Leave Your Lover for Me Playlist: 84 Songs About Interlopers and Love Triangles

Some of the best ideas for playlists are sparked by readers. This is just one example. A reader recently wrote a comment on one of my other playlists expressing his longing for someone else's partner. His anguish at being unable to be with her inspired this playlist.

We've all probably pined for someone we couldn't have. Some folks say you can't help who you love. However, you can control what you do about it.

Let's hope his story ends well, and if you're struggling with a similar situation, then we'll hope yours does, too. While you're still working it out, here is a large selection of pop, rock, and country songs about interlopers and love triangles so that you know you are hardly alone.

In this 2014 pop song, the narrator begs the one he loves to leave her current relationship so that they can be together. It is achingly beautiful and reflects the anguish of wanting someone you can't have:

Pack up and leave everything, don't you see what I can bring
Can't keep this beating heart at bay
Set my midnight terror free, I will give you all of me
Leave your lover, leave him for me.

The firecracker of a fella in this catchy 1990 rock song thinks he's really smooth. He knows that the woman he has eyes for is already taken:

I know you've got another man
But I can love you better than him.

However, that doesn't stop him. Addressing her as "baby" and "mama," he assures her that he is a man of great experience. Then, he invites her to come home with him where he can light her candle for free. Is this an offer she'll be able to resist?

This romantic interloper promises to stop time for her. Enough said, right?

In this 2016 song, a woman is dating a man who isn't right for her, and a male friend who desperately wants to be with her tells her the truth about her troubled love relationship. Her lover is not the gentleman she deserves. She should be with him instead—a man who will never let her down. The interloper is just waiting for his feelings to be returned.

The high school girl in this 2008 pop song is crushing hard on a male friend who happens to be someone else's boyfriend. While she waits for him to wake up to the realization that true love rests right in front of him, she conducts a compare and contrast between his two choices.

Feeling threatened by her lover's interest in another woman, the narrator in this electrifying 1993 rock song declares that no one will feel the love and passion for her that she does. (Yep, it's a lesbian love triangle.)

She's prepared to do battle with the interloper, knowing that she has more love for the woman they have in common:

But I'm the only one
Who'll walk across the fire for you
I'm the only one
Who'll drown in my desire for you
It's only fear that makes you run
The demons that you're hiding from
When all your promises are gone
I'm the only one.

A wife and mistress square off in this 1993 country favorite. The wife begins by telling the mistress that she's known about the affair for awhile. Regretably, her husband now leaves home with a smile, ready to meet up with his clandestine lover.

The mistress expresses sadness that although she is the woman who fulfills his nighttime desires, he must rush home. Each of them wonders aloud whom he loves best. Sharing a man has to be hell.

In this 1981 rock song, Rick Springfield (who was a total hottie in the 1980s) covets the girlfriend of his best friend. Looking in the mirror, he wonders what she doesn't see in him. Jessie must be a helluva catch, or the girl lacks good judgement. Our pining narrator watches the couple talking cute, and thoughts of them getting intimate mess with his mind at night.

A woman is faced with a choice of opposites in this 1991 rock song, both of whom kneel before her and want to marry her. The men couldn't be more different.

One choice is the man her father approves of—wealthy and from a good family. The other is the narrator, a man of simple means and no family connections who loves her without reservation. He promises her that he knows what a prince and lover ought to be. Whom will she choose? Whom would you choose?

Somebody needs to tell poor Scotty.

In this upbeat, risque rock song, Scotty's girlfriend, Fiona, has been telling him she's in church or shopping. Instead, she's doing the nasty with another man, and they both seem to be getting special enjoyment from the fact that they're keeping it secret from him.

The question, "Why don't you stay?" takes on different meanings in this heartwrenching country song from 2007 about a mistress addressing a married man.

At the beginning she and her lover are together and she wishes he didn't have to go. The interloper asks why her love isn't good enough for him to leave his current relationship.

Towards the end of the song, she has convinced herself that she is worth more than sloppy seconds. She tells him that next time he wants to leave his wife's bed and come hop into hers, "Why don't you stay?"

In this fun pop song from 2005, an ex-girlfriend reminds her former man that her replacement is no competition for her looks and sex appeal.

Although the guy says he won't be leaving his happy home if it's not love, this vixen taunts that no one is as hot, freaky, raw, and fun as her. Will he take all that pent-up sexual energy home to mama or be a bad boy?

There is more than one interloper in this complex love relationship. With this couple, she stepped out of the relationship first, then him. Now he's leaving for another woman and his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend regrets her misdeeds.

The 2014 pop song features the narrator's self-castigation for lying, cheating, and failing him. Although his new lover offers everything she cannot, she nevertheless hopes that forgiveness and their shared history will triumph.

This sorrowful 1993 country song reflects the emotional intensity of loving someone who will never be completely yours. When they met, the mistress knew the man was already taken. However, she gave in anyway.

What was supposed to be a summer fling turned into years of bittersweet stolen moments with someone else's husband. As he kept feeding her lies, she kept waiting until finally she realized that soon would be never.

A woman's lover says goodbye to her in this 1975 pop song but not before he tells her that the new man who courts her will never love her as much as he does. Her new boyfriend may be handsome and may say all the right things, but her current lover warns her that he's the leaving kind and will break her heart.

Stolen moments is all the woman in this 1985 R&B international hit can count on. She is in love with a family man—someone else's. Living alone and waiting for his call, she understands that she takes a distant second to his primary commitment and that they'll never actually be together.

In this heartwrenching 1997 song, two people who are cheating on their spouses feel guilty that their better halves believe they'd never do what they're doing. They lie and cheat, but they can only see one another when they look at their spouses' trusting eyes.

Ever give in to the request to keep it on the down low? In this 1995 R&B song, a woman has two male lovers, and she's doing her best to balance them. She struggles to keep her side lover a secret, and the interloper promises to go along with the plan. Nobody has to know.

In this 1998 country song, a woman reveals to someone else's boyfriend why he keeps getting hurt in his love relationships. He's picked the wrong partner and should instead be with her:

There's your trouble, there's your trouble
You keep seeing double with the wrong one
You can't see I love you, you can't see she doesn't
But you just keep holding on
There's your trouble.

This man has just met his new girlfriend. Trouble is, he already has one. But that's just a small detail.

The narrator in this 2010 pop song knows what she wants. Upon spotting the man she is attracted to, she directs him to call his girlfriend and break their relationship off. She even dictates how the conversation should go.

For many years he has loved her from the sidelines, and now that her lover has left, this interloper is ready to swoop in and dry her tears, giving her a shoulder to cry on.

The guy in this 1992 country song has been more than patient. Knowing just how to work it, he invites her to come in out of the pain and lay down in her arms. Talk about going from 0 to 60 super fast.