10. Phil Collins, Face Value (1981)

Collins' divorce and the release of his first solo album happened to dovetail rather nicely. Breaking away from Genesis' proggy ambitions with an album of poppy though despondent material, Collins ended up with a massive blockbuster, as well as a surfeit of material: not only would material Collins intended for Face Value end up on Genesis' Duke, but his second solo album, Hello, I Must Be Going! featured a wealth of breakup-oriented tunes. Collins would remain one of the highest-selling sad-sacks of the '80s: take your pick of Face Value's morose hits: "In the Air Tonight," "If Leaving Me is Easy," or "I Missed Again."

9. George Jones, Memories of Us (1975)

George Jones' fractious marriage to Tammy Wynette was so fraught that he cut two separate albums about it: Memories of Us and The Battle. The Battle is more blistering, but Memories of Us is a better album through and through. Few could have honky-tonk patrons weeping in their beer quite as well as Jones, and a song like "I Just Don't Give a Damn" (which he claimed to have written at three a.m. following the split) showcases the man at the height of his powers.

8. Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958)

The mawkish cover, featuring Frank as Pagliacci, actually won a Grammy, but the music has aged much better — this was reportedly Sinatra's favorite of his own recordings. Fresh off his divorce from Ava Gardner, Sinatra turned in a funereal collection of standards that could turn a sweet sixteen party into a wake. Arranger Nelson Riddle's mother and daughter had died recently, and he turned the whole album into a lush aural landscape of sadness. "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" is a late-night romantic's drunken anthem without peer.

7. Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975)

Not every divorce album has to be filled with tears and rage. As William Ruhlmann notes, Paul Simon's divorce album "reek[s] of smug self-satisfaction and romantic disillusionment," and this album earns its spot over Hearts and Bones or Graceland for the specificity of that emotional palette. The self-satisfaction proved to be ephemeral — Simon would spend the next ten years grappling with his own perceived inadequacies on record — but the disillusionment was here to stay. "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" leavened some of Simon's more jarring snideness with humor, but the wounds on the wax remain raw after all these years.

6. Elvis Costello, Blood & Chocolate (1986)

Costello called this album "a pissed-off, thirty-two-year-old divorcees' version of This Year's Model," and it's easy to see why. Recorded live with the Attractions (whose mutual enmity was reaching epic proportions), Blood & Chocolate has a young man's energy and an older man's problems; like the newly-divorced, it swerves from accusatory to self-pitying to downright creepy. (On tracks "I Hope You're Happy Now," "Home is Anywhere You Hang Your Head," and "I Want You," respectively.) Summing up the entire emotional spectrum of a divorce in a fierce blur of rock, Blood and Chocolate is nearly peerless.