Results for “desire and dissatisfaction”

Songs

My Black Mama Part 1

Son House

An early Delta blues performance built from loosely linked verses about a woman, sexual and romantic frustration, and…

desire and dissatisfaction mortality and religious doubt masculine boasting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'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

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

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) [Steve Angello Bootleg]

Eurythmics

This is a club remix of the Eurythmics classic, stripping the original's icy synth-pop menace down to a looped mantra built for…

universal desire ambivalence and detachment perseverance

Start Me Up

The Rolling Stones

A relentless riff-driven come-on built almost entirely from a single mechanical metaphor: sex as an engine or vehicle that needs…

sexual desire machinery/car imagery as metaphor loss of control

What Else Is There?

Röyksopp

A hazy meditation on visibility and distance between two people who are moving through the same landscape without ever truly…

invisibility and unrecognition distance within closeness self-mythologizing

You Can Leave Your Hat On

Randy Newman

A slow-building striptease monologue delivered as a series of clipped stage directions, in which the speaker's controlling…

desire and control objectification voyeurism

I Want You (Vocal)

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning plea for mutual desire, built almost entirely on repetition of a single wish stated and restated until it becomes…

unreciprocated desire longing for mutuality vulnerability in seduction

X Offender

Blondie

Blondie's debut single reframes a streetwalker's infatuation with a police officer as a giddy crime narrative, blurring the…

desire as transgression policing and power irony of legal language repurposed as romance

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Vampire Weekend

A brisk, brand-strewn snapshot of prep-school desire, where a narrator sketches a young woman's privileged upbringing before the…

class and privilege cultural appropriation and borrowing adolescent desire

Ansiedad

Nat King Cole

A bolero of pure longing, built almost entirely around the word "ansiedad" (anxiety/yearning) as the singer describes the…

longing and desire separation romantic devotion

Light My Fire

The Doors

A direct sexual invitation dressed as a song about urgency and risk, built around a fire metaphor that doubles as both seduction…

desire and urgency risk/consequence of love carpe diem

No. 13 Baby

Pixies

A fragmented, image-driven portrait of a woman rendered through physical detail and refrain rather than narrative, built around…

obsessive desire fragmented portraiture exoticization/otherness

West End Girls

Pet Shop Boys

A cold, hypnotic portrait of London's class and consumer divide, delivered in a near-rap monotone over a synth-pop groove. The…

class division urban alienation consumption and desire

Harvest Moon

Cassandra Wilson

Cassandra Wilson's cover transforms Neil Young's rustic love song into a slow, smoky meditation on enduring desire, stretching…

enduring love desire and memory nature as intimacy

20th Century Boy

T. Rex

A glam-rock strut built almost entirely on swagger and sound rather than narrative, the song is a self-mythologizing come-on in…

performed masculinity desire and conquest celebrity self-mythologizing

I Just Want To Make Love To You

Etta James

Etta James takes a Willie Dixon blues lyric written for a male singer and, sung from a woman's voice, turns a checklist of…

desire and domesticity gender role reversal possessiveness dressed as devotion

Gloria

Patti Smith

Patti Smith opens her debut album by rewriting Van Morrison's garage-rock standard as a declaration of self-authored sin and…

blasphemy and self-determination desire and conquest gender and voice inversion

On Hold

The xx

A breakup song built on the gap between assumed permanence and sudden loss, where the narrator realizes too late that…

complacency in love loss of control desire versus resentment

Mambo Sun

T. Rex

An opening-track invocation that treats seduction as a piece of cosmic weather, stitching together surreal, half-formed images…

desire as cosmic force surrealist romanticism vulnerability beneath bravado

Sanctified Lady

Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye sketches a wish list for a monogamous, church-going partner against a mid-80s backdrop of promiscuity and disease…

sexual anxiety in the AIDS/herpes era the sacred vs. the profane desire for domestic stability

Paradise Circus

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

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

Is It Love

Gang of Four

A fractured meditation on desire and alienation, this song asks whether what passes for love is really love at all, or just…

alienation under capitalism commodification of intimacy loss of language/memory