Results for “desire versus resistance”

Songs

You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want To Do It)

Patsy Cline

This is a classic Tin Pan Alley standard reworked through Patsy Cline's country-pop phrasing, built almost entirely around a…

reluctant surrender desire versus resistance emotional vulnerability

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

Never Could Toe the Mark

Waylon Jennings

A plainspoken defense of romantic independence, delivered in Waylon Jennings' outlaw drawl. The narrator explains, without…

romantic independence resistance to conformity outlaw self-mythology

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

All Right Now (Single)

Free

A blues-rock pickup story stripped to its essentials: a street encounter, a home invitation, a moment of resistance, and a…

seduction and courtship male bravado reassurance versus persuasion

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

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

You Can't Always Get What You Want

The Rolling Stones

A gospel-choir-backed anthem that stitches together disconnected scenes of desire, disillusionment, and death, all resolving…

disillusionment compromise the counterculture's limits

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

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

This Is Love

PJ Harvey

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

Water Curses

Animal Collective

A dreamlike wish-song built around water as an image of fluidity, ease, and self-erasure, drifting through loosely connected…

desire for formlessness/transformation mortality and impermanence creativity and artistic longing

Steam

Peter Gabriel

A funk-driven track built around a slippery central image—steam as heat, pressure, arousal, and creative combustion all at once.…

desire and arousal pressure and release perception versus performance

Let's Dance

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

Sumthin' Sumthin': Mellosmoothe (Cut)

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

Dancing star

Pet Shop Boys

A biographical tribute in the form of a synth-pop anthem, tracing a defector's escape from the Soviet Union to global stardom in…

defection and exile fame and celebrity freedom versus authoritarianism

Venus

Television

A downtown-New York nocturne about a night walk that tips into a heightened, almost hallucinatory perception of the city,…

urban nightlife altered perception desire and detachment

Sometimes a Fantasy

Billy Joel

A driving new-wave rocker about phone sex and the loneliness that drives someone to it, dressed up in a jittery, almost…

loneliness desire and substitution shame versus need

Baby It's Cold Outside

Ella Fitzgerald

A duet built entirely on a woman making excuses to leave and a man supplying reasons to keep her there, all while a blizzard…

seduction and resistance social propriety vs desire persuasion and pressure

Lucky Star

Madonna

A buoyant early-80s dance-pop confection that turns a childhood wishing-star rhyme into an adult love song, celebrating…

infatuation luck and fate celestial imagery

Can It Be All So Simple / Intermission

Wu‐Tang Clan

This Raekwon and Ghostface Killah cut turns Nas's soul-sample nostalgia formula inside out, using a hazy "remember when" hook to…

street violence and its costs nostalgia versus reality material aspiration and escape

You Should Probably Leave

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

Shot By Both Sides

Magazine

A song about ideological homelessness, built around a narrator who has infiltrated a crowd or movement only to find himself…

ideological disillusionment alienation from crowds and movements cynicism about political certainty

Sexy Boy

Air

A woozy, vocoder-warped taunt built almost entirely out of one phrase, "Sexy Boy" pokes at masculine vanity and celebrity…

vanity and self-image celebrity and consumerism irony versus seduction

Take Me to the River

Annie Lennox

Annie Lennox's version of the Al Green/Talking Heads standard turns a soul groove into a slow-burning meditation on masochistic…

destructive love confession and self-knowledge ritual cleansing/baptism

You and I

Betty Davis

A slow, confessional ballad in which Betty Davis strips away the funk-rock swagger of her usual persona to admit vulnerability…

emotional vulnerability the gap between maturity and desire dependency versus independence

Ms. Fat Booty

Mos Def

A narrative rap unfolding like a short film in three scenes, tracking a pursuit-and-fallout romance with a woman the narrator…

desire versus discernment the performance of masculinity and vulnerability cynicism eroded by intimacy

This Mess We're In

PJ Harvey

A duet-style meditation on a fleeting New York encounter, sung against a backdrop of helicopters, sunsets and skyscrapers that…

transience of connection urban alienation desire versus impermanence

Slide Tackle

Japanese Breakfast

A short, almost breathless meditation on the effort of self-improvement, framed through the odd, physical image of a soccer…

self-sabotage the labor of happiness obsessive thought patterns

Shut Up Kiss Me

Angel Olsen

A driving, garage-pop declaration of romantic persistence, in which the narrator refuses to let a faltering relationship end…

romantic persistence refusal to quit desire versus communication

Oh My God

Adele

A woman recently out of a long relationship narrates the giddy, guilty rush of falling into a new attraction she knows is…

post-divorce self-reinvention guilt versus desire loss of control

Say No Go

De La Soul

De La Soul takes on the crack epidemic of the late 1980s not through gritty street reportage but through wordplay, sampling, and…

addiction and its generational cost complicity versus resistance community warning and moral instruction

Call Your Girlfriend

Robyn

Robyn scripts a breakup for a man on behalf of the woman he's about to leave someone for, coaching him line by line on how to…

infidelity and self-justification emotional labor the ethics of kindness

Be Sweet

Japanese Breakfast

A synth-pop breakup plea dressed up as a demand rather than a lament: the narrator wants proof of good faith from an unreliable…

conditional love self-deception desire versus doubt

Mystery Achievement

The Pretenders

A live rendition of a Pretenders deep cut that treats fame and validation as a slippery, half-mocked obsession. Chrissie Hynde's…

ambivalence toward fame self-invention desire versus disillusionment

Wild Fire

Laura Marling

Laura Marling narrates from the outside of a relationship, watching a woman she's fascinated by perform for others while…

watching versus being seen inherited family damage artistic self-consciousness

You Go to My Head

Cassandra Wilson

This is Cassandra Wilson's 2015 reading of the 1938 Coots/Gillespie standard, delivered as part of a tribute to Billie Holiday.…

intoxication as metaphor for desire self-awareness versus helplessness obsession

I Won't Dance

Frank Sinatra

A comic protest song in which the singer refuses to dance not out of reluctance but because dancing with this particular woman…

comic denial as flirtation physical desire disguised as reluctance control versus surrender

Binz

Solange

A hazy, half-sung interlude built almost entirely from wordless vocal riffs and a few looping fragments about luxury, sex, and…

Black interiority and privacy luxury as self-possession desire and physical memory