Results for “holiday anticipation”

Songs

One Big Holiday

My Morning Jacket

A loose, sun-warmed travelogue about escaping a hometown for the promise of somewhere better, built around a phone call and a…

escape and reinvention friendship and collective movement music-making as ritual

The Way You Look Tonight

Billie Holiday

A standard from the Kern-Fields songbook, delivered here as a hushed, intimate meditation rather than a big romantic…

romantic devotion memory as consolation vulnerability

I'll Be Seeing You

Billie Holiday

A standard from the World War II era, delivered here as a hushed vow of remembrance rather than a jaunty farewell. Holiday turns…

separation and longing memory as consolation wartime parting

Blue Moon

Billie Holiday

A standard from the American songbook, this rendition finds Holiday addressing the moon as a witness to loneliness and its…

loneliness longing transformation through love

All of Me

Billie Holiday

A standard from the 1930s American songbook, this is a torch song built on a single conceit: the singer offers up her own body,…

romantic surrender self-negation abandonment

The Very Thought of You

Billie Holiday

A standard-era love song built entirely around the idea of infatuation rather than the beloved's physical presence: the singer…

idealized love longing and absence daydreaming as escape

Strange Fruit

Billie Holiday

A protest song built on a single sustained metaphor, comparing lynched Black bodies hanging from Southern trees to fruit ready…

racial violence and lynching complicity of the pastoral South witness and testimony

This Christmas

The Temptations

A warm, low-stakes holiday song built around domestic ritual and romantic anticipation rather than religious or narrative…

holiday intimacy domestic warmth romantic anticipation

Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey's 1994 reading of the 1934 novelty standard turns a simple children's warning song into a full-scale gospel-pop…

surveillance and reward childhood obedience holiday anticipation

Untitled

Interpol

The opening track of Turn On the Bright Lights strips lyrics down to almost nothing: a single promise repeated and slightly…

reassurance anticipation emotional distance

Feel Like Makin' Love

Roberta Flack

A slow-building meditation on desire that treats ordinary moments — a walk, a candlelit dinner, a touch — as triggers for…

desire and intimacy the sensuality of the ordinary seasonal renewal as metaphor

Crazy for You

Madonna

A slow-dance ballad built around a single moment: crossing a crowded room toward someone and closing the distance between…

infatuation vulnerability physical desire

Merry Christmas Baby

B.B. King

This is a blues-idiom Christmas song built almost entirely on gratitude and physical warmth rather than religious or sentimental…

romantic gratitude domestic contentment sensual celebration

Jambalaya

Hank Williams

A breathless invitation to a Cajun celebration, this song strings together food, music, and a woman's name into a single rushing…

celebration regional identity and place romantic anticipation

Twinkle Twinkle Little Me

The Supremes

A whimsical children's-style Christmas novelty in which a tree-top star sings in the first person about descending from the sky…

childlike wonder generosity and giving holiday magic

I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)

Jamie xx

This Jamie xx track builds a euphoric, sample-driven dance anthem around a simple mantra of anticipated joy, then hands the mic…

anticipation and collective release hedonism and excess class and hustle

Isn't It Romantic?

Chet Baker

Chet Baker's reading of this Rodgers and Hart standard turns a bright, playful showtune into something hushed and interior.…

anticipation of love imagination versus reality romantic idealism

The Man With All the Toys

The Beach Boys

A brief, cheerful Christmas novelty about a passerby who peeks in on Santa's workshop and reports back what he saw. It's less a…

Christmas wonder secrecy and restraint childlike observation

Moonlight Serenade

Carly Simon

This is Carly Simon's vocal reading of the Glenn Miller-era standard, a courtly, formal love lyric built entirely around a…

romantic devotion longing and anticipation nature as backdrop for love

Summer (Estate)

Shirley Horn

This is a slow, hushed apostrophe to a season, treated as a lover whose absence the speaker will endure with quiet fidelity.…

seasonal longing love as devotion beyond presence nature personified as beloved

Must Be Santa

Bob Dylan

Dylan's version of the polka novelty song plays it almost entirely straight as a call-and-response Christmas romp, building…

holiday tradition Americana kitsch absurdist humor

Gosh

Jamie xx

Gosh is almost entirely instrumental, built around a handful of chopped vocal samples that function less as lyrics than as…

rave culture and nostalgia collective euphoria minimalism as expression

Odessa

Caribou

A narrator watches a woman in an unhappy marriage build toward the moment she finally leaves, the story told through fragments…

domestic unhappiness female agency anticipation and delay

Silent Night

The Temptations

This is a Motown vocal group's reworking of the classic carol, wrapped in a spoken-word frame borrowed from 'Twas the Night…

communal peace holiday tradition spiritual reverence

White Christmas

Otis Redding

Otis Redding takes the Irving Berlin standard and rebuilds it as soul testimony, stretching its plain, nostalgic lines into…

nostalgia longing devotion

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Frank Sinatra

A holiday standard that consoles rather than celebrates, urging cheer in the present tense while openly admitting that reunion…

separation and longing deferred hope resilience

Big Time Sensuality

Björk

A euphoric, almost breathless meditation on giving in to a feeling too big to name, delivered as pure present-tense sensation…

surrender to the present moment intimacy without explanation courage as a precondition for pleasure

Scandalous

Prince

A slow-burn seduction track built almost entirely around anticipation, in which the narrator promises total sexual surrender to…

erotic surrender impatience and urgency fantasy fulfillment

I Felt Like a Gringo

Minutemen

A brief, jagged travel sketch in which an American narrator confronts his own privilege and alienation while vacationing in…

white guilt American privilege cultural alienation

For All We Know

Abbey Lincoln

A standard-era torch song built on a single plea: seize the present because permanence is never guaranteed. Abbey Lincoln's…

carpe diem uncertainty of the future mortality

Fantasy

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

Christmas In the Room

Sufjan Stevens

A quiet domestic carol that strips Christmas of all its commercial and decorative trappings and relocates the holiday's meaning…

domestic intimacy anti-consumerism presence versus decoration

Valentine's Day

Steve Earle

A plain-spoken confession of forgetfulness dressed up as a love song, in which the narrator arrives on the holiday with nothing…

romantic devotion failure and forgiveness commercialized ritual vs. genuine feeling

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

Give Love On Christmas Day

The Temptations

A holiday standard built on a simple, almost sermon-like premise: material gifts are fine, but love is the only present that…

generosity versus materialism universal love seasonal community

Sleigh Ride

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald's reading of this holiday standard is pure surface pleasure: an invitation to a winter courtship ride rendered…

winter romance togetherness seasonal nostalgia

Ain't No Grave

Johnny Cash

This is a defiant gospel-blues meditation on death recorded near the very end of Johnny Cash's life, built around a single…

death and resurrection faith and defiance mortality as personal reckoning

Pretty Paper

Willie Nelson

A Christmas song that undercuts its own cheer: a street vendor selling gift-wrap and pencils becomes a fixture the holiday crowd…

isolation amid crowds commercialism vs. compassion invisibility of the poor

Happy Birthday

Stevie Wonder

A deceptively simple birthday singalong that Stevie Wonder uses as a political vehicle, campaigning for a U.S. national holiday…

civil rights memory collective celebration as protest racial justice and equality

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Mariah Carey

This is Mariah Carey's 1994 cover of the Phil Spector/Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry classic, reworked as a Wall-of-Sound production…

loneliness during celebration longing and absence nostalgia for past happiness