The Cars
A synth-driven new wave track that uses driving and traffic imagery as an extended metaphor for a woman leading a secret,…
duplicity and secrecy urban alienation surveillance/control
Lily Allen
This is a satirical pop track in which Lily Allen adopts the voice of the pop-industry woman she's critiquing, deploying…
gender double standards objectification in pop culture sexism in the music industry
Free
A brash blues-rock boast about womanizing that curdles into confession, as the narrator's swagger about juggling multiple…
infidelity and desire self-awareness vs self-destruction masculine bravado
Frank Sinatra
A Rodgers and Hart standard in which every socially disreputable trait ascribed to the title character turns out, on inspection,…
class satire nonconformity irony of reputation
Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill delivers a two-part sermon on sex, self-respect, and modern relationship dysfunction, addressing women in the first…
sexual double standards nostalgia for a simpler past personal responsibility
Jenny Lewis
Jenny Lewis turns a wry observation about aging and gender roles in male-dominated creative circles into a meditation on…
aging and the double standard childlessness and biological clock anxiety gender roles in creative/professional spaces
Kacey Musgraves
A catalog of no-win social judgments builds into a plainspoken anthem for living by one's own compass rather than trying to…
double standards sexual and social freedom religious hypocrisy
Bill Withers
A confrontational, deeply personal song in which Bill Withers turns the tables on someone who has been trying to convince him…
gaslighting and psychological manipulation hypocrisy infidelity and betrayal
Bessie Smith
A blues warning delivered as a curse: the narrator threatens a philandering partner with damnation, using the devil as a…
infidelity and betrayal moral reckoning female assertiveness
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin plays elder counselor to a wounded young woman, using the image of a rose to insist that sexual betrayal doesn't…
self-worth after betrayal intergenerational female solidarity resilience
The Band
A blues-rooted warning song built almost entirely on one refrain: the woman you love will mistreat you, and that mistreatment is…
romantic mistrust resignation and complicity double standards in love
Mott the Hoople
An early Mott the Hoople track built on a swaggering put-down dressed up as rock bravado, with a narrator addressing a woman he…
misogyny/double standards rock star posturing public image vs private reality
Stevie Wonder
A slick mid-80s dance-pop track built around the mechanics of a secret affair, complete with coded signals and cover stories.…
infidelity and secrecy coded communication double standards in relationships
De La Soul
A radio-skit framed jam that turns Saturday roller-rink culture into a loose celebration of release after the work week,…
leisure and release community ritual casual romance and its double standards
Jethro Tull
A pastoral seduction song that turns increasingly ambivalent, using the image of a lush green hillside as both a real place and…
pastoral seduction innocence versus experience double standards around sexuality
J. Cole
J. Cole confesses to serial infidelity while dressing the confession in the language of fame, guilt, and self-destruction. The…
infidelity and guilt fame's corrosive pull self-awareness without change
The Raincoats
The Raincoats' version of the Kinks' 1970 hit keeps the original words intact but changes everything about who is speaking,…
gender ambiguity sexual awakening performance of identity
The Slits
The Slits take a Motown heartbreak standard, drenched for decades in Marvin Gaye's soul-man anguish, and strip its gender…
gossip and rumor gendered performance of emotion betrayal
Harry Nilsson
This is Nilsson's reading of Irving Berlin's 1924 standard, delivered as part of his second collection of pre-rock pop songs.…
heartbreak loneliness memory and photographs
Linda Thompson
A woman catalogs her own self-deception after being betrayed by a charming, unreliable partner, moving from private grief to a…
self-deception romantic betrayal gendered vulnerability
The Damned
A high-velocity blast of early British punk built on nonsense logic and a nagging three-note chant rather than any coherent…
alienation gender performance anti-authority sentiment
Portishead
A weary meditation on gender roles and the exhaustion of performing femininity as a game, "Scorn" pleads for authentic…
gender roles emotional exhaustion authenticity vs performance
The Slits catalogue a set of sexist clichés about femininity by reciting them in a flat, deadpan list, letting the accumulation…
gender stereotyping commodification of femininity conformity vs rebellion
The Replacements
A quietly tender ballad from a famously loud punk band, this song imagines two gender-nonconforming lovers with a gentleness…
gender nonconformity acceptance and tolerance love as constancy
Sonic Youth
A satirical dialogue between a rock star's ego and a skeptical female voice, "Kool Thing" stages a flirtation that curdles into…
gender and power celebrity worship racial politics
Mississippi John Hurt
A talking-blues that starts as an ad-jingle riff on a coffee brand and quietly turns into an extended sexual pun, with the…
desire disguised as domestic ritual double entendre longing and pursuit
Animal Collective
A song built around a half-real, half-mediated female icon glimpsed through screens and reviews, with the narrator working out…
celebrity and mediated desire gender and sexuality fandom as devotion
The Kinks
A wide-eyed young narrator recounts a night at a Soho club where he meets a striking, ambiguous figure named Lola, and the song…
gender ambiguity sexual awakening urban nightlife
The Beatles
A bouncy, deliberately artificial ska-pop tale of a market-stall trader and a band singer who fall in love, marry, and settle…
everyday romance domesticity gender roles
George Jones
A novelty-tinged story song built on a bait-and-switch: an old man's admiring description of a car turns out to be a description…
nostalgia lost youth double meaning/wordplay
Bessie Smith delivers an ultimatum blues to a freeloading lover, dressing up a blunt economic demand in barnyard comedy and…
economic independence sexual and domestic reciprocity female autonomy
Anita O’Day
This is Anita O'Day's vocal-jazz treatment of the Fats Waller standard, a breezy declaration of infatuation built entirely on…
infatuation sweetness as metaphor public admiration
Sleater‐Kinney
Sleater-Kinney takes the fan-idolatry that surrounds male rock stars and flips the gender of the fantasy, imagining a female…
gender and rock stardom fandom and desire female agency
Kendrick Lamar
A high-velocity opener that stages Kendrick as both king and enforcer of West Coast rap, mixing braggadocio with blunt social…
dominance and hierarchy loyalty vs. betrayal protection and gender roles
Amy Winehouse
This is a bossa nova standard sung from the vantage of the unseen admirer rather than the girl herself, and Winehouse leans into…
unrequited longing invisibility to the object of desire idealization from a distance
Albert King
Albert King turns the sentimental Christmas-song tradition on its head, recasting Santa Claus as a stand-in for a husband hoping…
domestic desire disguised as holiday cheer double entendre and innuendo blues humor
Gram Parsons
A countrypolitan narrative song told by a man who uproots his life to satisfy his wife's craving for city glamour, only to watch…
rural-to-urban displacement the limits of sacrifice gendered domestic roles
Ani DiFranco
This is a cover of the 1964 Dusty Springfield/Burt Bacharach-Hal David pop standard, recorded for a romantic-comedy soundtrack.…
gender roles and courtship performance versus authorship irony through casting
Bobbie Gentry
Gentry's reading of the Jimmy Reed blues standard strips the song down to its basic power struggle between a laboring narrator…
labor and exploitation authority and its limits endurance
Patti Smith
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