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
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
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
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
Bad Company
A late-period Bad Company arena-rock love song that borrows the language of religious ecstasy to describe romantic and sexual…
romantic devotion sacred/profane confusion obsession and disbelief
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
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
Robyn
A teenage Robyn's breakout single is a straightforward Eurodance declaration of romantic surrender, built around a repeated plea…
romantic vulnerability independence versus surrender demand for reciprocity
Guided By Voices
A cryptic, riddling GBV track that uses Fats Domino's real-life survival of Hurricane Katrina as an emblem of resilience, then…
survival and resilience flood/water imagery as threat and purification fame versus obscurity
My Morning Jacket
A falsetto-driven meditation built entirely from the phrase 'I'm amazed,' the song lists private tenderness alongside public…
media distrust personal devotion vs. public decay spiritual/moral drift
Madonna
A dancefloor anthem built on the friction between infatuation and impatience, where the singer clocks every second spent waiting…
romantic impatience obsession versus self-respect time as torment
Feist
A short, buoyant song about taking full responsibility for one's own emotional risk-taking, framed as both liberation and…
self-determination in love emotional exposure ambivalence toward commitment
Van Morrison
A rapturous, almost weightless love song built from a single sustained feeling rather than a plot. Van Morrison strings together…
romantic rapture renewal and lost time nature as emotional mirror
Mercury Rev
A driving, hypnotic song built almost entirely on repetition, tracking a headlong romance the narrator already knows is doomed.…
doomed romance velocity and recklessness impermanence
Deerhunter
A brief, jangly pop song that fuses the language of romantic infatuation with imagery of illness, possession, and death, so that…
obsessive love possession and illness death and reincarnation
Mos Def
A narrative rap unfolding like a short film in three scenes, tracking a pursuit-and-fallout romance with a woman the narrator…
desire versus discernment the performance of masculinity and vulnerability cynicism eroded by intimacy
Frank Sinatra
A Cole Porter standard in which a jaded sophisticate catalogs every conventional pleasure that fails to move him, only to admit…
ennui and sophistication unrequited or unequal love irony of excess
Blondie's debut single reframes a streetwalker's infatuation with a police officer as a giddy crime narrative, blurring the…
desire as transgression policing and power irony of legal language repurposed as romance
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
Joni Mitchell
A meditation on romantic infatuation that refuses to resolve into either full escape or full surrender, built around the central…
romantic obsession self-sufficiency amid heartbreak creative identity as refuge