Results for “desire and anticipation”

Songs

Feel Like Makin' Love

Roberta Flack

A slow-building meditation on desire that treats ordinary moments — a walk, a candlelit dinner, a touch — as triggers for…

desire and intimacy the sensuality of the ordinary seasonal renewal as metaphor

Whatcha Gonna Do

Smokey Robinson

A late-career Smokey Robinson seduction song built almost entirely on anticipation rather than consummation. The singer catalogs…

desire and anticipation physical fixation seduction as performance

Crazy for You

Madonna

A slow-dance ballad built around a single moment: crossing a crowded room toward someone and closing the distance between…

infatuation vulnerability physical desire

It Might As Well Be Spring

Sarah Vaughan

A standard from the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook, this is a portrait of adolescent restlessness dressed up as a…

longing without an object self-aware irrationality anticipation and desire

Just Like Water

Lauryn Hill

Performed live and introduced almost as an experiment in vulnerability after the confrontational 'Rebel', this song builds an…

surrender spiritual longing conflated with romantic desire purification

Faith

George Michael

A dance-pop declaration of self-preservation dressed up as a love song: the narrator is attracted to someone but refuses to hand…

romantic self-protection distrust of surface attraction patience versus desire

I Want

Chaka Khan

A straightforward declaration of romantic devotion and desire, built almost entirely on the call-and-response between the words…

desire devotion reassurance

Rockin' After Midnight

Marvin Gaye

A late-night dance-floor come-on built almost entirely from repeated affirmations of desire, this track functions less as a…

desire nightlife/escapism romantic pursuit

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

Untitled

Interpol

The opening track of Turn On the Bright Lights strips lyrics down to almost nothing: a single promise repeated and slightly…

reassurance anticipation emotional distance

Like Sugar

Chaka Khan

A pure dancefloor invitation built on a single sensory equation: funk equals sugar equals irresistible pull. Chaka Khan spends…

physical pleasure dance as surrender desire

Fortunate

Maxwell

A neo-soul love song built almost entirely from negation and comparison: the singer catalogs firsts and never-had-befores to…

gratitude romantic awe transformation through love

Tie Your Mother Down

Queen

A hard-rock stomper about sneaking past disapproving parents to get to a girl, played entirely for comic, cartoonish swagger.…

teenage rebellion forbidden romance comic machismo

Give Me Your Love (Love Song)

Curtis Mayfield

A slow-burning soul ballad built almost entirely around a single plea, this track works less through storytelling than through…

romantic devotion vulnerability refuge from hardship

In the Sun

Blondie

A breezy, almost novelty-pop daydream in which the singer imagines escaping gray urban New York for a sunlit, surf-and-luau…

escapism urban alienation fantasy vs. reality

Cabin Down Below

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

Surgeon

St. Vincent

A woman narrates a summer of collapse—medication, isolation, avoidance of family and mail—while a chorus repeats a request to be…

depression and isolation medicalization of the self desire for external repair

Right In Time

Lucinda Williams

A slow-building meditation on desire built from small domestic gestures rather than declarations. Williams narrates a private…

longing memory and its physical trace solitary desire

Rid of Me

PJ Harvey

A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…

obsession codependency possessiveness

Human Nature

Michael Jackson

A nocturnal meditation on urban restlessness and desire, framed as a defense against unnamed accusers who question the…

urban alienation desire and impulse self-justification

I'm On Fire

Bruce Springsteen

A minimal, hushed blues built on obsessive desire, where the narrator's want curdles into something closer to torment than…

obsessive desire sleeplessness and mental anguish transgressive attraction

The Nearness of You

Sarah Vaughan

A standard by Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington, here rendered by Sarah Vaughan as an intimate meditation on physical presence…

desire and presence the inadequacy of romantic cliché vulnerability

Dreams

Brandi Carlile

A hushed confession about desire that can only surface in sleep, this song is built around the gap between what the narrator…

repressed desire unrequited longing self-restraint

Bad Habits (Uncut)

Maxwell

Maxwell casts desire as an addiction that the singer both craves and cannot escape, framing love as a compulsion with real costs…

addiction as metaphor for love loss of control guilt and self-awareness

This Charming Man

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

Little Girl

Muddy Waters

A raw, low-slung blues courtship number in which the narrator badgers a woman with flirtatious questions, building desire…

flirtation and pursuit sensual desire Southern imagery

By the Rivers Dark

Leonard Cohen

A short, incantatory prayer-song in which the speaker surrenders the illusion of being the one who loves and comes to see love…

surrender of ego divine or transcendent love exile and punishment

T.V. Eye

The Stooges

This is a song built almost entirely on repetition, groove, and physical grunt rather than narrative or wordplay. It circles a…

voyeurism and being watched sexual desire primal/animal imagery

Barely Legal

The Strokes

A slack, half-confessional monologue about a lopsided romance where guilt, desire, and self-sabotage tangle together without…

failed responsibility desire and control guilt and self-justification

Kanga Roo

Big Star

A woozy, half-collapsed love song built from disconnected snapshots rather than a story, drifting through washes of noise and…

fractured attention desire as disorientation voyeurism and observation

Werewolf

Cat Power

Cat Power turns the werewolf myth into a spare, almost hymn-like meditation on shame, desire, and the parts of ourselves that…

shame and secrecy duality of self compulsion and desire

Jeepster

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

Because the Night

Patti Smith

A co-write between Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen, this song turns nighttime into a sanctuary where desire overrides doubt…

desire as sustenance night as refuge doubt versus surrender

Jambalaya

Hank Williams

A breathless invitation to a Cajun celebration, this song strings together food, music, and a woman's name into a single rushing…

celebration regional identity and place romantic anticipation

I'm a Ram

Al Green

This is a lean, driving groove song built almost entirely around one animal metaphor: the singer as a ram, butting persistently…

persistence in desire masculine self-assertion obstacle and pursuit

Shadow of a Doubt

Sonic Youth

A chance meeting on a train dissolves into a hazy, possibly murderous conspiracy between the narrator and a stranger, with the…

complicity and denial desire as danger dream logic

Can't Get Enough

Bad Company

A straightforward blues-rock strut about wanting sex and not being satisfied, built almost entirely on one repeated declaration…

physical desire insatiability masculine bravado

I Feel Like Breaking Up / Somebody's Home Tonight

Ann Peebles

A woman alone on a rainy night confesses to a desire strong enough to make her willing to wreck another relationship just to…

forbidden desire loneliness emotional compulsion versus morality

See No Evil

Television

The opening track of Marquee Moon works as a manifesto of pure appetite and willful blindness, its narrator declaring immediate…

desire and impatience willful ignorance denial of consequence

Glory Box

John Martyn

This is John Martyn's reworking of Portishead's 'Glory Box', stripped of its trip-hop menace and turned into a weary, aching…

exhaustion with games surrender to desire gender roles and reversal