The Doors
This is a live rehearsal-tape performance of the Van Morrison/Them garage-rock standard, stretched by Jim Morrison into a loose,…
adolescent sexual awakening performance and improvisation desire and impatience
Little Feat
A late-night narrator wanders into a seedy nightclub called the Spanish Moon and finds himself pawning his possessions to keep…
seduction and ruin vice and nightlife music as intoxicant
Sade
A cool, cinematic character study of a jet-setting con artist who trades in seduction and money with equal fluency. Sade…
seduction as commerce emotional detachment glamour and danger
Yes
A harder-edged, riff-driven track from 90125 that trades Yes's usual cosmic imagery for a noirish urban vignette about street…
urban predation temptation and naivety danger as seduction
A boozy, tall-tale narrative about a drifter drawn in by a radio siren's voice and then by a woman (or maybe a car, or a storm,…
seduction and danger the open road as myth radio as folklore/siren call
Fairport Convention
A young woman walking in the woods meets a strange, magnetic man who half-admits to being an outlaw or something worse, and ends…
seduction and danger the fox as trickster/shapeshifter female agency and vulnerability
Genesis
A driving opener built around the image of a lethal dance performed on the lip of an active volcano, where every misstep is…
risk and consequence performance under pressure mortality
Massive Attack
A slow-burning meditation on desire as self-inflicted damage, built from a handful of repeated images—storms, sin, flame,…
desire and self-destruction moral ambivalence addiction to feeling
Roxy Music
A restless catalogue of modern pleasures and their exhaustion, delivered in Ferry's arch, half-mocking voice. The song races…
disposability of romance modern glamour vs. rural retreat fate and gambling as models for love
Talking Heads
"Swamp" plays like a fever-dream noir, David Byrne narrating a shadowy transaction with the devil and a cast of menacing,…
paranoia moral corruption identity dissolution
David Bowie
A propulsive novelty-funk number written for the film Labyrinth, in which a chant-like spell is cast to soothe a crying infant…
childhood fear transformation through play ritual and incantation
Thin Lizzy
A first-person stalker song that trades on the ambiguity between a literal serial killer and a predatory seducer, using a…
predation and stalking masculine menace as performance ambiguity of violence vs seduction
Tom Petty
A stripped-down invitation song built almost entirely on repetition and a single image: a secluded cabin as the destination for…
seduction escape desire
Prince
A one-night invitation dressed up as a love song, built almost entirely around a single seductive refrain. Prince stages a…
seduction romantic urgency escapism
Smokey Robinson
A late-70s slow-jam invitation built almost entirely around a single repeated request: an offer to share the night. The song…
seduction mutual vulnerability intimacy as exchange
Muddy Waters
This is a blues standard built entirely on an insect conceit: the singer casts himself as a bee and his desired partner as a…
sexual boasting seduction male virility
Elliott Smith
A quiet, corrosive warning song addressed to someone being courted by fame and the music industry, personified as a seductive…
temptation and corruption the music industry as predator loss of autonomy
Bad Company
A road-worn narrator drifts through a neon city at night, half-thrilled and half-alienated by its speed and casual violence. Bad…
urban alienation spectacle and danger the outsider observer
A courtly, almost hypnotic love song written for the film Labyrinth, in which the speaker offers cosmic gifts to a beloved while…
seduction and enchantment love as surrender impermanence
Harry Nilsson
A stripped-down invitation to abandon restraint set to a rolling backbeat, the song works less as narrative than as incantation,…
seduction release/abandon repetition as persuasion
Talib Kweli
A breezy, radio-ready love-and-lust song built around a repeated hook praising a woman's heat and appeal. Talib Kweli trades his…
desire and attraction romantic idealization pop culture reference as flattery
Deep Purple
A swaggering character sketch of a seductive performer-illusionist who trades in charm and disguise rather than substance. The…
seduction as performance illusion vs. authenticity narcissism and self-mythologizing
The Smiths
A stranded young man with a broken bicycle is picked up by an older, wealthier stranger, and the encounter becomes a charged,…
class anxiety closeted desire vanity and self-consciousness
Bob Dylan
A gentle, direct invitation to a lover to stay the night, sung in a warm, unhurried voice that marks a sharp turn from Dylan's…
seduction and invitation domesticity urgency vs. patience
Michael Jackson
A horror-movie pastiche built as a seduction, where the terror on screen and the terror of intimacy blur together. The song…
horror as seduction voyeurism and spectacle predator/prey dynamics
T. Rex
A glam-rock come-on that fuses car culture, cosmic imagery, and vampire slang into a single boastful seduction. Marc Bolan…
desire and objectification glamour of consumer culture (cars) seduction as performance
Chris Stapleton
A late-night seduction song built on reverse psychology, where the narrator repeats a warning to leave while doing everything…
temptation and self-denial desire versus restraint vulnerability disguised as control
Sandy Denny
This is a traditional British/Irish folk ballad given a spare, haunting reading by Sandy Denny, in which a woman recounts…
seduction and betrayal female shame and defiance broken promises
Aretha Franklin
A mid-80s dance-pop track built around a single street-slang question: who's manipulating whom in a game of seduction. Aretha…
romantic gamesmanship female agency and self-possession seduction as strategy
Maxwell
This is a stripped-down, mostly instrumental-feeling neo-soul seduction piece built from fragments rather than full verses. It…
desire and seduction emotional guardedness persistence versus reciprocity
Sturgill Simpson
A menacing, minimalist track built around predator imagery and a chorus that reads as either seduction or something far darker.…
predation and violence dissociation internal darkness/duality
Phoebe Bridgers
A song about being drawn back, again and again, to someone (or something) reckless and self-destructive, using the Peter Pan…
arrested development romanticized danger toxic intimacy
Joni Mitchell
A stark, allegorical account of heroin addiction told through personified figures: the needle, the drug's seductive pull, and…
addiction death as seduction urban decay
Jethro Tull
A pastoral seduction song that turns increasingly ambivalent, using the image of a lush green hillside as both a real place and…
pastoral seduction innocence versus experience double standards around sexuality
Written for the Batman soundtrack, this track uses seduction as camouflage for a darker interrogation of manipulation and…
seduction as manipulation power and control faith versus flattery
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
The Roots
A slow-burning seduction track built around a repeated come-on hook, in which the narrator positions himself as a superior…
seduction and desire infidelity masculine competition
Kendrick Lamar
A coming-of-age account of hustling in Compton, oscillating between the seductive fantasy of quick money and the grim math of…
poverty and survival the seduction of money violence and its normalization
A retro-soul come-on built around a single, overworked double entendre, this theme song for HBO's Vinyl trades on 1970s funk…
desire as addiction performance of seduction decay behind glamour
Marvin Gaye
A slow-burning seduction song built almost entirely on a single proposition: move in with me. Marvin Gaye layers a soft, almost…
seduction and desire domestic fantasy emotional vulnerability masked as pleasure-seeking