Aretha Franklin
This is a driving-metaphor party song: sex and romance recast as a joyride down an open highway in a pink Cadillac. It's…
romantic/sexual liberation escape and momentum playfulness and flirtation
Ethan Whitney
This is a straightforward pop declaration of devotion that borrows superhero mythology to dress up a fairly conventional promise…
devotion and support escapism fantasy of destiny
Harry Nilsson
A short set of declarative lines about escape and entrapment dissolves into a chant that repeats itself into…
entrapment disguised as freedom codependency compulsion and addiction
Gillian Welch
A short, circling ballad about a young woman fleeing domestic expectation for a taste of freedom before she settles into the…
deferred responsibility female autonomy vs. convention escape and fantasy
Laura Marling
This is a cover of a mid-1960s folk standard, sung here in Laura Marling's plainspoken, weary register, about the impossibility…
itinerancy and escape addiction as self-medication romantic longing and loss
Bruce Springsteen
A young man stands in a driveway trying to talk a woman named Mary into getting in his car and leaving town with him. Over five…
escape and flight the limits of romantic promise small-town decay
Emmylou Harris
A narrator looks back at a childhood friend, Lillian, whose life in a small Southern town never escapes the gravity of that…
rural poverty and stasis female friendship the cost of unfulfilled ambition
Patti Smith
A duet between erotic urgency and something closer to faith: the speaker asks a lover to take her as she is, and then defends…
erotic desire as sustenance night as sanctuary from harm doubt and belief