Bon Iver
A short, wintry song built around an odd, almost clinical meet-cute at a blood bank that gradually reveals itself as a…
intimacy and secrecy blood and kinship as metaphor for love the limits of language
Stevie Wonder
A new father's unguarded celebration of his infant daughter's birth, structured as a series of rhetorical questions that answer…
fatherhood and new life gratitude love as creative force
Curtis Mayfield
A slow-burning soul ballad built almost entirely around a single plea, this track works less through storytelling than through…
romantic devotion vulnerability refuge from hardship
Sade
A slow, incantatory love song built almost entirely on a single declarative claim, repeated until it becomes its own proof. Sade…
contentment devotion sufficiency
Mitski
A brief, hymn-like address to the moon in which the speaker asks that their love outlive their body. It works less as narrative…
mortality possession and dispossession love as legacy
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
Al Green
Al Green frames a romantic relationship as a sacred event, thanking a higher power for a love that feels chosen rather than…
sacred love gratitude devotion
The Who
A single, almost liturgical plea builds around one pun -- love as both sovereign force and literal downpour -- to dramatize a…
spiritual thirst emotional exhaustion love as redemptive force
The Temptations
A holiday standard built on a simple, almost sermon-like premise: material gifts are fine, but love is the only present that…
generosity versus materialism universal love seasonal community
Kacey Musgraves
Kacey Musgraves' rendition of this 1961 standard, recorded for the 2022 Elvis biopic soundtrack, strips the song down to its…
surrender to love fate versus choice vulnerability
SZA
Love Galore is SZA's clipped, cool-voiced meditation on wanting intimacy without wanting the vulnerability that comes with it.…
emotional detachment as self-protection transactional intimacy power and control in casual relationships
Roberta Flack
A slow-building meditation on desire that treats ordinary moments — a walk, a candlelit dinner, a touch — as triggers for…
desire and intimacy the sensuality of the ordinary seasonal renewal as metaphor
Robyn
A teenage Robyn's breakout single is a straightforward Eurodance declaration of romantic surrender, built around a repeated plea…
romantic vulnerability independence versus surrender demand for reciprocity
PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey builds a self-mythologizing torch song out of biblical and folkloric imagery, casting devotion as a form of damnation.…
obsessive devotion blasphemy and sacrifice mythic self-invention
Wilco
A song about the gap between feeling and articulation, built around a narrator trying to write a love letter he can't finish.…
failure of language romantic devotion self-doubt
Minnie Riperton
A love song built around the gap between feeling and expression, in which the narrator worries that her devotion isn't landing…
communication anxiety reassurance devotion
Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen turns a boardwalk carnival ride into an extended metaphor for marriage, using the mechanics of a funhouse tunnel to…
marriage and disillusionment intimacy versus isolation fear beneath romantic ritual
Pixies
A deliberately dumb, bubblegum-pop pastiche sung by drummer David Lovering, this is Pixies parodying the sincerity of teenage…
parody of pop convention adolescent sexuality irony vs sincerity
Aretha Franklin
A joyous, motorized courtship song built around a single sustained conceit: romance as a drive on an open highway. Aretha…
romance as motion/escape freedom and self-determination playful flirtation
Queen
A ballad of direct, almost naked pleading, structured as a repeated appeal to a departing lover rather than a story with events.…
romantic loss pleading and supplication devotion despite rejection
Whitney Houston
A gospel testimony built almost entirely from a single scriptural refrain, this recording turns a short devotional statement…
divine refuge suffering and lament faith as action
Randy Newman
A booming, boosterish anthem that turns out to be a satire of boosterism itself: the narrator's civic pride is so shallow and…
civic pride as delusion class blindness American boosterism
A raw, fragmentary breakup address built from accusation and self-recrimination in equal measure, sung to a fading relationship…
dissolution of a relationship emotional exhaustion blame and self-blame
XTC
XTC's Andy Partridge stages a mock-confession, casting himself as an assassin who has killed off the very idea of romantic love…
disillusionment with romance performance of confession cynicism as self-defense
Buzzcocks
A power-pop punk song about the humiliation of loving someone who treats you badly, built around a chorus whose grammar…
romantic humiliation self-recognition through a partner codependency
Yes
A commercial-rock love song built on hesitation rather than certainty, in which the narrator wavers between wanting closeness…
romantic ambivalence reassurance through repetition emotional confusion
Lauryn Hill
This is Lauryn Hill's rendition of the 1967 Frankie Valli classic, placed on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a brief,…
infatuation gratitude vulnerability
Pearl Jam
This is a cover of The Who's 1973 track, rendered here for a film soundtrack about grief and recovery. Pearl Jam's version leans…
longing emotional drought catharsis
Rodney Crowell
A plainspoken proposal song built almost entirely around one repeated pledge: that devotion, not money, will be the measure of a…
romantic devotion class and money courtship and destiny
Gang of Four
A first-person portrait of a man who joins the military not out of conviction but as a solution to unemployment, lost…
militarism as consumer choice economic desperation masculinity and self-worth
New Order
A synth-pop anthem built on emotional gridlock: the narrator is caught between joy and dread in a relationship he can't name or…
emotional paralysis unspoken feelings fear of vulnerability
Broken Social Scene
This is Broken Social Scene's rendition of Joy Division's 1980 classic, recorded for the soundtrack of The Time Traveler's Wife,…
romantic disintegration emotional stasis guilt and self-recrimination
Fairport Convention
A meditation on mortality and constancy, written by Sandy Denny and here performed by Fairport Convention (who backed her on the…
mortality and impermanence the passage of time constancy in love
Nick Drake
A quiet love song built almost entirely from negation and plea, in which the speaker describes a lifetime of numbness suddenly…
awakening through love isolation and wandering doubt and vulnerability
Frank Ocean
A soft, wandering meditation on maternal love and mortality, built around the image of a hurricane and the small acts of…
maternal love survival and resilience impermanence
Massive Attack
Sung by Elizabeth Fraser, this Mezzanine track uses fragmented, almost liturgical phrasing to circle around themes of…
maternal love spiritual devotion consumption/communion
St. Vincent
A breakup song built almost entirely out of blunt, escalating metaphors, each one recasting the addressee as some kind of prop…
toxic attachment self-deception performance vs. authenticity
A slow, hymn-like meditation on falling in love, told through three escalating 'first times' — seeing, kissing, and lying with a…
romantic awakening the sacredness of intimacy time and permanence
Gregory Porter
Gregory Porter builds an extended allegory of romantic self-diminishment around the image of a caged lion taming itself for a…
self-suppression for love power and taming unrequited or unequal affection
A devotional love ballad built almost entirely on a single act of assertion: repeated declarations of faith in a partner rather…
romantic devotion faith and belief as metaphor for love surrender/vulnerability