Rock Songs About Pain and Getting Through Bad Days

A song list · 15 songs · updated October 2026

Pain in rock is usually the other kind, a breakup or a loss, and most of this list is that. My songs on it are about the physical kind as well: a headache that turns up at the same time every night and wants the whole day. Under every song there's a line on what it's about and where to hear it.

1. Pain · Three Days Grace

   A single from One-X (2006). It's about choosing to feel something, even pain, over feeling nothing at all.

   Official videoSpotify

2. Get Up · Shinedown

   From Attention Attention (2018). Brent Smith wrote it while helping bassist Eric Bass through depression, and it's about getting up on the days you don't want to.

   Official videoSpotify

3. One Good Hour · ZN RockZN Rock

   A pain that shows up at the same time every night, and the wish for one clean hour where nothing hurts. It goes from wanting to trade everything for that hour to spending one hour right, then another.

   Lyric videoLyricsSpotifyApple MusicYouTube Music

4. Broken · Seether feat. Amy Lee

   Shaun Morgan wrote it while missing Amy Lee, and their 2004 duet version became one of Seether's biggest songs. It's about feeling broken while the person you need is far away.

   Official videoSpotify

5. Simple Man · Shinedown

   Shinedown's cover of the 1973 Lynyrd Skynyrd song. A mother's plain advice to her son about taking life slowly and being someone he can live with.

   Official videoSpotify

6. Life Is Beautiful Anyway · ZN RockZN Rock

   Gray mornings, a weight with no name and a bottle that calls like a friend, while you keep trying to believe life is beautiful. By the end the light starts getting through.

   Lyric videoLyricsSpotifyApple MusicYouTube Music

7. Hurt · Johnny Cash

   Cash's 2002 cover of the Nine Inch Nails song, recorded near the end of his life. In his hands it becomes an old man looking back at everything he lost and everyone he hurt.

   Spotify

8. Somewhere I Belong · Linkin Park

   The first single from Meteora (2003). It's about feeling numb and lost and wanting to get back to a place where you feel something real.

   Spotify

9. You Don't Get My Day · ZN RockZN Rock

   A pain that moved in behind the eye and never takes a day off. The song lets it stay but won't hand it the day: it can have the pain, not how you live.

   Lyric videoLyricsSpotifyApple MusicYouTube Music

10. Kryptonite · 3 Doors Down

    Brad Arnold famously wrote it as a teenager, in a math class. It asks whether people will still stand by you when you're not at your strongest.

    Spotify

11. Wake Me Up When September Ends · Green Day

    From American Idiot (2004). Billie Joe Armstrong wrote it about his father, who died in September when Billie Joe was ten.

    Spotify

12. Still Standing Right Here · ZN RockZN Rock

    For the day after the worst day. Everyone counted you out, you counted yourself out too, and you're still standing there.

    Lyric videoLyricsSpotifyApple MusicYouTube Music

13. Lithium · Evanescence

    From The Open Door (2006). Amy Lee has said it's about being torn between a sadness you've gotten used to and wanting to let it go and be happy.

    Spotify

14. Wish You Were Here · Pink Floyd

    The title track of the 1975 album, written with the band's former frontman Syd Barrett in mind. It's about missing someone who's still around but not really there anymore.

    Spotify

15. Nobody Gets to Keep It · ZN RockZN Rock

    Chasing a happiness that would finally hold, and finding out it comes and goes like weather. It stops chasing and just catches the good hours when they turn up.

    Lyric videoLyricsSpotifyApple MusicYouTube Music

Play the whole list

If it's more than a bad day: in the US you can call or text 988, any time.