The slow burn, pining and romantic yearning, whatever you wish to call it - yearning is so back. In time for St. Valentines Day, this year’s weekend of showing extra love for those in your life including friends and family, the new cinematic reinterpretation of Wuthering Heights hits the big screens, Charli xcx’s piercing soundtrack of the same name has dropped, we’ve just come out of a summer consisting of brooding brothers in The Summer I Turned Pretty and entered a winter of pining and snuck in rendezvous’ with Heated Rivalry - romanticists across the world have their appetites whet. 

Want to yearn and long some more? Here’s popular media that will get you there:

• Normal People

The limited TV series and Sally Rooney’s book, because what says yearning more than a constant state of confusion and what if’s (see: situationship)? 

• Charli xcx, ‘Always Everywhere’

The strings and the production of it all. The violin and string instruments are a key part of the yearning repertoire and fits the tortured, gothic romance atmosphere that the singer’s going for with the release of the film. You can also use this to escape and romanticise rainy Britain. 

• Scandal

Shondaland’s TV hit, Scandal, with Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) have the ultimate (but taboo) yearners story playing out with a political backdrop to shake things up. 

• Call Me by Your Name

Timothee Chamalet is a top yearner for older PhD student Armie Hammer’s character in this beautifully shot film.

• Pride & Prejudice 

A yearning list without Jane Austen? Think again. The Kiera Knightley film version is my favourite, although Colin Firth will always also be Mr Darcy (in the 1995 TV adaptation and in Bridget Jones). 

• Season 2 of Bridgerton 

Shondaland makes the list again with her way with honing in on the intensity and sexual tension between characters and the stolen, silent glances that speak a thousand words. The show in general is an escapists fodder, but this season in particular focuses on the yearning nature of love and the absolutely insane behaviour it’ll lead you to.  All I’ll say is think about scenes like the viral clip where the Viscount, Anthony, smells the air after Kate has walked past because he’s hanging on for a crumb - nay, a shred - from her while they pretend they can’t stand each other. Similarly, the scene where Anthony and Kate are in his office unchaperoned and as they start to give into their magnetic attraction, he has to constantly repeat to himself that he is in fact a gentleman. 

• Arctic Monkeys, ‘Cornerstone’

Alex Turner continuously croons of where he thought he saw the person he’s crushing on, imagining them wherever he turns - “I’ve asked everyone / I’m beginning to think I imagined you all along”. This is the type of infatuated yearning where you inconvenience yourself just to spend more time with that person. 

“I elongated my lift home /

Yeah, I let him go the long way round’ /

I smelt your scent on the seatbelt /

And kept my shortcuts to myself.”

• Charli xcx, ‘party 4 u’

Throwing an entire party just so one person will turn up? Yearner.

• Wolf Alice, Charli xcx, Post Precious, ‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’

This remix of the original, also heartbreakingly beautiful track, is such a classic and captures the coming of age, 20-something, falling in love feeling. 

• Olivia Rodrigo, ‘drivers license’

The bridge to this breakout classic (“I still see your face in the white cars, front yards / I still hear your voice in the traffic, we’re laughing over all the noise”) backed by the power of Rodrigo’s voice, magnifies how everything really is that deep and catastrophic for a yearner.

• Any Nicholas Sparks novel or film adaptation

See: The book covers of the protagonist and their love interest caught in the pouring rain (because nothing else matters when you’re blinded by heightened feelings, come wind or rain), gripped in a lovers embrace. 

• t.A.T.u, ‘All The Things She Said’

This song will always remain an emblem of longing and mixed up emotions with the repetitive lyricism “running through my head”, and belt, “this is not enough”.