Songs about absent fathers include Hurt, Answer, Chum, and seven more. Songs can be from dads leaving their children or passing away but hit the same.
The topic of absent fathers has not only created some of the best music in many genres of pop but has also been a source of comfort or catharsis to the listeners.
These songs represent the sadness that often comes from losing your father regardless of how you lost him.
Fathers are an integral part of people’s childhood and often times a neglected one. The relationship between a father and their children can dictate the entirety of one’s life and how one moves through the world. Talking about love, we have also covered some popular songs about loving your child.
The songs on this list tackle the subject of absent fathers in a myriad of different ways from sadness, anger, grief, and acceptance.
1. A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash
A Boy Named Sue is one of songs about absent fathers by Country legend Johnny Cash. Cash released the song on July 2, 1969.
Though a part of Cash’s seminal live album At San Quentin which was recorded during a concert in the titular jail, the song was originally written by poet and Children’s author Shel Silverstein. Still, most people know and favor Cash’s version.
The song tells the story of the titular boy who grows up with a chip on his shoulder not only because he has been abandoned by his father, but also because his father named him Sue, a popular girl’s name. The boy moves through life getting in countless fights due to people making fun of his name, and vows revenge on his father for landing him in this predicament.
However, when the boy finally meets his father, he finds out that the old man originally gave him such a name because he knew he would have to abandon the son, and wanted to leave him with a name he’d get teased by so the boy would learn to be tough. The humorous climax of the song alongside Cash’s delivery of that ending has made it an instant classic, and Cash’s most successful song chart-wise.
2. Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day
Wake Me Up When September Ends is one of Green Day’s most popular songs. The song is about lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong losing his father.
Billie Joe lost his father when he was only ten years old and spent the rest of his life mourning that loss. The song’s mournful lyrics have gone on to become therapeutic for many Green Day fans.
The song not only peaked at number 6 on the Hot 100 during its release but still remains a popular song with over half a billion streams on Spotify. As such, it is also a platinum-selling song and has sold over 1.6 million copies as of May 2010, and has continued to be relevant for over a decade since.
Losing a father, and that too at a young age, is not only a sad but also a traumatic experience that Billie Joe has captured perfectly both lyrically and also musically. The song has gone on to reach meme status due to its relevancy with fans of the band listening to the song en mass as soon as October hits.
3. Chum by Earl Sweatshirt
Chum is a mournful rap song by popular American rapper Earl Sweatshirt. In it, the rapper chides and grieves over his father’s abandonment.
The song’s inception came at the tail end of a series of unfortunate events for the rapper. He had been shipped off to Samoa in 2012 as his mother had started worrying about his well-being after he joined the rap group Odd Future, which was famous back then for its violent and abrasive lyrics.
Throughout his disappearance, his fans were desperate for his return but did not expect such a sorrowful track from the previously raunchy and offensive rapper. In Chum, Earl not only discusses his disappearance but much of his early life, his problems with his mother, and his journey through making music.
However, the lyrical highlight of the track is when Earl discusses his father, the South African poet Keorapestse Kgositsile, who broke up with Earl’s mother and abandoned the boy when he was only six years old. Earl expertly dissects all the ways he was hurt mentally and emotionally due to his father’s abandonment, and how that turned him into the person he is now.
4. Dance With My Father by Luther Vandross
Luther Vandross expertly describes the love between father and son in this heartwarming song. Vandross draws inspiration from his childhood.
The legendary singer lost his father young like many others on this list. Though his father passed away when he was eight years old, the man left behind a touching memory that still affected his son at the twilight of his career.
The memory was of his father dancing with the boy and his mother when he was still alive. The singer reminisces about his father and that memory and ruminates on how happy he feels that he still has such a charming memory to hold onto despite the loss of his parent years ago.
Both in part due to the song’s touching narrative and the fact that Vandross was nearing the end of his own life, the song took off, and the singer earned two Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. Even now, long after Vandross himself passed away, people still remember the song fondly just as the singer remembered his own father.
5. Answer by Tyler, the Creator
Answer is a song by American rapper and Odd Future leader Tyler the Creator. In it, he imagines a phone call with his absent father.
Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler, the Creator not only have absent fathers in common but have both dealt with that topic in their lyrics. While Earl’s song was more sorrowful and self-effacing, here Tyler fully pushes the brunt of his anger on his father.
In the song, Tyler tells his father about all the things he has accomplished despite the fact that his father abandoned him and starts talking about his successful career, wealth, fame, and a giant house. He even goes so far as to say he will change his name soon so as to have no relation to his father.
But the song quickly takes a turn when its conceit is revealed as this imagined phone call can only happen if Tyler’s father ever picks up, which he doesn’t. The chorus of the song then features Tyler singing about how he would love to talk to his father if he ever did pick up the phone, and in a soft, yearning voice, the rapper pleads with his father to answer.
6. There Will Be Tears by Frank Ocean
There Will Be Tears by Frank Ocean is another song about bemoaning an absent parent. It closes out the trilogy of Odd Future artists on the list.
While Earl’s song was sad and resigned and Tyler’s was angry and hurt, Frank’s song is bewildered and erratic. Also, while the others were rapping, his is sung.
Lyrically, Frank tackles the subject of absent fathers by first looking back at the only male figure of his early life, his grandfather, who he only met a couple of years into his life. The singer then ruminates about how his friends told him he should be glad because you can’t miss what you never had, increasing Frank’s confusion and inner turmoil on the matter.
The singer closes out the song by vehemently singing to his absent father why he couldn’t be there for him and that all he had to do was simply tell him, warn him even, that he couldn’t be there for him. The song then closes with the music overtaking Frank’s voice and silencing him with all its might and fury, just like Frank’s sadness silenced him in early life.
7. Song for My Father by Sarah McLachlan
Song for My Father by Sarah McLachlan is a more heartwarming song than the previous entries. Here Sarah sings about missing her father.
The singer talks to her father and tells him how she wishes she could tell him all the things that her parent meant to her. In beautiful, lyrical language, the singer pours out her feelings.
Those feelings range from finding a place of comfort in her father’s presence which always gave her the courage to wrestle with her demons, and the strength his words gave her, which soothed her soul. She states how his light buried the dark, and how she misses his unwavering heart.
Though a deep cut as it is the sixth track on McLachlan’s eighth album, the song has amassed its own fanbase for how powerfully it communicates the love the singer feels for her father, and the pain she also feels for losing him. It earns its place on this list for juggling those often complementary feelings in such a way that both are honored and neither and pushed off to make way for the other.
8. As I Lay Me Down by Sophie B. Hawkins
As I Lay Me Down by Sophie B. Hawkins sings a similar tune as the previous song. However, Sophie takes it a step further in her song.
Still a song about mourning her father, lyrically the singer talks about hoping that he will still hold her while she sleeps. Sophie states that she will whisper his name and hopes that she will wake up happy.
Unlike McLachlan’s song, Sophie’s track is one of her two biggest hits alongside her more upbeat track, Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover. It reached number 6 on the Hot 100 and remains popular still with over 25 million plays on Spotify.
The song has also gained a lot of traction in popular media and in some circles has become the premier song for losing a father. It has since been used in various popular television shows like Party of Five and Dawson’s Creek, with its most popular modern usage being in an episode of the American sitcom, Community, where many characters argue that it is a much better song than Sophie’s other hit.
9. Father of Mine by Everclear
Father of Mine is a rock song by the Alternative band Everclear. The song is one of their biggest and most remembered hits.
Another angry, autobiographical song, it tackles the familiar subject of the lead singer, Art Alexaskis’s father leaving his family when he was only a young boy. The singer has talked a lot about the song and his feelings surrounding it.
The singer has stated in various interviews that writing the song was a form of catharsis for him and helped him deal with the pain, hurt, and confusion his father’s abandonment helped him feel. That sense of catharsis is palpable in the song and has helped it remain not only one of Everclear’s biggest songs but part of the annals of songs written for and about absent fathers.
The song is also popular for the iconic music video which does much to expand on the lyrical themes of the track itself. The video features a son watching his father and mother fight, with the father leaving at the end, and then different phases of the boy’s new life without the love, affection, and guidance of his father, finally centering on the singer, Art’s own life with his new family and children.
10. Hurt by Christina Aguilera
Hurt is a song by Christina Aguilera that she wrote with Linda Perry and Mark Ronson. The song was also produced by Lina Perry.
The song’s inception came from Aguilera wanting to sing a song about losing a loved one. Perry, who had lost her father a year ago, obliged and created one of Aguilera’s most popular and enduring songs.
What makes this song poignant is the different ways the singer and writer approach the song because of the different relationships they have with their respective fathers. Aguilera famously had a terrible relationship with her father while Perry’s own was much calmer and better by any indication.
Thus, the lyrics are more mournful and subdued but Aguilera, who is known for her powerful and soaring voice, turns it up a notch and delivers a striking performance that elevates the song despite approaching it from a completely different head space than Perry. In fact, the song can be used as great reasoning for why one ought to employ other writers on one’s song, precisely to interplay different emotions one might have on the same or similar subject matter.