A New Kind of Viral Emotion
Yearncore is a top music trend from TikTok in 2025 after dance trends, sped-up remixes and nostalgia edits over years. It moves softly and slows down, feeling emotionally raw. Yearncore focuses on longing, distance, and holding the fleeting beauty of intense feeling. The world moves ever-faster and in it, a trend invites listeners to slow down and sit with emotion for a moment.
What is Yearncore?
It is an aesthetic, a mood, or a way of listening.
Under the hashtag #yearncore, TikToks featuring sad music show people looking out car windows at sunsets and waves, or talking offscreen with blurred faces.
- The lyrics are sung in whispers and sobs on screen.
- There are vulnerable or trembling vocals.
- It is equipped with sparse acoustic or ambient production.
- The lyrical themes center on longing. They also center on identity and melancholy.
- Soft impression: It leaves a soft impression, using analog grain, slow motion, and overexposed light
You loop that one line, you get that vocal break that hurts in just the right way. It’s not background music; it’s music that just holds you.
Why It Resonates Now
1. Emotional Honesty in a Polished World: Gen Z feels weary of perfection after years of fast-edited videos and austerity-fueled immaculate “clean girl” aesthetics. Yearncore is the opposite, with imperfect cracks and quiet moments where we can sigh and feel human again
2. Slowness in a Fast-Forward Culture: the streaming age favors the quick, but the slow still yearn. Meanwhile, listeners have turned to music that takes its time, giving them space to feel rather than scroll.
3. The Editing Effect: they argue that TikTok’s shorter format spreads emotion quickly. Sometimes, a singular line, such as Hozier’s “If the Lord don’t forgive me, I still have you”, would be played on an infinite loop.
4. Nostalgia as Comfort: yearncore reaches back toward a softer, safer time, recalling analog sounds and filters from decades past. It’s not just about memory. It’s a memory of a place that probably never really existed.
Artists Defining the Yearncore Mood
- Hozier
With songs such as “Unknown / Nth” and “Too Sweet,” Hozier has become the unofficial patron saint of yearncore. His deep, pleading vocals and engaging lyrics provide the soundtrack to the thousands of TikToks made by fans. Clips of him whispering “Francesca” or delivering dialogue in a golden spotlight are shorthand for quiet devastation.
- Phoebe Bridgers & Mitski
Before the hashtag, artists like Bridgers (“Funeral” and “I Know the End”) and Mitski (“Two Slow Dancers” and “My Love Mine All Mine”) made this sound as indie musicians. The musicians treat yearning as sacred, tender, and devastating. They also find it strangely communal.
- Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey’s melancholy filmic pop music, epically captured in “Video Games” or “Mariners Apartment Complex,” is a further influence on the yearning sound of Yearncore, as evidenced in 2025 edits.
- Indie Voices from TikTok
The bedroom pop phenomenon runs contrary to the expected results of pop music: a cracked voice recorded in a closet can become the global anthem of longing overnight.
Yearncore Across Borders: K-Pop has been in the Chorus
The emotional range of K-Pop fits yearncore. Clips of Jonghyun’s “Y Si Fuera Ella,” BTS’s “Spring Day,” and TXT’s “Anti-Romantic” are shared on social media, as “songs that ache in any language.” Fans supercut cracked voices, lingering glances, and bowed heads into yearncore compilations that span culture and language.
The Risks of Romanticizing Pain
Not everyone is enthusiastic about yearncore‘s rise. Critics argue about how these songs glamorize sadness or trap listeners inside loops of nostalgia, by algorithms that leave them scrolling longer.
Still, many fans insist that yearning isn’t about wallowing, it’s about witnessing from within. People can express feelings there that they cannot share elsewhere. They can find others like themselves there as well.
“It’s not depression—it’s devotion.”
one viral comment reads under a Hozier edit.
Why Yearncore Matters
Yearncore shows the commodification of vulnerability, but not in a cynical way. It furthermore goes to show that in a culture obsessed with speed and irony and productivity, art finds a way to slow us down. One argues for depth instead of dopamine, one empathizes rather than seeking efficiency.
Artists whisper their heartbreak into a microphone and listeners will keep yearning right back as long as they do.
“In an age of quick hits and short attention spans, TikTok’s yearncore reminds us that some feelings are meant to linger.”