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
New Order
A euphoric-sounding synth-pop anthem that turns out to be about addiction and the erosion of innocence, dressed in language so…
addiction and dependency loss of childhood innocence denial and self-deception
Alison Krauss
This is a folk parable that condenses an entire human life—birth, marriage, death—into three ringing-bell scenes tied to the…
cycle of life community and ritual mortality
Depeche Mode
A slow-burning devotional track that blurs the line between spiritual ecstasy and self-annihilation, using the imagery of…
surrender and self-dissolution transcendence through love or faith mortality
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
Jethro Tull
A caustic broadside against the American co-option of Christianity, pairing frontier violence and cowboy mythology with the…
religious hypocrisy American mythology and violence colonialism
The Smiths
A short, almost prayer-like song built from just two brief verses and a repeated plea, this track compresses a lifetime of…
longing and deprivation fatalism the erosion of goodness by circumstance
Al Green
Al Green takes a mid-century ballad already worn smooth by decades of cover versions and slows it down further, turning its plea…
longing and separation time as erosion faith and supplication
Son House
Son House recounts the death of a lover through a series of stark, repeated images: a letter, a wake, a burial, a failed prayer.…
grief and loss delayed recognition of love religious doubt
Guy Clark
Guy Clark takes a childhood game of playing superhero and stretches it across a whole life, turning a boy jumping off a garage…
faith versus caution refusal to grow up conventionally risk and self-belief
The Flaming Lips
A bubblegum-sounding sci-fi fable about a karate-fighting hero named Yoshimi doubles as an oblique meditation on fear, faith,…
fear of death/destruction faith in another person childlike wonder vs. adult dread
Maxwell
Maxwell's Unplugged reading of Kate Bush's ballad turns a song about a man helplessly watching his wife through a dangerous…
helplessness in the face of mortality regret over words and gestures withheld gendered division of labor and pain
The Doors
An eight-and-a-half-minute suite that refuses to stay in one shape, moving from a mocking sermon about the failure of prayer…
failure of religious faith spiritual and sexual hunger consumer culture as spectacle
Talk Talk
"Eden" opens Spirit of Eden with a fragmentary, hymn-like meditation on loss and belief, using biblical imagery of Eden and…
loss of innocence religious doubt and faith death and rebirth
Gram Parsons
A hymn-like tribute to an unnamed Southern Black woman, built around the recurring refrain of her singing voice as the one…
Southern history and labor faith and gospel devotion admiration across difference
Vampire Weekend
A song about living without religious certainty while still wanting the comforts faith supposedly offers. It frames doubt not as…
religious doubt mortality secular loneliness
Loretta Lynn
A gospel-tinged novelty hymn that turns a folk saying into a meditation on the human fear of death, even among the faithful.…
fear of death faith versus human nature salvation
Whitney Houston
A devotional love ballad built almost entirely on a single act of assertion: repeated declarations of faith in a partner rather…
romantic devotion faith and belief as metaphor for love surrender/vulnerability
Donny Hathaway
Donny Hathaway's reading of this well-worn hymn-like standard turns a simple parable of brotherly duty into a gospel testimony,…
brotherhood and communal responsibility burden and endurance spiritual faith as sustaining force
Wind-Up closes Aqualung's second-side critique of institutional religion with a direct autobiographical account of a schoolboy…
institutional religion vs personal faith education as indoctrination inherited belief
Cat Power
This is Cat Power's slowed, hushed reinterpretation of a Velvet Underground song, stripping away the original's arrangement in…
faith and doubt devotion persuasion versus surrender
Dolly Parton
A protest anthem built on a nursery-rhyme taunt, cataloguing political dishonesty, social division and violence while insisting…
political disillusionment social division moral urgency
The Staple Singers
This is the Staple Singers' rendition of a traditional African American spiritual, one long believed to have carried coded…
deliverance/salvation biblical exodus imagery collective faith
Gladys Knight
This is a direct-address motivational anthem, closer to a sermon set to music than a conventional narrative song. Gladys Knight…
self-empowerment faith and perseverance overcoming fear
Sam Cooke
A first-person testimony of endurance under racial oppression, built around a single hope that refuses to die even as evidence…
racial injustice endurance faith and doubt
Bill Withers
This is Bill Withers's reading of the Beatles standard, taken from his 1971 debut album. Rather than write new lyrics, Withers…
surrender and acceptance comfort in crisis maternal/spiritual guidance
Common
Common builds a hymn out of hip-hop's contradictions, weaving together images of urban violence, spiritual conviction, and Black…
faith and endurance urban violence and its roots Black historical legacy
A gospel testimony built almost entirely from a single scriptural refrain, this recording turns a short devotional statement…
divine refuge suffering and lament faith as action
Guided By Voices
A cryptic, riddling GBV track that uses Fats Domino's real-life survival of Hurricane Katrina as an emblem of resilience, then…
survival and resilience flood/water imagery as threat and purification fame versus obscurity
Hank Williams
A deathbed testimony song in which a dying believer comforts an onlooker by reframing death as homecoming. Hank Williams…
death and salvation religious comfort acceptance of mortality
This is Loretta Lynn's rendition of the 1913 hymn by George Bennard, a foundational piece of American Protestant devotional song…
redemption sacrifice faith and devotion
Wire
Wire recast the nativity story as a satire of digital-age commerce and self-promotion, splicing biblical imagery with the…
technology and faith commodification of belief surveillance and self-branding
A closing hymn built around three elegies for people the narrator has lost, framed by a repeated plea for divine clarity and…
mourning and loss mortality and premonition faith under duress
Paul Simon
A bitter recollection of a suffocating hometown, stripped of color and possibility, sung as a reunion piece by Simon and…
small-town claustrophobia loss of faith inherited identity
A late-career meditation on mortality that treats death not as an ending to fear but as the final release from a hard life.…
mortality faith and afterlife weariness and endurance
This is a traditional African American spiritual, reworked here as a Staple Singers vocal showcase, built almost entirely on a…
death as release suffering and endurance faith under strain
Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen writes from inside the body of a firefighter climbing a burning tower on September 11, fusing physical labor,…
9/11 and collective trauma duty and physical sacrifice faith and doubt
Otis Redding
Otis Redding's cover of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem strips the original's orchestral polish into raw, gospel-inflected…
racial oppression and hope endurance and exhaustion fear of mortality
Neil Young
A spare, hymn-like address to fear and mortality, written for Jonathan Demme's film about a man dying of AIDS-related illness…
mortality stigma and shame need for belonging
King Crimson
A doom-laden meditation on Cold War anxiety and the collapse of moral authority, delivered as a kind of secular apocalyptic…
nuclear anxiety loss of faith/prophecy fear of the future