Leonard Cohen
A three-part meditation in waltz time that moves from a woman by a river, to Christ walking on water, and back to the woman…
erotic love as spiritual apprehension faith and doubt surrender to a guide
Otis Redding
Otis Redding's rendition of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem transforms a carefully wrought protest song into a raw,…
racial injustice and endurance faith versus doubt family and disappointment
Paul Simon
A reunion single from Simon and Garfunkel that reads as a bitter anti-nostalgia song, dismantling the idea of small-town…
small-town disillusionment loss of faith suppressed violence
Sam Cooke
A first-person account of a life lived under constant pressure — poverty, fear of death, segregation, betrayal by one's own —…
racial injustice and segregation endurance and faith mortality and doubt
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
Gram Parsons
A hymn-structured elegy that mourns three losses in succession -- a young man killed in a car crash, a musician taken too soon,…
mortality and premature death grief and mourning faith and supplication
Talking Heads
A preacher-like voice addresses an unnamed "you," cataloguing the accidental furniture of a middle-class life and then asking…
mid-life disorientation the unearned life time as drift
The Staple Singers
This is the Staple Singers' rendition of the traditional African American spiritual, built almost entirely on call-and-response…
deliverance and salvation collective faith and community crossing over / transition between states
Stevie Wonder
A funk sermon against magical thinking. Over one of the most recognizable clavinet riffs in popular music, Wonder catalogues…
superstition and magical thinking the cost of ignorance fear as self-fulfilling prophecy
Randy Newman
Written for the animated film 'Toy Story,' this is a plain-spoken pledge of loyalty from one companion to another, stripped of…
loyalty reassurance humility versus devotion
Bill Withers
A wounded plea for a fresh start with a partner whose affection is unreliable, built almost entirely around one conditional…
conditional love emotional ambivalence denial as coping
Public Enemy
A protest anthem built as a dance record: Chuck D argues that political consciousness and Black pride are things you build in…
Black pride and self-definition institutional racism who gets to be a national hero
Townes Van Zandt
A ballad about a Mexican bandit's death and the shadowy figure who may have betrayed him, told with the flat affect of folklore…
betrayal and complicity myth-making versus truth exile and diminishment
Jason Isbell
Isbell uses a fading hotel as an extended metaphor for a long marriage at risk of going stale, watching an older couple's silent…
marital complacency the labor of sustaining love aging and decline
Yes
A three-part suite that moves from pastoral invocation through cosmic address to a mantra-like affirmation of shared awakening.…
cosmic consciousness nature as spiritual messenger transmission of hidden knowledge
Sly & Robbie
This is a cover/reinterpretation of Sly Stone's meditation on family bonds, performed here by the Jamaican rhythm duo Sly and…
family loyalty versus individual difference the contradictions of intimacy emotional paralysis
Tom Waits
A wandering man confesses to a lover that he's constitutionally unable to take the straight path home, in love or in life. Waits…
restlessness and wanderlust romantic unreliability the tension between domesticity and freedom