The Louvin Brothers
A plain, pleading country ballad built entirely around a single conditional wish: to win the love of someone who remains just…
unrequited love longing devotion
Donny Hathaway
Donny Hathaway's reading of this well-worn hymn-like standard turns a simple parable of brotherly duty into a gospel testimony,…
brotherhood and communal responsibility burden and endurance spiritual faith as sustaining force
The Chemical Brothers
This is less a song than a spoken definition looped over a menacing electronic pulse, taken from the Chemical Brothers' score…
self-reference artifice vs feeling mechanization
Abbey Lincoln
Abbey Lincoln's 1991 reading of the Depression-era standard strips the song back to its bare, bitter arithmetic: a man who built…
economic betrayal labor and disposability war and its aftermath
A propulsive dance-floor exhortation built almost entirely on one imperative repeated in different clothing: stop hesitating and…
overcoming hesitation collective momentum hedonistic release
Sufjan Stevens
A song about the aftermath of a mother's abandonment and death, staged as a private argument between numbness and the…
maternal abandonment and grief emotional repression childhood memory
Uncle Tupelo
This is Uncle Tupelo's take on the Flying Burrito Brothers standard, a doom-laden vision of Los Angeles as a modern Babylon…
moral corruption of wealth apocalyptic judgment urban decay
MF DOOM
The title track of MF DOOM's debut solo album is both a resurrection and a mission statement. Rapping under a new mask after the…
reinvention through persona mortality and legacy underground rap ethics vs. commercial rap
Bon Iver
A song built from disconnected fragments of memory — a Halloween mishap, a burnt-down bar, a Christmas night with a brother —…
memory and its unreliability humility versus self-importance nostalgia for place
Al Green
Al Green takes a mid-century ballad already worn smooth by decades of cover versions and slows it down further, turning its plea…
longing and separation time as erosion faith and supplication
