Wire
A blunt, almost domestic-scale confrontation song built around one sustained image of betrayal-as-stabbing, delivered with a…
betrayal complicity disgust with manipulation
Interpol
A murky, incantatory song built around two women's names -- Rosemary and Sandy -- that Interpol never fully reconciles into a…
complicity and denial seduction as manipulation guilt and judgment
SZA
SZA casts herself as the mistress in a triangle and refuses the shame the role usually carries, framing her position as a…
infidelity and complicity self-worth versus desire possession and comparison
Laura Marling
This is Laura Marling's recording of Neil Young's 1972 song about heroin addiction, written after Young watched a bandmate…
addiction loss complicity of the witness
Townes Van Zandt
A ballad about a legendary Mexican bandit and the friend widely suspected of betraying him, told with the flattened affect of a…
betrayal and complicity myth-making versus truth exile and displacement
Magazine
A song about ideological homelessness, built around a narrator who has infiltrated a crowd or movement only to find himself…
ideological disillusionment alienation from crowds and movements cynicism about political certainty
Curtis Mayfield
A eulogy and a warning delivered in the same breath, this song uses the death of a minor drug-trade casualty from the Superfly…
addiction and exploitation systemic racism/economic entrapment urban despair
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
Billie Holiday
A protest song built on a single sustained metaphor, comparing lynched Black bodies hanging from Southern trees to fruit ready…
racial violence and lynching complicity of the pastoral South witness and testimony
The Velvet Underground
A simple origin myth about the redemptive power of rock and roll, told through a suburban girl named Jenny whose bleak home life…
salvation through music suburban alienation radio and mass culture