There are thousands of break-up songs in the pop music canon.  And, we’ve all listened to them in the past when we needed to get over unrequited or lost love.  And, as Elton John sang in Sad Songs, ‘from the lips of some old singer we can share the troubles we already know.’

However, divorce songs take the break-up to a whole new level.  They can be cutting, bitter, regretful and moving as they often share the singer or songwriter’s very personal experience.

There are lots of brilliant divorce songs, but here’s my top five.

Abba – The Winner Takes It All

When writing a piece about the world’s greatest songs about or inspired by divorce, it would be hard not to include the single that was voted Britain’s Favourite Break-Up Song in a 2006 TV poll.

Apparently written about the deteriorating relationship between Bjorn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog, The Winner Takes It All topped the UK charts in 1980 and has repeatedly been voted the nation’s favourite Abba song in polls.

Whether it’s about the writer’s own separation (Ulvaeus says not, the basis of the song being “the experience of a divorce, but it’s fiction. There wasn’t a winner or a loser in our case. A lot of people think it’s straight out of reality, but it’s not”) or it’s simply a break-up song, The Winner Takes It All is arguably the most famous and best-loved divorce song of them all.

Alanis Morrisette – Underneath

Bearing in mind that most of her songs are written about personal experiences, it stood to reason that a difficult and traumatic break-up was always going to lead to Alanis Morrissette penning a less than complimentary song about her own situation.

When the Canadian singer-songwriter split with Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds, her following album, 2008’s Flavors of Entanglement, was written about the grief and pain she suffered after the break-up.  It’s an album that must have made tough listening for Reynolds and lead single Underneath was particularly honest.  Underneath opens ‘look at us break our bones in this kitchen/look at us rallying all our defences’ and whilst it’s technically not a divorce record – the pair were only engaged – it’s as bitter and honest a break-up record as exists in modern pop.

Kelly Clarkson – Because Of You

After shooting to superstardom by winning American Idol in 2002, Kelly Clarkson’s record label were reluctant to include the song Because Of You on either her debut album Thankful or the follow-up Breakaway.

Apparently written when Clarkson was sixteen years old to cope with the emotional trauma of her parent’s divorce, Because Of You was polished by producers Ben Moody and David Hodges and released as a single in 2005, reaching the top ten across the world.

From the opening line (‘I will not make the same mistakes that you did/will not let myself cause my heart so much misery’) it’s clear that this is a song written from deep personal experience of the effect that a divorce can have on a teenager.  It’s a superb and moving pop record.

Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand – You Don’t Bring Me Flowers

Lots of songs about break-ups and divorces concentrate on giant, ethereal themes such as the end of love or the pain of the parting of the ways.  Others take a bitter look at who is to blame or are written from the position of a child caught up in the split.

What I love about You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, however, is that it does the exact opposite.  By concentrating on the tiny minutae of relationships it is somehow way more powerful than songs which talk in general terms.

I’d wager that ‘You hardly talk to me anymore/when you come through the door/at the end of the day’ is the most cutting, acerbic and honest lyric ever written in a break-up song.  This is not a vague overview of the deterioration in a marriage; this is the day to day factors which see two people drift apart.

For these reasons, I think You Don’t Bring Me Flowers is the greatest break-up song of them all.  Heart wrenching.

Jason Mraz – Love For A Child

The second divorce song written from a child’s perspective, Love For A Child features on Mraz’s bestselling 2008 album We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.  Loosely based on his parent’s own divorce when he was five years old, Love For A Child is a heartbreaking look at a parental split through the eyes of a small boy.

Mraz told the San Diego Union Tribune: “(One) line is from when my parents were busy not talking to each other. I could hide right down the middle (between them). I could tell my dad, ‘I’m going to my mom’s,’ and tell her, ‘I’m going to my dad’s,’ and then disappear for the weekend and learn (things) the hard way.”

Lyrics such as ‘Was it mom who put my dad out on his ass or the other way around/well I’m far too old to care about that now’ and ‘it’s kinda nice to work the floor since the divorce/I’ve been enjoying both my Christmases and my birthday cakes/and taking drugs and making love at far too young an age/and they never checked to see my grades’ tell the tale of someone caught between two separated parents.

Mind you, there is affection in the song too.  Mraz added: “At same time, I had a great upbringing from two families. And the freedom I had, I’m grateful for. You can’t live the rest of your life carrying a pain because your parents couldn’t get along. I choose to spend my life crafting a joy.”

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There’s my top 5 divorce songs.  Any that you’d agree with? Any you’d add to the list? Let me know by commenting below.

It’s been almost a year since the Staves were last in Nottingham.  Sisters Emily, Jessica and Camilla wowed a small audience at the Bodega Social last October whilst opening for Keane side-project Mt Desolation and despite rave reviews, little has been heard of the trio since.

However, all that could be about to change.  Sitting at the back of the Glee club, it turns out that the band have been busy this year, with this short tour supporting American singer songwriter Willy Mason just part of a busy autumn.

The trio are clearly excited about what the near future might bring and have clearly been hard at work.  “Doing the album has taken up most of our time this year.  We’ve also done some gigs, some recording and some more writing, which has been cool.

“We’ve basically finished our album but we don’t know when it’s going to come out yet – hopefully around spring.  We also have an EP later in the year – probably the end of October.”

For those unfamiliar with the Staves, think the Fleet Foxes but with female vocals.  Soaring harmonies, gentle acoustic guitar and some high quality songwriting mean that mainstream success is surely only a matter of time.  Especially, I wondered, with a general resurgence in interest in folk-pop acts?

“I think there’s more interest in the singer/songwriter genre – there was Damien Rice back when that huge record came out – and then there’s people today like Willy Mason, Laura Marling – classic songwriters of today.  It’s the simplicity of someone with a guitar – there’s no frills, just them and the music, their voice and their guitar.

“You can connect to that sort of music much better than with the glitz and glamour of stuff like the X-Factor and it’s definitely reassuring that people like to come out and listen to this kind of music.”

While their existing recordings give a taste of what to expect from the band – the beautiful Mexico and Facing West appear in their set – only by hearing the girls live can you truly appreciate the genuinely spellbinding nature of their harmonies.  And, the reaction to their live performances seems to be almost universally positive.

“You don’t really get many harmony groups without a big band behind them, so perhaps it’s something that people haven’t seen much of.

“It’s nice when people come up to you afterwards and say that they enjoyed the show, but obviously you’re not going to get that many people coming up to you telling you that they didn’t enjoy it!  We don’t have people walking out of our gigs or throwing things at us….

“You can kind of gauge it by the reaction of the audience – when people are quiet and listen, especially when you’re a support band that people aren’t there to see – they don’t owe us anything.”

It’s been a long road for the Staves to even get this far – indeed the trio freely admit that it’s only relatively recently that they made the decision to take the music business seriously.

“We’ve always sung together around the house, in the car.  One summer, a friend cajoled us into doing an open mic night at our local pub, so we did some covers and really enjoyed it.  We then did a gig of covers and enjoyed that – it has been a very slow process as one of us was always at uni and so it would be a ‘one gig a year’ thing.

“A couple of years ago we thought we should actually try to do this properly. We didn’t take it very seriously at first but then started writing some songs and it went from there.  This is our life now – it’s definitely what we want to do.  It would be amazing to be able to make a living from this and to do it as long as we wanted to make music together.  That’s the aim.”

I wondered that considering recent spats between members of sibling bands – think the Gallaghers and the Followills – whether the Staves also had their family moments.

“Being sisters is a blessing and a curse! We fight all the time, but as we’re sisters you can fight and it’s all OK.  There’s no grudges held – it’s very honest. We don’t fight in the sense that we don’t get on, we just spend a lot of time together.  We end up squabbling in the car, just like when we were kids – about which CD we want to listen to…

“We can’t imagine doing this with anyone else, though – it’s definitely our thing.”

If you think the Pierces had the ‘sibling acoustic singer songwriter’ market sewn up, you should think again.  After the haunting Winter Trees and the rousing new song What Good Am I? rounded off another superb show, a respectful and generous audience seemed to register what many already know; that the Staves are a band going places.

“As for conquering the world, we don’t know.  We just want to make music that people feel a connection to, that they enjoy listening to and that we like.”

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The Staves’ new EP is scheduled for release in late October.

Listen to Facing West, Mexico and The Fire at: http://www.myspace.com/thestavesmusic
For more information go to The Staves’ website or the Facebook page