Unwound
A short, incantatory song built around a single confession repeated like a curse: love is a demon. Verses sketch a speaker…
self-loathing love as possession isolation/displacement
Death Cab for Cutie
An extended, deliberately monotonous instrumental build frames a lyric spoken by someone who refuses to accept another person's…
obsession denial of rejection unreciprocated desire
Slayer
A straightforward early-Slayer horror piece in which the narrator is possessed and ultimately destroyed by an occult curse. It…
demonic possession loss of control occult horror
PJ Harvey
A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…
obsession codependency possessiveness
Chaka Khan
A meditation on jealousy and reassurance, sung by a partner who has just been told about some flirtation or attention from an…
jealousy possessiveness self-assurance
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A hazy, incantatory track that trades narrative clarity for mood and repetition, circling around loss, jealousy, and a loss of…
loss of control jealousy and betrayal naivety/self-deception
The O’Jays
A straightforward love song built almost entirely around light-as-devotion imagery, with the singer repeatedly affirming that…
devotion possessiveness light as metaphor for love
Joe Cocker
Joe Cocker's version of this Screamin' Jay Hawkins standard strips away the original's theatrical horror-show menace and…
obsessive love possessiveness jealousy
Descendents
A brief, blunt hardcore-punk song in which the narrator waits out a romantic rival, convinced that patience and possessiveness…
jealousy possessiveness unrequited love
The Animals
The Animals' version of this Screamin' Jay Hawkins standard turns a theatrical curse into a raw, garage-blues confession of…
SZA
SZA turns a breakup confession into a deadpan murder fantasy, using the exaggerated violence of the title as a vehicle for…
obsessive love jealousy denial and self-deception
Harry Nilsson
Nilsson's reading of the Pomus-Shuman standard takes a song already built on a tension between generosity and possessiveness and…
jealousy disguised as devotion possessiveness trust and its limits
The Triffids
A meditation on memory's unreliability, built around a man clutching physical relics of a lost woman while admitting each…
memory and distortion obsession idealization vs reality
The Temptations
A buoyant, uncomplicated love song built around call-and-response praise for a girlfriend, moving through her hair, her…
romantic infatuation possessiveness physical vs. inner beauty
B.B. King
A straightforward blues-soul declaration built almost entirely on the repeated phrase of devotion, this track trades narrative…
devotion fear of abandonment reassurance
FKA twigs
A seduction aimed squarely at someone else's partner, delivered with total confidence rather than guilt. The speaker frames…
sexual confidence rivalry and displacement desire as intoxication
Bee Gees
A disco-funk plea from a narrator stuck loving a partner who's cheating and staying anyway, caught between accusation and…
jealousy and infidelity codependency sexual desire vs self-respect
The Allman Brothers Band
A straight-ahead blues complaint built around a borrowed car, a vanished lover, and a narrator who keeps catching her out. It's…
betrayal and infidelity possessiveness wounded masculine pride
Michael Jackson
A buoyant, physically driven declaration of infatuation built almost entirely around a single hook that gets repeated, echoed,…
infatuation desire and pursuit possessiveness
The Rolling Stones
A blunt first-person account of having subdued a former partner into total compliance, delivered with a swagger that never…
domination and control gendered power imbalance possessiveness
Ghostface Killah
"Wildflower" is a vicious, sexually explicit diss track in which Ghostface Killah berates a former partner for cheating on him…
infidelity and betrayal masculine ego and sexual dominance revenge through humiliation
George Michael
A pop-funk plea from a partner watching a lover slide back into a destructive habit, with the habit personified as a rival for…
addiction as rival codependency frustrated love
Loretta Lynn
A wronged woman confronts her partner's infidelity by dismantling the appeal of the other woman, insisting the rival's power is…
betrayal and infidelity female rivalry possessiveness
The Band
A blues-rooted warning song built almost entirely on one refrain: the woman you love will mistreat you, and that mistreatment is…
romantic mistrust resignation and complicity double standards in love
Sinéad O’Connor
A declaration of independence from romantic possession, framed as a refusal rather than a lament. O'Connor sets up conventional…
autonomy versus possession distrust of romantic ownership spiritual love as refuge
Memphis Minnie
A woman sings about desire, control, and jealousy using the figure of a chauffeur as a thinly veiled sexual metaphor. The song…
female sexual agency jealousy and possessiveness double entendre and innuendo
Elliott Smith
A hushed, seductive address that turns out to be spoken in the voice of addiction itself, offering comfort, oblivion, and…
addiction as intimate voice self-destruction disguised as tenderness loss of potential
Neutral Milk Hotel
A distorted, obsessive love song that swings between tenderness and revulsion, built around the fixation of a narrator who both…
obsessive desire idealization vs. disgust possession and control
The Stylistics
A slow-burning declaration of romantic longing built almost entirely around one possessive phrase, repeated until it becomes an…
romantic longing possessiveness as devotion escape/private world
Taking Back Sunday
A jealous, self-pitying narrator confronts a partner he believes is cheating, oscillating between accusation and melodramatic…
jealousy and possessiveness emotional manipulation unreliable narration
Mitski
A brief, hymn-like address to the moon in which the speaker asks that their love outlive their body. It works less as narrative…
mortality possession and dispossession love as legacy
A spare, repetitive blues lament built almost entirely around one refrain: the singer would rather her man be dead than deny her…
sexual possessiveness jealousy and loss death as rhetorical extreme
A short, incantatory track built around elemental imagery of fire and water, where a possessed or transformed narrator moves…
transformation purification possession/obsession
Deerhunter
A brief, jangly pop song that fuses the language of romantic infatuation with imagery of illness, possession, and death, so that…
obsessive love possession and illness death and reincarnation
Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox's reading of this Screamin' Jay Hawkins standard, cut for her covers album Nostalgia, strips the song down to its…
possessive love jealousy desperation
A disorienting two-part piece that fuses surreal body-horror imagery with a plea for romantic or existential distance. It moves…
dissociation and bodily dread possessiveness in love isolation as self-protection
Colter Wall
A murder ballad told from inside a jail cell, where the narrator relives the courtship, betrayal, and killing of his lover Kate…
jealousy and possessiveness violence as consequence of betrayal guilt and damnation
Pet Shop Boys
A jealous lover watches a partner flirt and toy with a string of admirers, using the image of dominoes toppling one after…
jealousy and possessiveness romantic betrayal seduction as a game
Nat King Cole
This is Nat King Cole's rendition of "La Adelita," one of the best-known corridos of the Mexican Revolution, sung from the…
devotion and possessiveness war and mortality folk heroism
Blossom Dearie
A brief, deceptively simple plea for romantic exclusivity set to a dance-floor pulse, where the imperative to dance becomes a…
romantic exclusivity dance as metaphor for union fragility of love