10 Top Songs About Protecting Someone You Love

Best songs about protecting someone you love

In spite of our many falls, the key to success is always rising back up again. But that’s not always simple to do on your own, especially when you’re already feeling vulnerable because of the challenges life has thrown at you. In those moments, we look to our loved ones and closest companions for support and strength.

This article will feature the very best all-time favorite songs that deal with the theme of protecting someone you love, which I hope resonates with you enough to add them to your playlist.

10 Songs About Protecting Someone You Love

1. The Fray’s

“How to Save a Life”

This song is almost certainly going to be the first song that comes to anyone’s mind when they are asked to mention songs about protecting someone you love.

How to Save a Life by the Fray is not about suicide despite the title. Instead, it’s about attempting to understand how to assist someone who is having difficulty. Or more specifically, how to keep them from harming themselves and wasting away.

As I mentioned in the introduction, there are several forms of protection. Sometimes, it takes an adult like Isaac Slade to sit down with a troubled adolescent and tell him that the choices he’s making now will lead to nothing but misery in the future.

2. I’ll Cover You from Rent

The song “I’ll Cover You” was featured in the award-winning Broadway musical Rent. This touching tune is all about showing support for another person and detailing the ways in which you can protect, comfort, and shelter them:

This song is the perfect way to convey all the tiny things you can do during the day to protect someone simply because you care, whether it’s lending a coat to protect them from the weather or just giving a listening ear when they need it.

3. Jumper

Song by Third Eye Blind

This song has a strong message despite its lyrics, which are primarily optimistic and upbeat: the band’s lead singer Stephan Jenkins doesn’t want his friend to commit suicide. Jumper is a desperate cry for the person on the verge of suicide to stop what they’re doing and reconsider.

About ten years after the song’s initial release, in an interview with Vulture magazine, Jenkins revealed that it was about a person who leapt off the Coronado Bridge in San Diego, California.

This song may have special meaning to those who have lost a loved one to suicide, but it can also strike a chord with anybody who has ever felt helpless in the face of a loved one’s suffering.

My best friend told me what it was like to be on the other end of that experience about a year and a half ago, but for the first couple of years after my mom died, I was simply a shell of my former self. She was at a loss for words and action. In a nutshell, she felt helpless, and that’s what makes Jumper a character that anybody can identify with.

We’ve all experienced life spinning out of control, and this song is a poignant reminder that sometimes the greatest way to protect someone from their own suffering is to let them know they aren’t alone.

4. Stevie Nicks and Don Henley’s Leather and Lace

There’s a mutual giving and taking in Leather and Lace. They can have your lace if you’ll take their leather. Stevie Nicks relies on Don Henley’s sturdiness (represented by leather) while he relies on Nicks’ softness and fragility (represented by lace) in this song.

Despite the fact that the lyrics don’t appear to address the topic, I believe that protection is implicit in any healthy relationship and hence should be emphasized here.

Nicks is communicating with Henley that she needs him to be understanding of their separation by giving up her lace. She also needs him to bring her through this bad patch, and she sees removing his leather as a symbolic representation of her need.

This is the song’s central theme since it exemplifies what partners require to keep their connection strong and healthy over time.

5. Bill Withers, Lean on Me

Lean on Me isn’t Withers’ most complex composition, but its simplicity belies the sincerity with which he expresses his desire to remain by his friend’s side in times of need. Withers utilizes this song to remind us that it’s alright to ask for help and that it’s also appropriate to give it, whether that aid is simply listening to a friend complain or actively delivering advise.

In times of adversity, we discover who our true friends are. Unfortunately, this might lead us to confide in people who are unsupportive and make us feel like a burden when we ask for assistance during our darkest hours.

But if you have a good friend, you won’t feel obligated to share your food. When you are at your most fragile, a true friend can protect your heart and feelings. Lyrically, this is one of the best songs about protecing someone you love.

6. Kelis’s “Protect My Heart”

After a failed relationship, this song offers advice on how to keep your heart safe: It’s not always easy to keep your word after a rocky breakup and vow to “do better next time.”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of settling for what we believe we deserve, even if we’ve learned some valuable lessons about what we want and don’t want from our previous partner. Additionally, if we feel unworthy of true love or companionship, our hearts will just embrace any random stranger that passes by.

However, this is not inevitable. Changing the world begins with everyone of us, and that’s what I love so much about Kelis’s song. Finding out why we let these people into our life in the first place and what we can do to rectify it can often be the best strategy to safeguard ourselves against harm.

7. Live Like You Were Dying by Tim McGraw

The main theme of this song is preventing a loved one from wasting their life. Tim McGraw urges the audience to “live like you were dying” by asking what they would do if they knew they had only a short period of time left to live.

Tim McGraw was able to relate to the lyrics of this song after his father’s cancer battle and death in early 2004. This sadness planted the seed for the song’s lovely message.

The song was not written with McGraw’s father in mind, but it does capture the emotions that he and the songwriters had while thinking about people who choose to live in the now rather than wait for the inevitable end of their lives.

When my mother was fighting breast cancer, I often played this song in the background. I would play it while we waited to hear the results of her cancer treatment. Oddly enough, this song acted as a gentle reminder to take each day as it comes and make the best of it, even if it brings awful news. In fact, it’s precisely in the face of bad news that you need this lesson the most.

Knowing the truth behind what Tim McGraw spoke about in this song made me feel less alone in my grief. While the song does include references to experiences like skydiving, its focus is on the smaller things in life that have helped him grow into a better person and brought him the most joy.

8. People Get Old by Lori McKenna

The longer you live, the more likely it is that the people you care about will also grow old and die; this is the theme of Lori McKenna’s People Get Old. This tune is essentially a country take on the classic “Circle of Life.”

How does this relate to the overarching topic of protection? Actually, I believe it has to do with preventing someone from taking the dangerous path that despair often does.

McKenna is seen strolling through her childhood home in the accompanying music video, reflecting on her relationship with her father and the passage of time. As someone now navigating this phase of life, I can attest to the plethora of strange, unpleasant, and heartbreaking feelings that arise throughout this time.

When dealing with an ailing parent or the estate of a deceased parent, it’s tempting to put your own life on hold, but it’s important to remember who you are and what’s important to you. That’s why I believe this song can protect its listener.

You can play it for someone going through a trying time like I was and let them know what they’re going through is a tragic but common aspect of life. It can save them from becoming mired in self-pity or a sense of victimization, which are common reactions when something terrible happens.

This song will cause you to experience mental breakdown, but in a positive way because it will drive you to cry deeply and it is for our reason that it is included on this list.

9. Calum Scott’s, No Matter What

No matter what, Calum Scott is loved and admired by his parents. No Matter What revolves around this message. Scott describes the hell he endured as a kid due to the cruelty of bullies who picked on him for being “different.” Sometimes, when it seems like the whole world is against you, your own house is the safest place to be.

Unfortunately, as children, we often fail to heed our parents’ counsel. Hearing our mothers advise us to “be ourselves” when we’re being bullied on the playground often falls on deaf ears because, in the view of bullies, “being ourselves” is the underlying cause of the problem.

The older we get, though, the more we understand how reassuring such counsel is, and how it serves to protect us from internalizing the harsh judgments of others. This is the main reason why you should listen to No Matter What again and over again: the message. Each and every one of us can identify with this.

10. Forest Blakk and Meghan Trainor’s “If You Love Her”

When a woman entrusts her heart to you, you have a responsibility to keep it safe. that’s the song’s theme:

“If she gives you her heart, don’t break it. In your arms, she should feel secure. She is the most wonderful thing that could happen to you. If you show her affection, she will return the favor.

The significance of this message about what it means to be in a relationship cannot be overstated. Being the person your girlfriend can depend on is more important than simply being present.

If someone gives you their heart, you have a responsibility to keep it safe. In spite of the potential difficulties ahead, you should always be there to lend a sympathetic ear, offer sound advise, provide solace, cheer someone up, and show them they are loved no matter what.

Final thoughts on songs about protecting someone you love

In this post, we discussed several different ways to protect a loved one from harm, whether it be from external threats or from within the person’s own mind and heart. Among these ten songs about protecting someone you love, we hope at least one or two have struck a chord with you.