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
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
PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey builds a self-mythologizing torch song out of biblical and folkloric imagery, casting devotion as a form of damnation.…
obsessive devotion blasphemy and sacrifice mythic self-invention
Roxy Music
A short, hypnotic track built almost entirely around a single repeated phrase, using minimal lyrical content to evoke a mood of…
obsession romantic devotion ambiguity of desire
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
Sonic Youth
A hazy, repetition-driven love song built on a nickname (borrowed from Marilyn Monroe's character in 'Some Like It Hot') that…
idealized desire surface glamour vs. hidden unease repetition as devotion
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
The Rolling Stones
A weary declaration of devotion dressed up as a refusal: the singer insists he won't be exploited or taken for granted, even as…
emotional labor in relationships self-worth and insecurity devotion disguised as protest
Mitski
Mitski builds a compact love song around a single, self-lacerating gambling metaphor: choosing to invest in something bound to…
self-sabotage in love masochistic devotion desire as identification with failure
Animal Collective
A song built around a half-real, half-mediated female icon glimpsed through screens and reviews, with the narrator working out…
celebrity and mediated desire gender and sexuality fandom as devotion
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin takes Sam Cooke's 1957 declaration of devotion and rebuilds it as a gospel-charged testimony of pleasure,…
romantic devotion desire as overwhelming force reclamation/reinterpretation
XTC
A cascade of small domestic and historical fantasies stacked into one long conditional wish, this song imagines romantic…
romantic devotion role-play and historical fantasy growth through love
A blunt, riff-driven declaration of desire that keeps colliding with the speaker's own disbelief at how simple and overwhelming…
desire versus complexity secrecy and shame repetition as devotion
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
Fleet Foxes
This two-part suite pairs a quiet devotional wandering through orchards and fountains with a raw, sonically ravaged breakup…
longing and unfulfilled devotion loss of connection possessiveness and withdrawal
A woman in a hard-pressed neighborhood insists that her devotion to her man is proof against the world's skepticism, turning a…
romantic devotion as proof poverty and resilience female desire and agency
Mos Def
A slow-burn seduction song built almost entirely on repetition and murmured reassurance rather than narrative incident. Mos Def…
seduction and patience presence over words physical intimacy as the only true communication
Rodney Crowell
A road-worn narrator, hungover and rattled by a bar-room bigot, turns to his partner and demands verbal reassurance rather than…
insecurity and reassurance aging and mortality bigotry and disgust
Smokey Robinson
A late-career Smokey Robinson song built on the classic instant-attraction premise: a man spots a woman and asks for a single…
instant attraction desire and persuasion romantic optimism
David Bowie
A dance-floor invitation built on a simple repeated command that gradually reveals an undertow of anxiety about impermanence and…
desire and vulnerability impermanence performance versus intimacy
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
Frank Sinatra
A love song that uses cosmic imagery as an elaborate courtship metaphor, translating grand celestial longing into the plainest…
romantic devotion longing and desire the vastness of space as metaphor for feeling
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
Bert Jansch
A late-period Bert Jansch song that treats courtship as sorcery, built from a wandering, almost dreamlike set of images rather…
enchantment and desire the limits of language to capture love folkloric imagery
Whitney Houston
A dance-pop declaration of instant, total surrender to a new love, built almost entirely around one repeated vow of…
instant attraction surrender and devotion desire framed as fate
Japanese Breakfast
A love song addressed to an emotionally shut-off partner rendered as a machine, where intimacy is described in the vocabulary of…
emotional unavailability desire versus control dehumanization of a lover
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
Thin Lizzy
A tender, almost devotional love song built on simple repeated vows, addressed to someone named Sarah. Its plainness is the…
unconditional love parental/romantic tenderness devotion
The Beach Boys
A brief, buoyant mid-60s Beach Boys track that expresses uncomplicated gratitude toward a devoted partner. There's no plot or…
devotion gratitude young love
Minnie Riperton
A soft, incantatory love song built almost entirely from direct address and imperative pleading, in which the singer asks a…
romantic surrender identity through the other sensuality
Seal
This is Seal's cover of the Al Green soul standard, a straightforward vow of devotion rendered in his signature smoky vocal…
devotion commitment through hardship romantic idealization
Ramones
A stripped-down declaration of devotion built almost entirely from repeated affirmations rather than narrative detail. The song…
devotion simplicity as sincerity teenage romance
Sade
A slow, incantatory love song built almost entirely on a single declarative claim, repeated until it becomes its own proof. Sade…
contentment devotion sufficiency
Donny Hathaway
A late-period Donny Hathaway love song built around a single refrain that gets repeated and reframed across the hours of a day.…
devotion time and memory domestic intimacy
Chaka Khan
A devotional, almost ceremonial love song built on a single vow of presence: to be there at the first light of a relationship,…
devotion presence and belonging new beginnings
Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson takes the well-worn Kern-Fields standard and slows it into something closer to a devotional murmur, letting the…
devotion memory as comfort aging and constancy
A cover of Ewan MacColl's 1957 folk standard, rendered here as a slow, orchestral torch ballad. George Michael strips the song…
first love devotion transcendence through intimacy
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
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
This is Lauryn Hill's rendition of the 1967 Frankie Valli classic, placed on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a brief,…
infatuation gratitude vulnerability