Steely Dan
A slick, self-satisfied loser moves onto his aunt's couch and develops a leering fixation on his younger cousin, pitching his…
arrested development delusional self-regard taboo desire treated as comedy
Johnny Cash
A prisoner in California listens to a passing freight train and measures his life against it. Over four short verses he moves…
incarceration freedom and mobility guilt and remorse
Curtis Mayfield
A eulogy that refuses to sentimentalize its subject, using the death of a small-time hustler named Freddie as a blunt instrument…
addiction and exploitation urban poverty complicity and blame
Emmylou Harris
A narrator looks back at a childhood friend, Lillian, whose life in a small Southern town never escapes the gravity of that…
rural poverty and stasis female friendship the cost of unfulfilled ambition
David Bowie
A radio drama in miniature: a space agency counts an astronaut into orbit, celebrates him as a media sensation, then loses him.…
alienation celebrity and spectacle technological failure
Fairport Convention
This is the Fairport Convention arrangement of the old English/Scottish murder ballad about an adulterous tryst between a…
class transgression sexual desire and consequence honor and violence
Minnie Riperton
A love song built around the anxiety of being misunderstood -- the singer insists that her feelings are genuine even if her…
communication and its failure reassurance devotion
Neil Young
A domestic sketch collides with a highway fantasy: the narrator remembers a diner waitress and imagines her alternate, freer…
restlessness and rootlessness domestic confinement vs. freedom idealization/myth-making
Paul Simon
A reunion single from Simon and Garfunkel that reads as a bitter anti-nostalgia song, dismantling the idea of small-town…
small-town disillusionment loss of faith suppressed violence
Nina Simone
A traditional African-American spiritual rebuilt by Simone into a ten-minute chase sequence: a sinner runs from judgment on the…
judgment day futile flight refused sanctuary
Talking Heads
A preacher-like voice addresses an unnamed "you," cataloguing the accidental furniture of a middle-class life and then asking…
mid-life disorientation the unearned life time as drift