David Cassidy – Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

A bright, sweet melody—“Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”—that hides a quiet truth: even the sunniest love songs can carry the ache of goodbye

There’s a special kind of heartbreak that doesn’t arrive with thunder. It slips in wearing a smile, humming a tune you can’t forget. That’s exactly what happens when David Cassidy sings “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”—most famously through The Partridge Family recording that became a major UK hit. On paper, it’s classic pop: a familiar title, an irresistible hook, a rhythm that keeps your shoulders moving even as your heart sinks. But in the listening, it’s something else: a farewell disguised as radio sunshine.

In the UK, this recording reached No. 3 on the Official Singles Chart and stayed on the chart for 13 weeks—a striking run that confirmed how powerfully Cassidy’s voice traveled across the Atlantic. The track’s British success also arrived in an unusual package: it was issued as a maxi single that paired “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” with “I Think I Love You” on the same side, and “I’ll Meet You Halfway” on the B-side—a kind of fan’s bundle, like three postcards from the same emotional world.

The deeper story begins long before the Partridge bus ever rolled. “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” was written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, and Sedaka’s original 1962 recording became a defining moment of early-’60s pop, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (hitting the top on August 11, 1962). It’s important to remember what that original did so well: it turned a universal pain into something you could sing along to, proving that pop music can be both light on its feet and heavy in its meaning.

So when David Cassidy takes on the song in the Partridge Family era, he’s not simply covering a hit—he’s stepping into a ready-made emotional blueprint. And Cassidy, whatever the packaging around him, always understood something crucial: the most effective sadness in pop is the sadness you can dance to. His vocal doesn’t collapse into melodrama. It stays clean, youthful, and direct—almost conversational—like someone trying to sound brave while the truth catches in the throat.

That’s the quiet magic of this version. The lyric says breaking up is hard, but the melody insists you’ll survive it. The drums keep time like a steady heartbeat. The harmonies soften the edges, as if friends are standing nearby, not letting the room fall completely silent. Yet underneath the bounce, the song’s message remains starkly adult: leaving hurts, staying hurts, and the heart doesn’t always get a vote.

Hearing Cassidy sing it now, you can feel how pop songs become memory vessels. A chorus like this doesn’t just replay the story of one romance—it reopens whole rooms of the past: a car radio glowing at dusk, a kitchen where someone hummed while doing the dishes, the particular loneliness of late night television after everyone else has gone to bed. A song this bright can be strangely intimate, because it never forces emotion; it simply offers it, wrapped in melody, and lets the listener supply the rest.

And perhaps that’s why “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” worked so well for Cassidy’s audience—especially in the UK, where it climbed so high. It wasn’t asking anyone to grow up overnight. It was admitting—softly, sweetly—that growing up includes goodbyes, even when the song still sounds like summer.

In the end, David Cassidy doesn’t make this track darker; he makes it truer. He lets the sadness remain, but he refuses to let it win. The final feeling isn’t despair—it’s that familiar pop miracle: the ache is real, the tune is bright, and somehow both can live in the same three minutes without canceling each other out.