The Rocker Chick's Anti-Valentine's Playlist.

Ah, Valentine’s day. You either love it, or you hate it. And let’s be honest, the feeling varies depending on where you stand that particular year. You may be in one of the following stages:

1.Single and searching: every day is a hopeful day until February 13th. That’s the day you reluctantly sign up for a dating site’s trial and, worse, for their Valentine’s singles mixer. You know it will end up in disaster, and you know you won’t meet your spouse there, but you already watched the whole seasons of both Bridgerton and Cobra Kai, so why not.

2.In a relationship, but too soon to know how the V-day will go: you hope for the best, brace for the worst (or try to brace for the worst but can’t), and when the day comes, it will likely be a disappointment.

3.On a stable relationship: you know how it goes, so you are either thinking about dinner or hoping against hope that your significant other will get it right this year because you have expressed your disappointment for the good part of a decade.

4.Recently dumped: you hate this day with the force of a thousand suns, and you will never, ever, ever fall for its commercial nonsense again. You are grown and mature, and you do not believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, or that little pest Cupid. No sir. None of that nonsense for you.

Regardless of where you stand right now, we have all stood on one side of the bridge or the other through the course of a lifetime. This year I count myself among the ones with plans, and my mind is full of thoughts of appetizers, entrees, and wine, lots of wine (kids, after a certain age you stop thinking Valentine’s day is for sex. After a three-course dinner, is not going to happen). But I have spent most of my adult years as a card-carrying member of the “I hate Valentine’s” club, and with that membership comes an awesome soundtrack.

You would think that an anti-Valentine’s soundtrack would be all sappy and moany, but some of us are not delicate flowers that stop eating and won’t leave the bed for days. Some of us order a pizza, crack open a beer and listen to the stuff that makes the neighbors call the cops with a noise complaint. Your soundtrack comes in phases, progressing as the beers are consumed.

-Phase one: you just got dumped. You are partially in disbelieve at this stage, and nothing fits your mood like doing an interpretative dance to the strange beats of Gotye’s Somebody That I used to Know.

-Phase two: the beer is flowing freely, and so are the angry tears. For that grudge-filled state, tune into Fall Out Boy’s Thnks fr th Mmrs (yes, it’s read thanks for the memories).

-Phase three: your memory is a little fuzzy right now, so you start thinking that maybe you were the one that dumped the bastard. You are a strong, independent woman (if you are a guy, you have enough beer in you to believe that the phrase totally fits you), and you decide that you want your freedom and wouldn’t take that loser back if they begged. So you pull out the vacuum cleaner and cosplay Freddy Mercury while singing I want to Break Free at the top of your lungs.

-Phase four: you have enough beer in you to accept that the crappy relationship is over. You also remember a time when driving around in your Camaro and headbanging in every red light was the best time ever, so you bring a little of that back with Journey’s Separate Ways.

-Phase five: it’s time to wrap it up, so you call a couple of friends that are in the same boat, you set up an epic drunken zoom meeting, and you all sing Fun’s We Are Young out of tune.

After that you probably will black out, and what happens on Valentine's day, stays on Valentine's day. Unless one of your pals hit record on the zoom meeting. Yikes.