Talking Heads
A family gathers around a newborn and, with a mix of adoration and casual selfishness, decides to keep waking him up because…
infantilization and possession domestic joy selfishness disguised as love
Otis Redding
Otis Redding's rendition of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem transforms a carefully wrought protest song into a raw,…
racial injustice and endurance faith versus doubt family and disappointment
Tom Waits
A wandering man confesses to a lover that he's constitutionally unable to take the straight path home, in love or in life. Waits…
restlessness and wanderlust romantic unreliability the tension between domesticity and freedom
New Order
A euphoric synth-pop track built on lyrics of paralysis and unspoken feeling: the narrator is caught between infatuation and…
romantic paralysis emotional confusion fear of vulnerability
Maxwell
Maxwell's cover of Kate Bush's 'This Woman's Work' turns a song about a man's helplessness during childbirth into a raw,…
helplessness impending loss regret
Jimi Hendrix
This is Hendrix's take on the Booker T./William Bell blues standard, a compact statement of fatalism delivered through the…
fatalism poverty and misfortune blues tradition/lineage
Smokey Robinson
A straightforward duet declaration of romantic certainty and fidelity, built around a duet pairing Smokey Robinson's classic…
romantic devotion fidelity certainty in love
Marvin Gaye
A returning-soldier's-eye plea addressed to family members in turn — mother, brother, father — asking why grief and violence…
war and its cost at home generational misunderstanding police brutality and protest
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
The Beach Boys
A love song that opens by admitting its own limits "" the singer won't promise permanence "" and then spends the rest of its…
conditional devotion dependence and identity uncertainty as a form of honesty