Candi Staton
This is a gospel-soul testimony about clinging to divine support when everything else fails. Candi Staton catalogs exhaustion,…
faith under duress endurance spiritual dependence
Mississippi John Hurt
A rollicking Piedmont blues built entirely on a single, transparent sexual double entendre. Mississippi John Hurt uses the…
sexual innuendo folk humor itinerant male desirability
The Velvet Underground
A quiet, first-person portrait of alienation from one's own body and self, sung through the voice of a character named Candy,…
body dysphoria alienation from self longing for escape
Elvis Costello
A jilted narrator sifts through the physical debris a lover has left behind, treating each object as evidence of who she was and…
romantic obsession grief and loss self-deception
Guided by Voices
A brief, dreamlike sketch of a girl's day rendered in candy-colored Americana imagery -- doughnuts, ice cream trucks, strange…
childhood innocence American ephemera/nostalgia absurdist non-sequitur
