Run the Jewels
A high-energy flex built on a chopped vocal hook lifted from an old funk/soul sample, where El-P and Killer Mike trade boastful,…
braggadocio excess and appetite anti-authority posture
Kate Bush
A song about the gulf of misunderstanding between two lovers, imagined as something so vast it could only be closed by a…
miscommunication in intimacy empathy and its limits bargaining with fate
Laura Marling
This is Laura Marling's rendition of a 1965 folk standard originally written by Jackson C. Frank, a song about restless flight…
itinerancy and escape addiction as coping mechanism inescapability of sorrow
Run-DMC
The title track of Run-DMC's landmark album is a boast-battle anthem built almost entirely from self-crowning imagery and…
braggadocio hip-hop supremacy battle rhetoric
Television
This is Television's first single, a hazy character sketch built on a shuffling, unresolved guitar figure rather than a…
outsider mystique visionary madness voyeurism and judgment
A song about the gulf of misunderstanding between two lovers, imagined as a problem that could be solved by literally trading…
empathy and its limits gender and relational miscommunication bargaining with fate
Vampire Weekend
A jaunty, harpsichord-inflected pop song that uses a grammar joke as a launching pad for a satire of upper-crust pretension and…
class and privilege cultural tourism and appropriation linguistic pedantry vs authenticity
Gladys Knight
Gladys Knight catalogs the domestic labor of a woman keeping a household running while her partner grows cold and indifferent,…
emotional labor and domestic care withheld affection self-respect and pride
Common
Common builds a triumphant victory-lap track around a sampled ELO hook, using the sky as a running metaphor for ascent,…
ambition realized spiritual gratitude celebrity and success
The Band
A small-time narrator in a decaying Atlantic City weighs a desperate, half-criminal solution to his debts against a fragile…
economic desperation organized crime and violence romantic loyalty amid ruin
