New Order
A song about a relationship curdling under the weight of unspoken resentment, built on the tension between wanting release and…
emotional withholding breakup and loss communication breakdown
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
The War on Drugs
Red Eyes is a rush of ecstatic, half-legible sentiment stitched to a driving, anthemic rock arrangement, where the lyric's…
devotion under strain spiritual/emotional darkness self-doubt
The Kinks
The Kinks revive Lola from their earlier hit only to trap her in a nervous, self-lacerating anthem about anxiety and…
paranoia and mental illness self-sabotage fame and surveillance anxiety
Gillian Welch
Gillian Welch strings together a series of small-town obituaries and rumors — an overdose, a runaway, a breakdown, a possible…
mortality and fatalism small-town gossip and rumor addiction and ruin