a bit but ultimately chose the one I hoped she would.
“That is such a hard question,” she groaned. “But if I had to pick one, I would say ‘Break My Heart,’ which sounds like a negative thing but it’s actually not. It’s saying I’m so in love with someone that if I really had to choose who could break my heart, it would be [them]. I think to be in that space [with] someone and to trust somebody so much to say, ‘If anyone had to break my heart, it would be you,’ that’s love.”
The brilliance of “Break My Heart” is rooted in the power of choice and the conquering of fear. As I wrote in my breakdown of Heart On My Sleeve’s purest love lyrics, “Throughout the song, Mai contextualizes what it means to choose a soulmate by not only accepting but also embracing the possibility of love’s worst outcome. Essentially, she’s saying love, like life, means what it does because of all the ways it could end.”
Embodying the album’s title, this negotiation between anxiety and affection is a theme that runs throughout Heart On My Sleeve. But nowhere else on the record does it arrive at a place that feels as reverent of what it means to commit to a romantic relationship. This is most evident when comparing the writing in each of the album’s other love songs to that of “Break My Heart.”
Feelin‘ anxious
Trackstar, heart racin‘
You’re contagious
I’m so taken
Where you take me
Your love, sacred
It’s amazin‘, just sayin‘
The first verse of “Break My Heart” begins with that aforementioned anxiety. To the rhythm and reverb of D’Mile’s pounding drums, Mai’s heart races as she describes being “taken” by a lover she’s fallen for. Her elevated heart rate calls to mind symptoms of a virus, in that she’s experiencing a love so “contagious” it can’t be contained, as the illness hops from her partner’s heart to hers.
A similarly daunting experience is described in “Not Another Love Song,” a Heart On My Sleeve single in which the affliction of love is instead imagined as a sea of emotions ready to drown wayward travelers. Yet, the difference between “Not Another Love Song” and “Break My Heart” is the former finds Mai questioning whether what she’s feeling is actually love, while in the latter she understands there’s nothing else that feeling could be mistaken for.
We’re connected
There’s no guessin‘
You command me, levitatin‘
Keep mе singin‘ love songs daily
It’s amazin‘, just sayin‘
The synchronicity Mai notes at the start of verse two mirrors the synergy displayed in “A Mess,” her Lucky Daye-assisted ballad that appears toward the end of the album. As that track explores all the things that could go wrong even when you find the right person, it reflects the same sort of romantic realism as “Break My Heart.” Each song ultimately finds the ruins of a crumbled relationship only prove its former glory, as Daye and Mai sing in their duet, “Know this might be a mess, but, yes/ ‘Cause for me you’re the best/ I don’t want nothing less.”
But only “Break My Heart” dares to imagine suffering as a worthy risk rather than a managed reality. In turn, it treats messiness less like an intoxicating inevitability and more like a sobering and somewhat dignifying romantic hazard.
Been hurt many times before
So can you be careful with my heart
Swear you’re my every single thought
Oh, I don’t want sleepless nights no more
So can you be careful with my heart?
With you, I’m just gettin‘ my start
The bridge of “Break My Heart” feels reminiscent of “Pieces,” track number seven on Heart On My Sleeve. Both songs are optimistic about what comes before and after heartbreak, yet the former appreciates the possibility of being left broken and alone while the latter seeks shelter from it in the form of a trauma bond with another damaged person. In “Break My Heart,” as Mai sings, “Swear you’re my every single thought,” there’s a devotedness that indicates no other man could ever help her recover from losing the love of her life.
This bridge also unpacks a thought expressed in “Trying,” the first song on the album. Throughout that track, Mai comforts an inexperienced lover, as she sings, “Truth is, I’m down/ You ain’t been in love but you learning how/ I need you now.”
But in this Yellow Diamonds love song, the roles are reversed and the singer finds herself seeking similar assurances: “Can you be careful with my heart?/ With you, I’m just getting my start.” Though these lyrics reflect more agency than the writing Mai uses to describe her partner in “Trying,” both records attempt to resolve romantic hesitancy with trust and commitment. The more inward approach to the way “Break My Heart” achieves this is what sets it apart from the album’s intro and every other track that follows.
Oh, I love you, but I’m so scared
Still, I want you near
Face my fears
‘Cause if I had to choose who could break my heart
Baby, it’ll be you
Don’t know what you’re doin’ to me
Spendin’ my life with you only
So if I had to choose who could break my heart
Baby, it’ll be you
You, baby
Is that crazy?
‘Cause if I had to choose who could break my heart
Baby, it’ll be you
Of course, the pre-chorus and primary chorus are the parts of “Break My Heart” that feel the most clever. The weight of what it means to hand your heart over to someone is emphasized with the finality Mai observes as she sings, “Spendin’ my life with you only/ So if I had to choose who could break my heart/ Baby, it’ll be you.” The stakes of love are plainly set in these lyrics: When a person finds their soulmate, their life is forever changed one way or another, either in peace or in pain.
Co-written by Ella Mai and Charles A. Hinshaw (coincidentally the brother of the recently profiled Amazon Music executive Tim Hinshaw), the imagination in “Break My Heart” can’t be overstated. As most other R&B songwriters distort love in a way that sometimes devalues it, regarding its consequences with a seriousness that respects its sanctity feels like an accomplishment. That feat is what makes the track the best love song on an album chock full of them, and an early candidate for the best love song of 2022.