Results for “fear of vulnerability”

Songs

Bizarre Love Triangle

New Order

A euphoric synth-pop track built on lyrics of paralysis and unspoken feeling: the narrator is caught between infatuation and…

romantic paralysis emotional confusion fear of vulnerability

Can't Take My Eyes Off of You (I Love You Baby)

Lauryn Hill

This is Lauryn Hill's faithful cover of the 1967 Frankie Valli pop standard, tucked into The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a…

romantic infatuation gratitude vulnerability

Baby, This Love I Have

Minnie Riperton

A love song built around the anxiety of being misunderstood -- the singer insists that her feelings are genuine even if her…

communication and its failure reassurance devotion

House of the Rising Sun

Joan Baez

Baez's rendition of this traditional folk ballad tells the story of a woman ruined by a New Orleans house of ill repute, framing…

ruin and moral downfall warning and cautionary storytelling regret

Blindness

The Fall

This is a plainspoken country-flavored heartbreak lament built around a single proverb-like refrain about foolishness and…

self-deception romantic betrayal folk wisdom/proverb

I'm On Fire

Bruce Springsteen

A minimal, hushed rock song built around a single sustained image of desire as physical injury. Springsteen strips away the…

obsessive desire transgression/infidelity psychological torment

This Woman's Work

Maxwell

Maxwell's cover of Kate Bush's 'This Woman's Work' turns a song about a man's helplessness during childbirth into a raw,…

helplessness impending loss regret

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Roberta Flack

A slow, hymn-like ballad that traces one relationship's progress through three ascending intimacies: first sight, first kiss,…

awakening love cosmic/natural imagery as emotional scale vulnerability and surrender

Gloria

Bonnie “Prince” Billy

A quiet meditation on walking alone toward some unnamed threshold, framed as a kind of secular hymn. The repeated invocation of…

solitude and pilgrimage devotion without doctrine mortality and departure

Superwoman

Gladys Knight

A domestic monologue in which a woman catalogs the daily labor she performs for a partner who has grown cold and inattentive,…

emotional labor and domestic care the myth of female self-sufficiency withdrawal and neglect in a relationship

Distant Lover

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning soul lament in which the narrator addresses an absent lover across an unspecified distance, moving from tender…

romantic longing separation and absence memory and nostalgia

You Keep Me Hanging On

The Supremes

A woman demands her own release from a dead relationship, addressing an ex who refuses to fully let go even though he no longer…

emotional limbo asymmetry of feeling demand for autonomy

Superstition

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

Angel

Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan addresses a fragile, self-sabotaging figure she calls an angel, coaxing her toward vulnerability and self-acceptance.…

emotional fragility self-acceptance codependency and healing

I Don't Want to Know

Fleetwood Mac

A breakup song built on willful avoidance: the narrator repeatedly insists they don't want an explanation for why the…

denial as self-protection romantic dissolution emotional exhaustion

A Change Is Gonna Come

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