52 Songs for Pet Loss Grief, Sorted by What You Need

When we lost Baxter in October 2024, our world went silent. The house felt empty without his little Boston Terrier snorts, and the quiet was deafening. But slowly, we found that music became a bridge between the pain and the healing, a way to honor his memory while processing the enormous grief that comes with losing a piece of your heart.

Below are 52 songs for pet loss grief, grouped by the job you need them to do. Some are for the nights you cry until there’s nothing left. Others suit the slow middle, when you’re still turning all of it over and getting nowhere. A few are for the day you finally want to remember them without coming apart. Picking by mood, rather than scrolling a ranked list, is the difference between a playlist that helps and one that flattens you at the wrong moment.

One warning before you press play. A song that comforted you last week can take your legs out this week, and that isn’t a sign you’re going backward. Further down: what to do when a song ambushes you in public, how to build a playlist you can live with, and when to close the app.

Key Takeaways

• Pick songs by the job you need done, not by rank. The four groups are sorted by purpose rather than intensity, so if today is bad, start at Finding Comfort (27 to 37) instead of the top.
• A study of bereaved people, on human loss rather than pets, found five reasons they reach for music and only one is sadness. The others: connection, feeling them present, lifting a low mood, imagining who they’d be now.
• A song that helped last month can wreck you today. That’s normal, and it isn’t a sign you’re regressing.
• If music is unbearable right now, stop. What we hear constantly is that the first weeks are silent ones, and the way back is one song, not a playlist.
• Build it for one moment, like the drive home from the vet or the first walk alone, not for grief in general.

Why Music Helps After You Lose a Pet

Music helps because it does several different jobs at once, and grief needs all of them at different hours. A 2022 study in the journal OMEGA interviewed 28 bereaved people about how they actually used music and found five distinct reasons people reach for a song while grieving: to make a connection with the one they lost, to feel them present in the room, to lift a bad mood, to sit down inside a bad mood on purpose, and to imagine what they would be like if they were still here.

Only one of those five is about sadness. The study covered human loss rather than pets, but the shape of it maps onto pet loss almost exactly, and it lines up with what people describe to us. Nobody puts on a song only to cry. They put one on to feel their dog in the passenger seat again. They put one on because it was playing the summer they brought their cat home. They put one on to get through the drive to work.

A single ranked list of “saddest pet loss songs” is close to useless in practice, and it’s the same reason grief refuses to run on a schedule. The song that helps you at 2 a.m. on day three is not the song that helps you on the first anniversary. The four groups below are built around those different jobs, which is the same reason pet loss hits as hard as it does: you’re not grieving one thing, you’re grieving a dozen small daily ones at once.

Songs for Pet Loss on the Hardest Days: 1 to 14

These meet you at the bottom. They don’t try to move you along, offer perspective, or find the bright side. Play them when you need permission to fall apart. Skip this section entirely if you’re holding yourself together on purpose today, because these will undo that on the first chorus.

A practical note: these are the ones most likely to catch you off guard later, in a shop or someone else’s car. If a song here becomes unbearable in public, that’s worth knowing before you add it to a playlist you keep on shuffle.

“The Night We Met” by Lord Huron

When grief hits hardest, you find yourself wishing you could go back to better times. This one sits inside that longing, with lyrics about having all of someone and then none of them. For pet parents, it becomes about those last days, weeks, or months together, wishing you could go back to when they were healthy and happy. It’s devastatingly beautiful. It also lets you feel the full weight of what you’ve lost, which is the point.

“Pink Skies” by Zach Bryan

Zach Bryan, watching pink skies and turning the loss over, lands on the quiet moments when grief arrives unannounced. The song’s gentle acknowledgment that beautiful things still exist inside the worst pain finds the pet parents who notice a sunset while carrying the weight of loss. When Bryan sings about memories and the passage of time, it tells you plainly that your pet’s absence colors everything you see, even the sky.

“Another Love” by Tom Odell

Tom Odell, on exhausting all your love and all your tears, speaks to how depleting grief is. When he sings about singing about another love to avoid facing the real pain, it names the way people distract themselves from the crushing weight of pet loss. Grief is exhausting. Crying until there’s nothing left is part of it, and the depth of the sorrow tracks the depth of the love.

“Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi

Lewis Capaldi, singing about losing someone you leaned on, hits differently after a pet dies. When he sings about getting used to someone being there and then having to learn to live without that comfort, it it lands on the devastating adjustment of life without your pet. The acknowledgment of needing that presence to get through dark times lands hard for anyone whose pet was their emotional support, their constant comfort, their reason to get up.

“Thoughts of You” by Ole 60

A tender country ballad that sits with the raw feeling of being unable to stop thinking about someone you’ve lost. With lyrics about late-night overthinking and questioning what the love was all for, the song expresses the confusion and deep sadness that follows loss. When you’re lying awake missing your pet’s presence beside you, Ole 60’s honest vulnerability reminds you it’s okay to feel the full weight of it.

“Someday I’ll Get It” by Alek Olsen

Sometimes grief feels like drowning while shoving away the memories that hurt most. Hauntingly simple, this one lands on that exact feeling: thinking about them constantly and wishing you could make it stop. It gives voice to the worst hours, when grief feels unbearable and the only goal is getting to tomorrow. Some days that’s the whole plan.

“Supermarket Flowers” by Ed Sheeran

Cleaning out a grandmother’s things is what Ed Sheeran wrote this about, and every line of it applies here. The intimate details of flowers from the windowsill and taking pictures land on the painful business of putting away your pet’s bowls, toys, and bed. The angel imagery becomes a tribute to a companion who brought nothing but light into your life.

“You Are the Reason” by Calum Scott

The unconditional devotion running through this one hits hard after a pet dies. When you feel like you’ve lost something irreplaceable and the tears won’t stop, the song acknowledges that depth of pain while promising you’re not alone in it. The lyrics about climbing mountains and swimming oceans capture the wish underneath all of it: that you could do anything at all to bring them back.

“Only Love Can Hurt Like This” by Paloma Faith

Paloma Faith recognizes a truth at the center of pet loss grief. The depth of your pain reflects the depth of your love. When she sings about love hurting like nothing else can, she names the paradox: this excruciating pain exists because the bond was so good. Pain as proof of love says your grief isn’t weakness, it’s evidence of an extraordinary connection.

“See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth

Written for a film, and long since taken over by anyone who’s lost someone. The lyrics about long days without a friend, and telling them everything when you see them again, offer comfort to those who believe they’ll be reunited with their pets one day. The insistence that family is everything holds the line that a pet is family, and that their loss deserves to be grieved as such.

“Fix You” by Coldplay

Coldplay’s anthem about grief has comforted millions since its release. The line about losing something you can’t replace speaks directly to pet loss, because your companion was irreplaceable and no one fills that space. The promise that lights will guide you home offers gentle hope that support and healing exist, even when everything feels broken. It doesn’t minimize the pain. It sits in it. And it reminds you, quietly, that you won’t always feel this lost.

“To Build a Home” by The Cinematic Orchestra

Almost entirely piano, this one explores the impermanence of everything a life gets built around. When you lose a pet who was woven into every part of your daily routine, the song gets at the devastating feeling of a home that no longer feels like home. Patrick Watson’s voice conveys the ache of watching something you built together disappear, and how loss changes even the most familiar rooms.

“Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon

A lullaby Lennon wrote for his son, and the unconditional part lands on exactly how people love a pet. The comforting words about monsters being gone could be the ones you whispered in their final moments. The line about life happening while you’re busy making other plans says the thing nobody wants said: the time is never enough.

“loml” by Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift’s heart-wrenching ballad about losing the love of her life translates powerfully to pet loss. The acronym in the title, love of my life, captures how people feel about a pet without hesitation. When Swift sings about someone holding that place even after they’re gone, it validates that your pet occupies exactly that spot in your heart. The song’s exploration of grief, regret, and the permanence of love speaks directly to anyone processing the loss of their truest companion.

The Long Middle: Songs 15 to 26

Welcome to the long middle of grief, the stretch nobody warns you about. The shock has worn off, everyone else has moved on, and you’re left turning it over: what you’d do differently, what you missed, whether you’re allowed to still feel like this. These songs sit in that specific confusion.

Most people find this group easier to keep on rotation than the last one. They open something up without taking the whole day down with them. You can play these in the kitchen.

“Indigo” by Sam Barber and Avery Anna

Sam Barber and Avery Anna use color as a metaphor for connection, which is exactly how a pet colors an entire world. When Barber and Anna sing about indigo, it stands in for the depth and richness they brought. The song helps process how everything looks different now, how the world lost some of its saturation without them here to share it.

“Here With Me” by The Killers

The Killers’ emotional track about wanting someone close goes straight at the longing for physical presence. The repeated plea becomes the wish that fills every quiet moment. When you reach for them in the morning, turn to call them out of habit, or simply ache for their warmth beside you, this song gives voice to that specific pain, the one about a body that used to be in the room.

“Sailor Song” by Gigi Perez

Gigi Perez’s haunting melody explores longing and the ache of separation through nautical imagery. Themes of waiting, distance, and hoping for return speak to pet parents who feel adrift. When Perez sings about sailors and the sea, it becomes a way of describing the vast emptiness between life with your pet and life after, and the wish to find your way back somehow.

“If I Would Have Known” by Kyle Hume

Almost nothing captures the regret of not knowing which moments would be the last. Kyle Hume’s lyrics about what he’d have done differently land painfully on pet parents replaying those final weeks. The song validates the “I wish I’d taken more pictures” and “I should have stayed home that day” thoughts, while gently reminding you that you loved them the best you could with the time you had.

“Dancing On My Own” by Calum Scott

Sometimes grief makes you feel utterly alone even when you’re surrounded by people. Calum Scott’s heart-wrenching cover sits in that isolation. When everyone else has moved on but you’re still devastated, when the world keeps spinning but you’re stuck, this song understands. Scott’s voice does the rest. It validates that feeling of being invisible in your grief while life carries on without pausing.

“Sweet Heat Lightning” by Gregory Alan Isakov

Sparse and haunting, this folk song explores the emptiness that follows loss. With imagery of an empty house and fleeting light in darkness, Isakov finds that disorienting feeling when home doesn’t feel like home anymore. The repeated plea to be found expresses the loneliness of grief, while the lightning stands in for those brief flashes when memories bring pain and comfort at the same time.

“Evergreen” by Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners

Being stuck between moving forward and staying rooted is hard to put into words, and this introspective folk track manages it. The lyrics about being locked in a stalemate and questioning what you’re waiting for express that paralyzed feeling many pet parents know: you want to heal but aren’t ready to let go. The song’s brevity mirrors how grief can leave you with nothing but memories you can’t put down.

“Homesick” by Kane Brown

Losing a pet makes your own home feel unfamiliar, and Kane Brown tracks that. The imagery of coffee still in a cup and dishes in the sink captures the specific reminders: the food bowl still in its spot, the bed still in the corner, everything exactly where it was except for them. When Brown sings about being homesick for a person, pet parents get it immediately. You’re homesick for a feeling, not a place.

“Anchor” by Novo Amor

Nautical imagery again, this time for loss and the search for something to hold you in place. The repeated plea to anchor becomes a cry for stability when grief has set you adrift. When Novo Amor sings about tears becoming a sea to swim in, he gets at how overwhelming this can feel, drowning with nothing solid within reach.

“Stargazing” by Myles Smith

Recognizing love that was always there is the heart of this soulful ballad. It catches the moment you realize how completely your pet shaped your life, which lands painfully once they’re gone. They were the constant. Now the constancy is what’s missing. The imagery of stargazing speaks to a connection people feel and struggle to name.

“Coastline” by Hollow Coves

Gentle and unhurried, this folk song explores distance and the pain of separation. The imagery of coastlines and vast distances holds the unbridgeable gap between life with your pet and life without them. When you’re feeling their physical absence most sharply, the atmospheric sound and reflective lyrics create space for processing the reality that they’re truly gone.

“These Memories” by Hollow Coves

Hollow Coves honor the bittersweet power of memories after loss. The soft melodies explore how memories comfort and wound at the same time, reminding you of what you had while sharpening what you’ve lost. For pet parents, it makes the case for revisiting memories even when it makes you cry, because those moments are what you have left to hold.

Songs for Finding Comfort: 27 to 37

These don’t rush you. They don’t pretend the loss was a lesson either. They just carry more light than the ones above, which makes them the group you can play while doing something else: driving, cooking, walking the route you used to walk together.

Not sure where to start on a bad day? Start here rather than at the top. The hardest songs are easier to reach once something gentler has already made room.

“Good Grief” by Bastille

Bastille’s exploration of what good grief means offers a different angle on loss. The song acknowledges that grief, painful as it is, comes from something worth having. When they sing about watching through your fingers and wondering what if, it lands on those moments of looking back and understanding that grief is love with nowhere to go. The upbeat tempo against melancholy lyrics mirrors how healing isn’t linear and how you can feel several things at once.

“Who You Share It With” by Layup

Experiences matter because of who you share them with, and Layup build a whole song on it. That’s the essence of living alongside an animal. Your pet made every moment better simply by being present for it. The song validates that it wasn’t about grand adventures, it was about the ordinary days made specific by their company.

“You’re Gonna Go Far” by Noah Kahan

Noah Kahan’s bittersweet anthem about believing in someone even as they leave speaks to the faith you keep placing in them after they’re gone. The encouragement in the title turns into something you end up wishing at them anyway, long after there’s anyone left to hear it. The blend of sadness and pride mirrors grieving the loss while celebrating the life they had and the love they gave.

“Even If It Breaks Your Heart” by Eli Young Band

A country anthem about chasing something despite the cost, which translates to continuing to love and honor your pet’s memory despite how much it hurts. The acknowledgment that some things stay with you and drag you around recognizes that grief becomes permanent furniture. The hopeful tone suggests that isn’t necessarily bad. Their love changed you, and carrying it means part of them is still here.

“Favorite Place to Go” by Layup

Familiar spaces and routines are the comfort here, which are exactly the things that hurt most after a pet dies. Your favorite place to go was anywhere they were, and now those places feel hollow. The track helps you process how loss changes even beloved spaces into reminders of absence, while honoring the joy they held when your companion was beside you.

“Ghost” by Justin Bieber

Romantic heartbreak was the brief. Being haunted by a presence is the actual subject, and that part transfers cleanly. When you see them in every corner of the house, feel them beside you where they used to sleep, or hear phantom sounds of a collar on the floor, the song says out loud what that’s like. The haunting brings comfort even as it breaks your heart.

“You Should Be Here” by Cole Swindell

Written for his father, Cole Swindell’s ballad turns out to fit losing a pet who should have been around for more of your life. The line about hearing a song and going straight back to where you were shows how a sound or a smell can drop you into a memory without warning. The insistence that they should be here validates your grief and the unfairness of the timing.

“7 Years” by Lukas Graham

Lukas Graham traces the passage of time in a way that sits with the bittersweet reality of a shorter lifespan. The lyrics trace a life through different ages, a reminder that they’re present for only a portion of your story. But what a portion. The song helps you honor the years you had while making peace with the fact that the time was always going to be too short.

“The Mountain Is You” by Chance Peña

Chance Peña explores the idea that our hardest challenges become part of who we are. When the lyrics turn to mountains, it lands on the mountainous quality of pet loss: something that feels impossible to climb and changes the shape of everything around it. Working through that pain, difficult as it is, ends up becoming part of your own terrain.

“Wash” by Bon Iver

Bon Iver’s ethereal sound creates a meditative space for grief in this sparse track. Themes of cleansing and release feel like gentle permission to let the tears come, to let the grief move through you without resistance. Sometimes healing requires surrendering to the pain rather than fighting it, and this song makes room for that.

“Let Her Go” by Passenger

Passenger sits on a hard truth: you rarely appreciate what you have until it’s gone. That clarity arrives late and all at once. Suddenly you remember every small thing, every moment you filed away as ordinary at the time. But the song offers a gentle counterweight: that appreciation, even now, honors the relationship and keeps it vivid.

Songs for Honoring Their Memory: 38 to 52

This group is for the days you want to remember them on purpose rather than being caught by surprise. Anniversaries, birthdays, the day you finally scatter the ashes, the moment you decide to hang their photo somewhere you’ll see it. It’s worth knowing which dates tend to land hardest before the first one arrives. These are often the songs that eventually replace the ones at the top of the list.

If you’re building something for a memorial or a scattering, these are the ones to start from. Pairing a song with a small ritual gives grief somewhere to go, which is the same reason simple pet loss rituals tend to help more than people expect.

“Save You a Seat” by Alex Warren

Saving someone a seat turns into a way of describing how you keep their place in your life. Whether it’s their actual spot on the couch, their place at your side, or the space they occupy in your thoughts, the song honors how you keep making room for them. It’s about maintaining the connection and making sure they’re never quietly replaced.

“Carry You Home” by Alex Warren

Carrying someone home is the image, and it maps onto how you carry them after they’re gone. The message of devotion translates to the way they carried you through hard stretches, and how you carry their memory forward now. It’s a tribute to how reciprocal the love was, and to the weight of it that you bear on purpose.

“Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish

Eilish’s declaration that she’ll love someone until the day she dies, and would rather go on the same day, captures the depth of the bond. The line about birds of a feather sticking together speaks to that sense of belonging to each other. For pet parents, it confirms the connection was real and permanent, that the two of you were genuinely a pair.

“I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab For Cutie

A promise of devotion that goes past death itself. When Death Cab sings about following someone into the dark without fear, it speaks to the bond between a pet and their person. For those who believe they’ll be reunited, the song offers comfort in the certainty that love doesn’t stop when life does. The quiet conviction mirrors the loyalty they showed without ever being asked.

“Die With A Smile” by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars

Cherishing every moment is the whole subject here, and it takes on a different weight after pet loss. When Gaga and Mars sing about dying with a smile if they were with the one they love, you recognize it instantly: you’d give anything for one more day. The song celebrates the completeness of their presence and honors how they made ordinary days feel like something else entirely.

“I Will Remember You” by Sarah McLachlan

Sarah McLachlan has spent decades working in animal welfare, and the promise she makes here lands squarely on pet loss. The mutual question of remembering becomes a vow to keep their memory alive. The song acknowledges the pain and the beauty together, giving you permission to feel all of it while promising that what you shared will hold.

“Rivers and Roads” by The Head and The Heart

Friendship and distance were the starting point. It lands somewhere else entirely after a pet dies. The line about everyone being scattered within a year captures how inevitable all of it is. Then it just says it plainly: missing someone badly, no dressing it up.

“Chasing Shadows” by Alex Warren

Warren explores chasing something you can never quite catch, the presence of someone who’s gone. For pet parents it captures those moments when you think you see them at the edge of your vision, when you turn expecting them to be there. Chasing shadows is part of grief, a way of not being ready yet even as you know. The song treats that as natural. Not something to fix.

“Waste” by Myles Smith & James Bay

Regret, and the sense that time wasn’t fully used, sits at the center of this duet. For pet parents looking back, it understands wishing you’d spent more of it, or not knowing those were the last good days. The back and forth between Smith and Bay creates a conversational feel, two grieving people working through it, which is its own reminder that this particular regret is close to universal.

“Belong Together” by Mark Ambor

A song about connection, and about the bond between a pet and their person, a relationship where two creatures simply fit. When you’re missing them, the track reminds you the connection was real and specific. Death separated you physically, and the sense of belonging to each other stays where it was.

“One More Light” by Linkin Park

Linkin Park challenge anyone who’d minimize your grief. The question of who cares when someone’s time runs out turns into a defiant answer rather than a question. Their life mattered. The loss matters. Anyone suggesting otherwise is wrong. It’s a useful song for the stretch when people around you have started expecting you to be over it.

“Goodbye My Friend” by Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt’s goodbye works as a letter to your pet, thanking them for what they brought. The acknowledgment that goodbye isn’t the end offers comfort to those who believe the bond outlasts death. This one suits the quiet moments when you want to say a proper goodbye, or just talk to them one more time and say the things you still carry.

“What Hurts the Most” by Rascal Flatts

Rascal Flatts capture the pain of things left unsaid. The acknowledgment of being close, with so much to say, while watching someone go, becomes those final days. All the love you wanted to communicate, all the gratitude, knowing the time was running out. It validates that regret. More usefully, it gives it somewhere to sit.

“Till There Was You” by The Beatles

Sweet and nostalgic, it lands on how a pet opens your eyes to ordinary beauty. The observation about birds in the sky going unnoticed until someone arrived becomes a tribute to how your pet taught you to notice small things. They’re gone. What they changed in you isn’t. That part is permanent.

“Rainbow” by Kacey Musgraves

Kacey Musgraves wrote this about divorce, and it has since been adopted by people grieving almost anything. The promise that the rainbow was always overhead is the whole song. Many pet parents connect it to the rainbow bridge idea they’ve heard from others. It doesn’t argue with that and doesn’t insist on it either, which is why it works for people on both sides of believing.

How to Build a Pet Loss Playlist You Can Live With

Build it for one specific moment, not for grief in general. A playlist meant to cover everything fits nothing, because the songs that help on the drive home from the vet are not the ones that help six months later on their birthday.

Pick the moment first. Then pick four or five songs for it. The drive back from the vet’s office. The first night the bed is empty. The walk you used to do together, with the leash still on the hook by the door. The anniversary. Four songs is enough for any of these, and a short playlist is far easier to face than a fifty-song monument you built in one sitting and can’t bring yourself to open.

Add songs that carry actual specifics: the one that was playing in the car the day you brought them home, the one that sounds like their personality, the one you sang at them badly for years. Those beat any curated pick, including everything on this page, because they carry your evidence rather than someone else’s.

Wherever you already listen is the right place to build it. Search the titles in Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, or whatever is on your phone, because nothing here depends on a particular app. Two practical rules once you have. Keep the hardest songs off shuffle, so they only play when you choose them. And let the playlist change. What you need at week two and what you need at month eight are different, and a playlist that never changes stops being useful around the same time it starts feeling like an obligation. If you want a second way to work through the same material, journaling prompts for pet loss pair well with a short playlist.

When a Song Ambushes You

It will happen in a grocery store. Or a waiting room. Or an advert you weren’t even watching. Three notes in and you’re crying in public over a song you’d forgotten existed, and the specific indignity of it is that you didn’t choose the moment.

Most playlist articles skip this part. It’s also the part people ask about most, so here’s what actually helps.

Leave if you can. Step outside, sit in the car, let it finish or don’t. You’re not obliged to hold it together in a shop for the benefit of strangers who haven’t noticed.

Don’t decide the song is ruined. That’s the usual instinct: delete it, never again. Give it a few weeks and try it on purpose, at home, where you control the volume and the exit. A song you meet on your own terms behaves differently than one that jumps you.

Expect the intensity to change without warning in both directions. A song that flattened you in March can be fine in July and then flatten you again on their birthday. That’s not regression, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing grief wrong. Crying at unpredictable moments is one of the most common experiences in the whole of pet loss, and the crying itself has reasons behind it.

When Music Is Too Much Right Now

What we hear constantly from pet parents is that music is the last thing they want for the first few weeks. Everything sets it off, so the radio stays off, the playlists stay closed, and the car stays quiet. That’s not a setback and it doesn’t mean the songs stopped working.

The way back in is usually smaller than people expect. One song, once, rather than a whole playlist. Often it isn’t even a decision: something comes on somewhere and instead of skipping it you let it play and cry through it. That tends to be the turn, the point where music stops being the thing that hurts and starts being the thing that helps.

There’s a difference worth naming, though, between grief that hurts and grief that isn’t moving at all. If months have passed and music, or anything else, only ever makes things worse, that’s worth taking seriously rather than waiting out. Our guide to complicated grief after pet loss covers where that line sits, and the pet loss grief counselors in our directory work in exactly this.

Sharing the Playlist With Other Pet Parents

Music connects people who are carrying the same thing, which matters more than usual in pet loss, where a lot of people around you quietly think you should be over it. Sending someone a song is a low-cost way of saying you know, without either of you having to talk about it.

Send one song, not a playlist. A single track from someone who understands lands better than a link to fifty. Fifty reads as homework. If you’re on the receiving end and can’t listen yet, saying so is fine.

Shared playlists work well for households grieving the same animal, where two people are often at completely different places and can’t say so out loud. Building one together gives you a way to be in it at the same time without either of you having to perform being okay. Spotify calls this Invite Collaborators, Apple Music calls it a shared playlist, and either takes about thirty seconds to set up.

A song also gives a memorial somewhere to start. If you’ve made an online memorial for your pet, naming the song that belongs to them alongside the photos gives everyone who visits a way in, and it tends to prompt other people to tell you their own memory of your animal rather than just leaving a condolence.

What These Songs Are Actually For

Since losing Baxter, we’ve found that music doesn’t erase any of it. It just makes the weight easier to hold on a given day. These songs are part of our own process now, and which one we reach for changes constantly.

Here’s our actual position, after watching this play out across thousands of pet parents: the goal was never to find the song that fixes it. There isn’t one. The goal is smaller. It’s having something to put on when the house is quiet in a way it never used to be, and having that something understand rather than argue with you. That’s a much smaller and much more achievable thing than healing, and it’s available tonight.

So pick one. Not a playlist, not a project, just the one song that fits the hour you’re in. That’s what these songs for pet loss are actually for, and it’s a far smaller ask than healing. If you want to understand more about what you’re moving through, our pet loss grief and emotions resources go deeper than any playlist can.