Linda Thompson
A traditional Irish-American ballad about famine-era emigration turned cannon fodder, sung here in Linda Thompson's spare,…
forced emigration poverty and displacement broken promises of America
Richard Thompson
This is Richard Thompson's arrangement of the traditional American folk/sea shanty "Shenandoah," recorded for his "1000 Years of…
longing and distance migration and westward movement love across separation
A meditation on paralysis dressed as a series of images of a figure stuck at the edge of decision — literally on a ledge, at a…
paralysis and indecision fear of change vs. longing for it risk and self-preservation
A jaunty novelty jump-blues number in which a narrator affectionately but insistently mocks his partner's terrible dancing,…
comic frustration in love physical imperfection as running gag performance and public embarrassment
Richard Thompson's version strips a bubblegum pop hit down to voice and guitar, exposing lyrics about romantic manipulation that…
manipulation dressed as innocence performance versus sincerity gender and blame
Richard Thompson builds a song around a wish for violent weather that never arrives, using the absent storm as a stand-in for…
stagnation and decay longing for catharsis powerlessness
A brief, dense narrative-ballad about a woman who abandons a protest march to nurse and possess a sick, faithless man, offering…
codependency self-erasure in love hunger and deprivation
A soldier's-eye monologue from the Iraq War, delivered in the blunt, blackly funny voice of an American GI who narrates the…
war and mortality dehumanization of soldiers media spin and propaganda
A soldier or observer of war encounters a girl playing amid devastation, and her untouched joy becomes an unbearable rebuke to…
war and its psychological aftermath lost innocence the corruption of feeling by violence
A first-person account of self-sabotage—hanging, shipwrecking, sabotaging one's own vehicle of escape—that keeps circling back…
self-destruction dependence on others redemption/salvation
A jaunty, almost comic account of a wrecked relationship, where the narrator recounts being physically and emotionally battered…
toxic romance emotional exhaustion comic violence
A short, circling song built almost entirely around one unspoken sentence: the narrator never told a former lover he loved her,…
emotional inarticulacy regret unfinished endings
Chet Baker
A standard from 1939 (words and music by Jane Brown Thompson, published as a discovery by Hoagy Carmichael) becomes, in Baker's…
denial as self-protection involuntary memory seasonal association with loss
Fairport Convention
A young band's meditation on mortality and friendship disguised as a simple folk-rock singalong, written by a teenage Richard…
mortality and remembrance friendship and community loss of youthful idealism
