Fleet Foxes
A young narrator wrestles with the individualism he was raised on, wondering whether meaning comes from being special or from…
individualism vs. collectivism disillusionment with authority search for purpose
Ella Fitzgerald
A standard-issue torch song from the Great American Songbook, "Misty" describes the disorientation of falling helplessly in…
helpless infatuation surrender of control sensory overwhelm
Whitney Houston
A dance-pop track built around uncontrollable physical attraction rather than romance in any tender sense. The narrator catalogs…
obsessive desire loss of self-control infatuation vs. commitment
Pearl Jam
A short, chant-driven track that treats the exclamation "Olé" as a stand-in for helpless resignation in the face of overwhelming…
information overload helplessness desensitization to violence
Blondie
A cover of a 1963 girl-group style bubblegum tune, reworked by Blondie into a knowing new wave valentine that trades on…
infatuation surface pleasure and artifice girl-group nostalgia
X
This is X's version of the garage-rock standard, stripped down and repeated almost to the point of incantation. Rather than…
infatuation desire uncertainty about love
Mariah Carey
A buoyant celebration of infatuation that lives entirely in the space between attraction and consummation, where the pleasure…
infatuation escapism desire and daydream
The Stooges
Little Doll is a two-minute blues-punk grind built on a simple crush and a raw, repeated command to move. Its lyric barely…
infatuation objectification desire vs. distance
The xx
A duet-style track built around the exhilaration and risk of falling into infatuation, with the two vocalists trading lines that…
infatuation vulnerability risk-taking in love
Michael Jackson
A buoyant, physically driven declaration of infatuation built almost entirely around a single hook that gets repeated, echoed,…
infatuation desire and pursuit possessiveness
Madonna
A buoyant early-80s dance-pop confection that turns a childhood wishing-star rhyme into an adult love song, celebrating…
infatuation luck and fate celestial imagery
Blue Öyster Cult
A brief, incantatory lyric that treats loss as an unexplained catastrophe, personifying death as a strangely dressed-up visitor…
mourning and loss the arbitrariness of death personification of fate
Deep Purple
This is a straightforward garage-pop cover turned hard-rock workout, built almost entirely from nonsense syllables and a simple…
obsessive infatuation powerlessness in love physical desire
Tears for Fears
A love song that keeps interrupting itself, veering between romantic infatuation and anxious social commentary before dissolving…
infatuation and vulnerability fear of loss social conscience amid personal desire
Lucinda Williams
A plainspoken, almost obsessive plea directed at someone who has vanished without explanation. The song works less through…
loss and disappearance unanswered longing anxiety about a loved one
Lauryn Hill
This is Lauryn Hill's rendition of the 1967 Frankie Valli classic, placed on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a brief,…
infatuation gratitude vulnerability
Jimi Hendrix
This is a raw, improvisatory blues lament built almost entirely on vamped repetition rather than a finished lyric. Hendrix works…
loss and longing obsessive devotion the blues tradition of the departed woman
A slow-dance ballad built around a single moment: crossing a crowded room toward someone and closing the distance between…
infatuation vulnerability physical desire
Humble Pie
A short, almost skeletal love song built around the old rock-and-roll conceit of the heart skipping a beat, borrowed and…
infatuation the body as evidence of love repetition and ritual
Beirut
A brief, deceptively cheerful pop song built almost entirely from a wordless vocal hook, with a single quatrain of lyric…
infatuation uncertainty urgency
Joan Armatrading
A love song built almost entirely on declaration rather than incident: a narrator confesses an all-consuming attachment, admits…
infatuation self-aware sentimentality gratitude/luck
Queen
A slight, groove-driven vignette about attraction to someone effortlessly stylish and self-possessed, filtered through…
infatuation cool detachment vs. desire surface style over substance
Vince Gill
A country love song built around the physical panic of infatuation rather than its resolution. The narrator never gets to…
unrequited longing vulnerability idealization
The Pretenders
A giddy, slightly defensive love song built around a single repeated plea: don't misread my erratic behavior as indifference.…
infatuation and its contradictions fear of being misunderstood impermanence versus commitment
James Blake
A hazy meditation on romantic infatuation so intense it blurs into hallucination, James Blake's song treats intimacy as…
infatuation and disbelief dissolution of time psychedelic imagery of love
A meditation on the specific pain of witnessing infidelity, built almost entirely from repetition rather than narrative…
betrayal grief and helplessness obsessive memory
Björk
Björk's cover reworks a 1951 Betty Hutton novelty tune into a dynamic set piece where hushed, orchestral verses collapse into…
the volatility of infatuation quiet vs. chaos as emotional states the absurdity of romantic obsession
Curtis Mayfield
A late-70s disco-soul love song built almost entirely around physical and emotional surrender, with Curtis Mayfield trading his…
romantic and sexual devotion surrender of control obsession/infatuation
Billy Joel
A young narrator describes a destructive, one-sided infatuation using imagery of physical danger — electrified rails, hidden…
obsessive infatuation self-destruction adolescent isolation
Creedence Clearwater Revival
A cover of the Gene Pitney-penned, Ricky Nelson-popularized 1961 pop-rock standard, this Mardi Gras rendition is CCR playing it…
love at first sight teenage infatuation nostalgia for early rock and roll
XTC
A giddy, image-drunk love song that describes a single overwhelming encounter through a barrage of unrelated historical and…
sudden infatuation the inadequacy of language before wonder celestial imagery displaced onto a person
Kate Bush
A song about a sailor lost at sea during a storm, told from a perspective that pulls back and back until it's watching the whole…
helplessness in the face of nature guilt and complicity scale and perspective (cosmic vs. human)
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
Cassandra Wilson
This is Cassandra Wilson's 2015 reading of the 1938 Coots/Gillespie standard, delivered as part of a tribute to Billie Holiday.…
intoxication as metaphor for desire self-awareness versus helplessness obsession
A quietly devastating character study of a woman trapped in a stalled, likely unhappy relationship, told entirely from the…
romantic inertia self-deception domestic entrapment
Spoon
A pulsing title track built almost entirely around a single obsessive phrase, tracking a mind hijacked by desire while it's set…
obsession and infatuation loss of control urban nightlife / travel
John Lee Hooker
A stark, first-person account of poverty rendered in the repetitive, incantatory style of Delta blues. Hooker strips the song…
poverty desperation fatherhood and helplessness
Sleater‐Kinney
A giddy, self-aware love song that keeps interrupting its own swooning with jolts of caution and self-mockery. Sleater-Kinney…
romantic infatuation self-control vs. surrender desire as destabilizing force
New Order
A dance-pop track built from disconnected emotional fragments rather than a linear story, this song stages the anxiety of desire…
romantic infatuation loss of self guilt and betrayal
Sufjan Stevens
A young narrator recounts the slow death of a girl he loves from bone cancer, intercutting scenes of adolescent intimacy with…
mortality and illness adolescent love faith and doubt