Laura Marling
A ritualistic breakup song that treats an ex-lover, or an old version of the self, as an intruding spirit to be exorcised.…
exorcism of desire boundary-setting self-possession
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
PJ Harvey
A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…
obsession codependency possessiveness
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Led Zeppelin
A blues-boogie strut built almost entirely on riff and repetition, this song stages sexual pursuit and its exhausted aftermath…
desire and lust boasting and bravado romantic disillusionment
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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