Television
Television's late-reunion track builds a noir vignette out of coded phone numbers and cryptic instructions, sounding like a…
surveillance and code confinement versus escape urgency under pressure
Memphis Minnie
A late-period Memphis Minnie blues built on a repeated refrain about clandestine romance, treated with wry fatalism rather than…
secrecy and infidelity consequences of desire female camaraderie and cautionary gossip
Betty Davis
A raw funk vamp that turns the language of politics into an extended sexual come-on, with Davis playing a swaggering seductress…
sexual power and control satire of political rhetoric female sexual agency
Missy Elliott
Missy Elliott's signature single is a maximalist celebration of sexual confidence and self-invention, built on a literal sonic…
sexual agency self-invention and reinvention female solidarity and hustle
Howlin’ Wolf
A slow, slinking blues built entirely on barnyard imagery, in which a rooster's absence throws the whole farm into disorder.…
sexual potency and absence domestic disorder masculine boasting
Arca
"Rakata" is Arca's detonation of classic reggaeton vocabulary -- the perreo ad-libs, the dembow percussion chatter, the…
sexual appetite and self-possession reclaiming reggaeton/perreo lineage transformation and witchcraft as metaphor
Gang Starr
Guru builds a track around the idea of self-restraint, framing discipline as the thing separating impulse from action in matters…
self-restraint vs impulse sexual politics and mistrust hustler code and reputation
Company Flow
"Lune TNS" is Bigg Jus's solo tribute to New York subway graffiti culture, structured almost entirely as a cascading roll call…
graffiti history and lineage New York City geography and transit youth and formative witnessing
Wet Leg
A deadpan burst of post-university malaise dressed up as a deadpan seduction bit, built almost entirely on a crude pun and a…
deflated ambition sexual innuendo as comedy boredom and indolence
Bon Iver
The opening track of For Emma, Forever Ago is a fragmented, image-driven overture more than a narrative song, built from cryptic…
maternal inheritance identity and self-definition bodily/natural imagery as emotional code
Eric B. & Rakim
An extended sexual metaphor built entirely around the language of music-making, where rapping, drumming, and tempo stand in for…
sexuality as performance music as body seduction through craft
Car Seat Headrest
A song about the failure of language to carry romantic and sexual desire, so the narrator retreats into the physical -- dancing,…
failure of language desire and physical intimacy mortality and fragility of the body
De La Soul
"Buddy" is a posse-cut party track from De La Soul's debut, built around an extended and deliberately silly sexual code word…
sexual innuendo through wordplay collective male bravado playful group identity
Kacey Musgraves
A comic, unapologetically horny country song about a woman counting off the days since her last sexual encounter, using rural…
sexual frustration female desire and agency rural/country signifiers as innuendo
Sufjan Stevens
A brief, understated love song about the impossibility of naming a feeling that doesn't fit any available category. The narrator…
unspoken love platonic vs romantic intimacy inadequacy of language
A big man's boastful self-defense turns into an easy, unhurried seduction. Howlin' Wolf takes what could be an insult about his…
self-acceptance masculine boasting sexuality and endurance
Led Zeppelin
A blues-rock boast built almost entirely on sexual innuendo and repetition, where the lyric functions less as narrative than as…
sexual conquest desire and excess masculine bravado
The Replacements
A quiet, unglamorous portrait of teenage isolation, framed around confusion about sexuality and identity. Instead of anthemic…
adolescent alienation sexual confusion loneliness
Bettye LaVette
This is a straight-ahead blues boast, built on a classic call-and-response hook, in which the singer offers herself as the cure…
sexual confidence self-possession comfort over speed (blues innuendo)
Taj Mahal
A short, loose blues vamp built on a single stretched-out innuendo: an itch that needs scratching. Taj Mahal uses the old blues…
sexual innuendo bodily pleasure call-and-response flirtation
Big Mama Thornton
A self-naming blues boast in which the singer claims her nickname, her size, and her sexual confidence as sources of power…
self-naming and reclamation body as power sexual confidence
A boastful, sexually charged blues in which the singer claims mastery over both the physical act of "rocking" a partner and the…
sexual bravado transactional relationships masculine reputation
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode's "Angel" describes a visitation - an overwhelming spiritual or erotic encounter that strips the narrator of…
religious ecstasy surrender and dissolution erotic/spiritual conflation
St. Vincent
A voice built entirely of negation insists on its own indeterminacy while a second, quieter voice tries to soothe or scold it…
self-negation and identity refusal power and submission emotional volatility
Heart
A young woman narrates her seduction by an older, magnetic man, tracing her passage from girlhood to sexual awakening over the…
sexual awakening loss of innocence maternal anxiety
Ann Peebles
A declaration of sexual and emotional appetite delivered without apology, this song is Ann Peebles claiming the traditionally…
female desire and agency self-possession pursuit and conquest
Mississippi John Hurt
A rollicking Piedmont blues built entirely on a single, transparent sexual double entendre. Mississippi John Hurt uses the…
sexual innuendo folk humor itinerant male desirability
King Crimson
Adrian Belew turns a nonsense abecedarian exercise into a satire of verbal noise, marching through the alphabet with synonyms…
communication breakdown language as noise satire of discourse
A brash, party-floor anthem in which Missy Elliott asserts sexual and regional dominance in equal measure, treating braggadocio…
sexual assertiveness regional pride/unity self-mythologizing braggadocio
Fugazi
A tense, elliptical piece built around the image of a man walking a psychological margin, caught between admiration and violence…
obsession and surveillance jealousy self-destruction
Massive Attack
This is a fragmentary, almost liturgical piece built around a single stammered command—obedience—repeated until it dissolves…
power and submission ritual/liturgy loss of individual voice
Joe Williams
This is the standard Johnny Mercer/Richard Whiting torch-song standard, given a warm, unhurried reading by Joe Williams. The…
ineffability of love the limits of language playful hyperbole
Stevie Wonder
A slick mid-80s dance-pop track built around the mechanics of a secret affair, complete with coded signals and cover stories.…
infidelity and secrecy coded communication double standards in relationships
Bill Callahan
A meditation on grief and the failure of language to console it, built around a dream in which the narrator writes down what he…
grief and mourning the limits of language dreams versus waking reality
A raw, funk-driven declaration of Southern Black identity that fuses food, sex, and soul music into a single unapologetic…
Southern Black identity sexual assertiveness reclamation of stereotype
Josh Ritter
A small-town girl is sent to Bible college to be straightened out, and comes back having absorbed scripture's actual ethics…
religious hypocrisy sexual freedom small-town conformity
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
Betty Davis turns dirty talk into a call-and-response ritual, offering total sexual and emotional surrender in exchange for…
sexual liberation dominance and submission performance of desire
Neutral Milk Hotel
An opening track that fuses childhood memory with domestic violence and adolescent sexual awakening, all delivered in a run-on,…
childhood innocence and its loss domestic dysfunction sexual awakening
A terse, angry meditation on the failure of language to guarantee anything, 'Promises' treats verbal commitment as a kind of…
distrust of language broken commitment individual autonomy vs. mutual obligation