Gram Parsons
A jealous, wounded narrator catalogs small betrayals -- a new man in town, a broken date, a no-show -- each one triggering the…
jealousy and suspicion romantic betrayal anticipatory dread
Sam Cooke
Sam Cooke retells the classic American murder ballad about Frankie and Johnny, reworking the folk standard into a soul…
betrayal and jealousy infidelity folk balladry reimagined
Pet Shop Boys
A jealous lover watches a partner flirt and toy with a string of admirers, using the image of dominoes toppling one after…
jealousy and possessiveness romantic betrayal seduction as a game
Fairport Convention
This is the Fairport Convention electric-folk arrangement of the ancient English/Scottish ballad about adultery, betrayal, and…
class inequality adultery and its consequences honor and vengeance
Sade
A quietly devastating account of betrayal, built around the image of returning a letter and everything it contained. Sade's…
betrayal broken trust disillusionment
Hank Williams
A jilted lover addresses an ex-partner who has returned to bars and nightlife, framing her departure as a betrayal of domestic…
betrayal domesticity vs. nightlife wounded pride
Chaka Khan
A meditation on jealousy and reassurance, sung by a partner who has just been told about some flirtation or attention from an…
jealousy possessiveness self-assurance
Burial
This is a track built almost entirely from a single vocal fragment looped and pitched into a kind of emotional smear, more mood…
betrayal emotional numbness isolation
Joy Division
A bleak meditation on betrayed loyalty, dressed in the language of grand ideals that curdle into disillusionment. The song moves…
betrayal disillusionment failed idealism
Gillian Welch
A traveler recounts a journey to a mythic, menacing place called Scarlet Town, where hospitality curdles into betrayal and…
betrayal mortality folk/ballad inheritance
Wire
A blunt, almost domestic-scale confrontation song built around one sustained image of betrayal-as-stabbing, delivered with a…
betrayal complicity disgust with manipulation
Rush
A narrator recounts a shipwreck deliberately caused by shore-dwellers who lure vessels onto rocks with false lights, then loot…
betrayal false hope/illusion predation and greed
Michael Jackson
A funk-driven complaint about gossip and betrayal, built almost entirely from repetition and chant rather than narrative detail.…
gossip and rumor paranoia and persecution betrayal
SZA
SZA turns a breakup confession into a deadpan murder fantasy, using the exaggerated violence of the title as a vehicle for…
obsessive love jealousy denial and self-deception
Laura Marling
A song addressed partly to a goddess and partly to an absent man, this piece uses classical and religious imagery to explore a…
silencing and voice betrayal religious/mythic guilt
Blondie
This early Blondie track (later reworked into "Heart of Glass") strips romantic disillusionment down to a chant-like refrain:…
disillusionment in love self-deception emotional numbness
Madvillain
A jealous, wounded rant against a cheating lover and her new partner, delivered as a broken phone call full of accusation, petty…
betrayal and infidelity masculine pride and possessiveness petty revenge
Townes Van Zandt
A weathered ballad about a Mexican bandit and the friend who may have betrayed him, told with the flat, elliptical tone of a…
betrayal and guilt myth-making and unreliable legend exile and diminishment
A ballad about a legendary Mexican bandit and the friend widely suspected of betraying him, told with the flattened affect of a…
betrayal and complicity myth-making versus truth exile and displacement
Kate Bush
Kate Bush tells a compact fable of a wife who sets a trap for her own marriage by inventing a mysterious alter ego, only to…
jealousy and self-sabotage disguise and identity the decay of romantic feeling
The Staple Singers
This is the Staples' take on an old African American spiritual, retelling the biblical Samson story as a folk ballad while a…
betrayal hidden strength divine retribution
Big Star
An opening-track statement of collapse dressed as a rock song, "Feel" uses blunt repetition and a horn-driven arrangement to…
emotional exhaustion betrayal romantic ruin
Massive Attack
A hushed, circling meditation on romantic ambivalence, sung from the position of someone who claims to wish an ex-lover well…
ambivalence possessiveness disguised as tenderness jealousy
Mariah Carey
A holiday novelty song that recasts Santa Claus as a matchmaker rather than a gift-giver, with the narrator petitioning him to…
romantic longing holiday nostalgia wish-fulfillment
Nas
This is the definitive diss track of the Nas–Jay-Z feud, a single sustained assault built to end an argument rather than…
rap rivalry and hierarchy authenticity vs. fabrication legacy and lineage
A plainspoken country waltz of heartbreak in which the narrator, abandoned by a lover after sacrificing everything for her,…
betrayal loneliness sacrifice for love
Pixies
A minimal, chant-driven fragment built almost entirely from four repeated phrases, this song trades narrative for atmosphere --…
paranoia violence betrayal
John Lee Hooker
A stripped-down Delta blues lament built on the image of the drifter, a man cut loose from home and love, cast adrift with no…
isolation betrayal homelessness/wandering
Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox's reading of this Screamin' Jay Hawkins standard, cut for her covers album Nostalgia, strips the song down to its…
possessive love jealousy desperation
This is a cover of the Clash song reworked by Annie Lennox into a soul-inflected torch-song confession, trading punk snarl for a…
abandonment financial precarity betrayal
Howlin’ Wolf
A blues complaint built on the classic AAB stanza, this song traces the slow ruin of a man exploited financially and emotionally…
exploitation in love aging and abandonment betrayal
Muddy Waters
A brief, wry blues complaint built around a single pun: a woman leaves her man for a bus driver, and the singer turns the man's…
infidelity sexual innuendo wounded pride
Pink Floyd
A touring rock star, isolated and priapic, seeks anonymous sex on the road while his marriage quietly disintegrates in the…
infidelity and its consequences isolation of touring life masculinity as performance
The Fall
This is a plainspoken cautionary tale about romantic self-deception: a man ignores his own instincts, falls hard for a woman who…
self-deception romantic ruin pride and consequence
Japanese Breakfast
A bruised, self-aware account of wanting someone who has already made clear they want someone else, or something else entirely.…
unrequited desire self-loathing jealousy
Burial builds an entire track out of two chopped vocal phrases, repeated and pitch-shifted until they stop functioning as…
betrayal memory and repetition isolation within collective spaces
Spoon
A cryptic, industry-inflected kiss-off aimed at a music-business figure who's been caught performing sincerity rather than…
authenticity vs. image music industry disillusionment betrayal
Chet Baker
This is Chet Baker's reading of Irving Berlin's 1924 standard, a spare lament built almost entirely around a single repeated…
separation and longing romantic insecurity jealousy
Ann Peebles
A stark relationship ultimatum built almost entirely on a single conditional refrain, this song treats mutual suspicion as a…
trust and suspicion jealousy relationship ultimatums
Van Morrison
A dream-logic ballad in which the narrator revisits scenes of betrayal, cruelty, and violence with a strange, floating calm.…
betrayal and blame dream as psychic space violence and endurance