I'd like a male to listen to my music and find it kind of

Hear the tender and yearning words of Ellie Goulding: “I’d like a male to listen to my music and find it kind of fascinating, what a girl goes through when they get heartbroken or get sad or get hurt by something.” This is no simple wish, but a profound desire for understanding between souls divided by experience. In her music, she seeks not only to tell her own story but to build a bridge—a way for one who has not lived her sorrow to glimpse it, feel it, and learn from it. For the truest art is not made for the self alone; it is made to open hearts that were once closed.

The meaning of her words lies in empathy. Too often, men and women live within separate worlds of feeling, each burdened by the belief that the other cannot fully understand their grief. Goulding longs for her songs to serve as windows: so that the male listener might be drawn into the landscape of a woman’s heartbreak, not to judge it or dismiss it, but to find it “fascinating,” worthy of wonder and respect. In this, she teaches us that art is not only beauty—it is the great translator of the human condition, capable of carrying one person’s sorrow into another’s soul.

The ancients, too, saw this purpose in art. When Sappho of Lesbos wrote her verses of longing and loss, she did not speak only to women, but to all who could hear. Her songs revealed the intimate ache of love denied, and though centuries have passed, her voice still allows men and women alike to understand emotions beyond their own experience. Goulding walks in the same tradition: through music, she calls her listeners into the tender world of heartbreak, teaching that pain, though particular, can be universally felt.

History offers a parallel in the writings of Anne Frank. Though she was a young girl confined to hiding, her diary spoke across all boundaries of gender, age, and culture. Men who read her words wept with her, felt her fear, understood her courage. What she endured was not theirs to live, yet her art—her writing—made them feel as if it were. Goulding’s hope is the same: that through her melodies and words, the male listener might not simply observe but experience the hidden struggles of women when they are hurt and sad.

From this emerges a lesson: empathy must be cultivated through listening, especially across the divides of experience. Men cannot know the pain of women by instinct, nor women the burdens of men, unless each side chooses to listen with humility. Music, poetry, and story are the bridges across these gulfs, and those who walk them become wiser, more compassionate, more human. To dismiss the experiences of the other is to remain blind; to embrace them through art is to share in the great tapestry of human life.

Thus, let us take practical steps. When you hear the song of another’s sorrow, do not turn away, saying, “This is not mine.” Lean closer. Listen with fascination, not judgment. If you are a man, hear the cry of a woman’s broken heart and recognize its truth. If you are a woman, hear the struggles of men and understand their hidden grief. Let music, literature, and art shape in you the gift of empathy, for this gift is the foundation of compassion, and compassion is the root of peace.

So let Goulding’s words stand as both invitation and command: that we should use the power of music not only to entertain but to awaken. For in every song of heartbreak lies a universal story, in every voice of pain lies a mirror of ourselves. And if we listen well—men to women, women to men, and all to one another—we may find that sorrow, though born of difference, leads us to unity. In this unity, there is healing, and in healing, the possibility of love renewed.