Results for “desire vs. patience”

Songs

Cool It Down

The Velvet Underground

A loose, easy-rolling shuffle about romantic patience versus urgency, dressed in vague hints of bureaucratic or criminal…

desire vs. patience urban anonymity casual detachment

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 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

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

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

Restless

New Order

Restless opens New Order's Music Complete with a bright, synth-driven track that masks a fairly bleak inventory of consumer…

consumerism and desire emotional exhaustion alienation in modern life

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

Kokomo, IN

Japanese Breakfast

A song written from the point of view of someone left behind by a person who's moved on to a bigger life, framed as a letter of…

unrequited devotion being left behind longing and patience

Bull In the Heather

Sonic Youth

A slippery, almost mantra-like track built from a numeric countdown and a cycling list of demands, where desire and commerce…

desire vs. commodification repetition and ritual unpredictability/chance

Lay Lady Lay

Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes takes Dylan's spare, folk-country invitation and rebuilds it as a slow-burning soul seduction, stretching the…

seduction and invitation patience and waiting domestic intimacy

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

Naomi

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

Break You Off

The Roots

A slow-burning seduction track built around a repeated come-on hook, in which the narrator positions himself as a superior…

seduction and desire infidelity masculine competition

I'm Goin' Down

Bruce Springsteen

A breezy, almost bubblegum-pop arrangement carries a pretty deflating story about a relationship that's cooled into…

romantic frustration mismatched desire emotional deflation

Little Bribes

Death Cab for Cutie

A miniature Vegas travelogue that turns slot machines and casino architecture into a metaphor for loneliness and transaction.…

artifice vs authenticity loneliness and connection commodification of desire

Soothe My Soul

Depeche Mode

A blues-electro stalker's chant built almost entirely around a single fixation: sexual compulsion framed as addiction and…

obsession addiction desire as compulsion

Money (That's What I Want)

The Supremes

This is a cover of Barrett Strong's 1959 Motown founding single, redone by the Supremes as a driving, chant-heavy dance number.…

materialism vs. sentiment economic realism desire and demand

Gimmie Gimmie Shock Treatment

Ramones

A two-minute blast built on a single joke: a narrator who's fallen apart cheerfully begs for electroconvulsive therapy the way…

mental illness and institutionalization irony of enforced happiness conformity vs. breakdown

Fiction Romance

Buzzcocks

Buzzcocks turn the language of pulp romance novels and magazine love stories into a way of talking about the gap between…

mediated desire self-deception longing vs cynicism

So Emotional

Whitney Houston

A dance-pop track built around uncontrollable physical attraction rather than romance in any tender sense. The narrator catalogs…

obsessive desire loss of self-control infatuation vs. commitment

Dirt

The Stooges

A slow-burning blues built almost entirely from repeated fragments, "Dirt" turns degradation into a claim of inner combustion.…

self-abasement as power desire and vulnerability transformation through suffering

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

Green Light

Lorde

A breakup song built around the gap between wanting to move on and actually being able to. The verses sketch the disorientation…

emotional limbo self-deception vs. clarity urban restlessness

Higher

Sly & Robbie

A patient, seductive invitation dressed up as spiritual uplift, where the promise of 'higher' works simultaneously as romantic…

seduction disguised as salvation patience and waiting escape from disillusionment

Mushaboom

Feist

Mushaboom is a domestic daydream sung from the gap between a cramped present and an imagined rural future. Feist narrates a life…

domestic fantasy vs. present reality aspiration and patience rural retreat

Trouble On Double Time

Free

A brash blues-rock boast about womanizing that curdles into confession, as the narrator's swagger about juggling multiple…

infidelity and desire self-awareness vs self-destruction masculine bravado

Sugar Kane

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

Lean Woman Blues

T. Rex

A brief, blues-inflected lament built from stark two-word titles and short repeated stanzas, this track finds Marc Bolan casting…

romantic scarcity vulnerability power imbalance in love

Elephant

Jason Isbell

A narrator sits with a dying friend in a bar, trading jokes and old songs to avoid naming what's killing her. The song is a…

death and denial friendship vs. desire gallows humor

Fun House

The Stooges

Fun House is less a song than a physical event: a repetitive, chant-driven invocation that builds through call-and-response…

bodily release performance as ritual invitation and seduction

Lay, Lady, Lay

Bob Dylan

A gentle, direct invitation to a lover to stay the night, sung in a warm, unhurried voice that marks a sharp turn from Dylan's…

seduction and invitation domesticity urgency vs. patience

The Lady Don't Mind

Talking Heads

A breezy, mid-80s Talking Heads pop song built around a woman who slips through logic and expectation without apparent friction.…

surrender to irrationality enigmatic femininity detachment vs. desire

Damaged Goods

Gang of Four

Gang of Four fuse the language of romantic breakup with the language of consumer transactions, treating a relationship like a…

commodification of relationships alienation desire vs. disgust

One Way Trigger

The Strokes

A breakup song dressed in a falsetto so bright it almost disguises the exhaustion underneath. The Strokes borrow an A-ha style…

romantic ambivalence conformity vs. escape emotional exhaustion

Dry Spell

Kacey Musgraves

A comic, unapologetically horny country song about a woman counting off the days since her last sexual encounter, using rural…

sexual frustration female desire and agency rural/country signifiers as innuendo

Next Lifetime

Erykah Badu

A woman confesses to an overwhelming attraction to someone who isn't her partner, and instead of acting on it, she defers the…

temptation fidelity vs desire self-restraint

Little Doll

The Stooges

Little Doll is a two-minute blues-punk grind built on a simple crush and a raw, repeated command to move. Its lyric barely…

infatuation objectification desire vs. distance

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

Elton John

A newcomer's romantic image of New York collides with the grimmer reality of the city, framed as a meditation on class and…

urban disillusionment class division romantic idealism vs reality

Oh!

Sleater‐Kinney

A giddy, self-aware love song that keeps interrupting its own swooning with jolts of caution and self-mockery. Sleater-Kinney…

romantic infatuation self-control vs. surrender desire as destabilizing force

In the Flesh

Blondie

A slight, doo-wop-inflected pop song about physical longing dressed up as teenage romantic melodrama. Blondie plays it as a…

desire and physical longing romantic jealousy performance of innocence vs. sexuality