10 Best Breakup Albums Of All Time

10. 21 - Adele

Most breakup albums tend to take either one of two directions in their songwriting. Either you have songs apologizing about how you screwed up, or you try to make the bounce back album and claim that you never needed that guy/girl in the first place. There's not many that can toe the line though, and Adele's 21 managed to package every conceivable breakup song into one record.

Across just 11 tracks, this entire album tells the story of one of Adele's first major breakups of her adulthood, which takes different forms depending on where you are in the record. While not necessarily a concept album, each of these tracks paint a pretty coherent picture of where she is in the separation process, from the anger that comes from Rolling in the Deep to the pure pain of Set Fire to the Rain.

Above all else, this is one of the few breakup albums that actually manages to find maturity at the end of everything, with Someone Like You showing her becoming stronger as a person and willing to leave this man in the past for someone different along the line. For all the sappy love ballads that populate other breakup albums, this is Adele staring the future in the face, determined to move forward regardless of who's walking along side her.