Madonna
A dreamy pop postcard from 1986, this song imagines an idealized Latin island escape through the eyes of an outsider narrator.…
escapism romanticized otherness nostalgia
Chet Baker
This is an instrumental reading of the pop standard "Tangerine" as performed by Chet Baker, likely on trumpet (possibly with a…
longing romantic nostalgia exoticism/escapism
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
Led Zeppelin
A hypnotic travelogue through desert and vision, where the journey itself becomes indistinguishable from a mystical state. The…
spiritual quest desert imagery as transcendence time and displacement
Weezer
This is Weezer's note-for-note cover of Toto's 1982 hit, so the words themselves are unchanged; what shifts is the frame. Sung…
longing and distance exoticized landscape as metaphor devotion versus escape