Beastie Boys
A cartoonish spaghetti-Western pastiche in which the three Beastie Boys members appear as characters in their own tall tale,…
mythmaking and self-invention outlaw fantasy adolescent bravado
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton's rendition of the traditional African American spiritual carol is a straightforward proclamation of the Nativity…
proclamation of good news communal celebration awe and reverence
George Michael
A cover of Ewan MacColl's 1957 folk standard, rendered here as a slow, orchestral torch ballad. George Michael strips the song…
first love devotion transcendence through intimacy
Johnny Cash
This is Johnny Cash's straightforward reading of the traditional carol, sung without irony or reinterpretation. The interest…
nativity reverence light versus darkness
Mariah Carey
This is Mariah Carey's rendition of the 19th-century Christmas carol, treated less as a historical text than as a vehicle for…
religious redemption hope after despair reverence
Waylon Jennings
Waylon Jennings imagines a barroom conversation with Hank Williams Jr. about his late father, using it as a vehicle to reckon…
musical inheritance/legacy myth-making around dead legends fatherhood and absence
Rapsody
Rapsody builds an extended plea and prayer directed at Black men, asking them to reckon with how they treat Black women, while a…
gender violence and accountability reverence for Black motherhood intra-community healing
Maxwell
A neo-soul love song built almost entirely from negation and comparison: the singer catalogs firsts and never-had-befores to…
gratitude romantic awe transformation through love
Daft Punk
Contact strips away song-form entirely, opening with a found-audio transmission of a wide-eyed astronaut describing an…
scientific awe the unknown distance and perspective
Atmosphere
Slug narrates a surreal, almost hallucinatory encounter with a solitary older woman whose hand tattoos come to embody the…
duality of good and evil sexual autonomy and self-pleasure voyeurism versus empathy
The Temptations
This is a Motown vocal group's reworking of the classic carol, wrapped in a spoken-word frame borrowed from 'Twas the Night…
communal peace holiday tradition spiritual reverence
Rodney Crowell
Rodney Crowell builds a memory song around a childhood car ride and the moment he first heard Johnny Cash's classic, using the…
nostalgia musical inheritance family and rural childhood
Brian Eno
Deep Blue Day is a slow, pedal-steel-laced instrumental from Eno's soundtrack to a documentary about the Apollo moon missions.…
weightlessness nostalgia Americana in space
JPEGMAFIA
A dense, fragmented prayer-as-flex from JPEGMafia's early catalog, where religious language gets stripped of reverence and…
religious language as vernacular survivor's paranoia fame and anonymity
Seal
Seal's version of the Curtis Mayfield gospel-soul standard is a faithful, reverent cover that leans into the song's spiritual…
salvation and grace spiritual readiness judgment and mercy
Aretha Franklin
A late-career Aretha Franklin love song built almost entirely on the sensation of new romantic disbelief, sung as direct address…
new love disbelief and wonder vulnerability
An instrumental ambient piece built from slowly rising synthesizer chords and a wordless choral pad, composed for a documentary…
space and vastness transcendence mourning and elevation
Peter Gabriel
This is a cover of the Magnetic Fields song, and Gabriel's version strips away Stephin Merritt's deadpan irony in favor of a…
romantic convention vs. lived intimacy tedium redeemed by love marriage and commitment
Jim Croce
This song is a musical setting of Rudyard Kipling's 1890 poem, sung in the voice of a British colonial soldier looking back at…
colonialism and racial hierarchy service and self-sacrifice guilt and belated recognition
Public Enemy
This track is Public Enemy's roll call of unofficial Black history, built around a single stubborn refrain: the people Chuck D…
erasure of Black radical history official vs. lived memory self-mythology and hip-hop lineage