Sandy Denny
A Bob Dylan song given to Sandy Denny's voice becomes a study in absence: the singer measures every image of beauty and time…
longing and absence time as burden identity dissolved by loss
Beck
A brief, hook-driven single that trades in fragmentary, almost dissociated imagery of division and delay, wrapped around a…
impending departure social division sensory disorientation
The Doors
A straight blues workout built on a single inverted-fortune boast, this track uses the twelve-bar form's repetition to turn…
confinement and release blues tradition/lineage sexual demand
Elton John
A spaceman narrates the mundane dread of leaving home for another routine off-world shift, and finds the glamour of space travel…
alienation the gap between public and private self domestic loss
Todd Rundgren
A lonely Friday-night bar excursion turns into something closer to a ghost story or wish-fulfillment dream, as a mysterious…
loneliness desire and fantasy the uncanny
Seal
This is Seal's cover of the Otis Redding soul standard, a slow-burning plea from a lover watching devotion curdle into…
one-sided devotion fear of abandonment emotional dependency
Deep Purple
A snarling caricature of moral censorship, this track invents a composite figure of public prudishness and spends three verses…
hypocrisy censorship sexual repression
Abbey Lincoln
A direct, sermon-like piece of advice-giving set to jazz phrasing, in which the singer positions herself as a hard-won…
mortality and urgency self-improvement brotherhood and ethics
Fugazi
A short, incantatory piece built around a single arithmetic metaphor for a relationship's dissolution. Fugazi strip the lyric…
breakup and separation refusal of blame fracture as survival
Tom Waits
A wandering, guilt-soaked ballad in which a restless narrator confesses his inability to settle down even as he pleads for…
restlessness and wanderlust guilt and self-forgiveness domestic responsibility vs freedom
Aesop Rock
A children's-book superhero story about a heroic frog who rescues people (and a poodle) from peril, delivered with a straight…
heroism as ritual childlike wonder absurdism
Neil Young
Neil Young's elegy for a car that has died is written with such tenderness it plays as a breakup song or a eulogy for a person,…
loyalty and companionship loss and mortality nostalgia for youth
Rosanne Cash
A ghost narrates his own wrongful execution, explaining that he chose death over revealing the affair that would have cleared…
forbidden love silence and secrecy guilt and sacrifice
Wire
A short, elliptical piece built from fragmented statements about breakdown -- of attention, feeling, and communication. It reads…
mental exhaustion alienation failure of language
Tom Petty
A mid-tempo Heartbreakers-style rocker built around a single deflating refrain: whatever romance is being described, the song…
disillusionment with romantic idealism emotional exhaustion letting go
Smokey Robinson
A spare confession of regret builds around a single unanswered question: why didn't the narrator show up for someone waiting.…
regret emotional paralysis longing
Shirley Horn
A torch song of pure yearning, sung by a woman addressing an absent, perhaps imaginary, lover. Shirley Horn's reading strips the…
loneliness longing romantic idealization
Lucinda Williams
A slow-building meditation on desire built from small domestic gestures rather than declarations. Williams narrates a private…
longing memory and its physical trace solitary desire
Don Williams
A quiet ballad of loneliness sung by someone whose partner is gone, spending the whole song rehearsing the small domestic…
loneliness loss and absence domestic intimacy
A ballad of consolation addressed to a partner during an absence, built around the idea that longing itself is what the blues…
separation and longing reassurance under strain romantic devotion
Death Cab for Cutie
A song about distance rendered as flood myth: the ocean between two people is imagined as newly created, cutting off any…
long-distance separation longing creation myth as metaphor
The Supremes
This is a Motown reading of the Four Tops' own hit, recast as a plea from a woman who admits her desire has tipped into…
romantic longing emotional dependency vulnerability as strength
Moby
Built almost entirely from a looped vocal sample lifted from old field-recording blues, this track treats lyrics as sound…
longing repetition as form sampling and folk memory
Laura Nyro
A woman addresses her partner directly, laying out years of loyalty and affection while pressing him toward a proposal that…
romantic impatience commitment and its absence gendered expectations of marriage
Nat King Cole
A bolero of pure longing, built almost entirely around the word "ansiedad" (anxiety/yearning) as the singer describes the…
longing and desire separation romantic devotion
Billie Holiday
A standard-era love song built entirely around the idea of infatuation rather than the beloved's physical presence: the singer…
idealized love longing and absence daydreaming as escape
Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy's reading of this Bill Withers standard turns a compact soul lament into a slow-burning blues confession, using…
absence and longing emotional paralysis domestic emptiness
Donny Hathaway
A meditation on a lover's seasonal absence, this song uses the turning of the year as a structural metaphor for unreliability in…
seasonal absence and unreliability romantic disappointment cyclical time versus stagnant love
Mariah Carey
This is Mariah Carey's 1994 cover of the Phil Spector/Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry classic, reworked as a Wall-of-Sound production…
loneliness during celebration longing and absence nostalgia for past happiness
Cat Stevens
A quiet meditation on the gap between feeling and speech, where a lover's devotion keeps outrunning his ability to articulate…
inexpressibility of love longing and absence devotion as ritual
Marvin Gaye
A slow-burning soul lament built almost entirely on repetition and vocal ad-lib, in which the narrator addresses a lover who has…
longing and absence romantic betrayal memory versus present loss
A late-period Marvin Gaye track that opens with an oddly ceremonial spoken thank-you before collapsing into a repetitive, almost…
reconciliation physical longing reunion after absence
Dinah Washington
A torch-song vow of exclusive devotion, sung as a series of promises about what the singer will refuse to see, feel, or accept…
devotion exclusivity romantic vow
Everything but the Girl
A ballad of stalled grief disguised as a dance track: the narrator keeps making a pointless pilgrimage to an ex-lover's old…
unrequited longing inability to let go absence and disappearance
Burial
Ghost Hardware is a mostly instrumental piece built from vocal fragments, static, and skittering 2-step rhythm rather than a…
urban isolation technology and memory nocturnal longing
Curtis Mayfield
A soul ballad structured as a spoken letter, where the mundane details of daily life become a vessel for tenderness. Curtis…
longing in absence domesticity understatement as intimacy
King Crimson
A short, hushed love song built around a single Japanese phrase meaning "please wait," describing a woman suspended in stillness…
long-distance longing stillness and waiting transnational intimacy
A standard from the World War II era, delivered here as a hushed vow of remembrance rather than a jaunty farewell. Holiday turns…
separation and longing memory as consolation wartime parting
A sparse, almost incantatory song about physical absence and longing, built less on narrative than on the repetition of sensory…
longing memory of intimacy loss
Arab Strap
A meditation on aging desire that literalizes the body's decay into full-blown Gothic imagery, then insists on carnal renewal…
aging and desire mortality and decay reunion after long absence