Sandy Denny
A Bob Dylan song given to Sandy Denny's voice becomes a study in absence: the singer measures every image of beauty and time…
longing and absence time as burden identity dissolved by loss
Beck
A brief, hook-driven single that trades in fragmentary, almost dissociated imagery of division and delay, wrapped around a…
impending departure social division sensory disorientation
Elton John
A spaceman narrates the mundane dread of leaving home for another routine off-world shift, and finds the glamour of space travel…
alienation the gap between public and private self domestic loss
Deep Purple
A snarling caricature of moral censorship, this track invents a composite figure of public prudishness and spends three verses…
hypocrisy censorship sexual repression
Fugazi
A short, incantatory piece built around a single arithmetic metaphor for a relationship's dissolution. Fugazi strip the lyric…
breakup and separation refusal of blame fracture as survival
Wire
A short, elliptical piece built from fragmented statements about breakdown -- of attention, feeling, and communication. It reads…
mental exhaustion alienation failure of language
Rosanne Cash
A ghost narrates his own wrongful execution, explaining that he chose death over revealing the affair that would have cleared…
forbidden love silence and secrecy guilt and sacrifice
Neil Young
Neil Young's elegy for a car that has died is written with such tenderness it plays as a breakup song or a eulogy for a person,…
loyalty and companionship loss and mortality nostalgia for youth
Tom Petty
A mid-tempo Heartbreakers-style rocker built around a single deflating refrain: whatever romance is being described, the song…
disillusionment with romantic idealism emotional exhaustion letting go
Aesop Rock
A children's-book superhero story about a heroic frog who rescues people (and a poodle) from peril, delivered with a straight…
heroism as ritual childlike wonder absurdism
Tom Waits
A wandering, guilt-soaked ballad in which a restless narrator confesses his inability to settle down even as he pleads for…
restlessness and wanderlust guilt and self-forgiveness domestic responsibility vs freedom
Carly Simon
This is a torch-song standard (best known from Sinatra's version) recorded by Carly Simon for a film soundtrack, and it's built…
insomnia and longing unrequited love the contrast between day and night
Bruce Springsteen
A minimal, hushed blues built on obsessive desire, where the narrator's want curdles into something closer to torment than…
obsessive desire sleeplessness and mental anguish transgressive attraction
Leonard Cohen
A prayer disguised as a love song, built from a dialogue between a son and a father-God about shame, embodiment, and the…
shame and self-loathing faith and divine dialogue the body as trial
Lucinda Williams
An early Lucinda Williams ballad addressed to an idealized poet-lover, mixing plainspoken country-blues devotion with a fantasy…
idealized love escapism artistic admiration
Smokey Robinson
A spare confession of regret builds around a single unanswered question: why didn't the narrator show up for someone waiting.…
regret emotional paralysis longing
Grandaddy
A stranded astronaut, long resigned to isolation on some barren world, walks toward a mirage of swans on a lake he's never seen…
isolation longing mortality and acceptance
Seal
A sparse, almost incantatory song about physical absence and longing, built less on narrative than on the repetition of sensory…
longing memory of intimacy loss
Otis Redding
Otis Redding takes the Irving Berlin standard and rebuilds it as soul testimony, stretching its plain, nostalgic lines into…
nostalgia longing devotion
The Rolling Stones
A disco-inflected blues about romantic obsession, where a narrator's loneliness is undercut by the party noise and distraction…
obsessive longing denial and self-deception urban loneliness
Al Green
Al Green takes a mid-century ballad already worn smooth by decades of cover versions and slows it down further, turning its plea…
longing and separation time as erosion faith and supplication
The xx
A short, spare meditation on the way absence corrodes trust in a relationship, where the beloved's reality becomes…
insecurity in intimacy fear of abandonment the unreliability of perception
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth's cover of the Carpenters' "Superstar" strips the original's lush orchestration down to a slow, droning haze,…
one-sided obsession loneliness the falseness of mediated intimacy
A young man begs a train conductor to reverse course so he can return to a lover he left too hastily. Al Green, still developing…
regret and reversal longing isolation
Richard Thompson
A short, circling song built almost entirely around one unspoken sentence: the narrator never told a former lover he loved her,…
emotional inarticulacy regret unfinished endings
The Beatles
A simple, unguarded love plea built from a demo John Lennon left behind, completed decades later by his surviving bandmates. The…
longing mortality and memory reunion
Chet Baker
This is an instrumental reading of the pop standard "Tangerine" as performed by Chet Baker, likely on trumpet (possibly with a…
longing romantic nostalgia exoticism/escapism
This is an instrumental reading of the Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg standard, recorded by Chet Baker on his 1962 comeback album Chet…
longing exile and return faded innocence
Patsy Cline
A weary adult voice imagines borrowing a child's unclouded vision as a way of escaping accumulated disappointment. The song…
lost innocence nostalgia for childhood perception weariness with adult disillusionment
Burial
"Loner" is an instrumental piece built almost entirely from a chopped, pitch-shifted vocal sample looping over a skittering,…
urban isolation nightlife and rave nostalgia fragmented communication
Frank Ocean
Frank Ocean's 2018 cover strips the classic Mancini/Mercer standard down to its skeleton, treating the original as a found…
longing transience companionship
Broken Social Scene
A hushed, hypnotic plea built almost entirely from conditional clauses and a repeated invitation to go home, undercut by a…
emotional numbness conditional intimacy self-doubt
Moby
Built almost entirely from a looped vocal sample lifted from old field-recording blues, this track treats lyrics as sound…
longing repetition as form sampling and folk memory
The Louvin Brothers
A plain, pleading country ballad built entirely around a single conditional wish: to win the love of someone who remains just…
unrequited love longing devotion
Pearl Jam
This is a cover of The Who's 1973 track, rendered here for a film soundtrack about grief and recovery. Pearl Jam's version leans…
longing emotional drought catharsis
A simple, tender travel song built around a single promise: the singer will return to a loved one when the day ends. Sandy Denny…
longing separation and reunion homecoming
The War on Drugs
An instrumental-forward, motorik rock track from Lost in the Dream whose lyrics function almost as texture rather than narrative…
emotional distance self-doubt longing
A simple, wistful song built on a single wish: that the singer could trade her adult, disillusioned view of the world for a…
lost innocence nostalgia for childhood disillusionment with adulthood
Roberta Flack
A quiet, aching ballad built around a single conditional wish -- the hope of a reunion the singer knows may never come. Flack…
longing regret idealized love
This piece reads less like a finished lyric than a raw studio artifact: a repetitive, formulaic love song built almost entirely…
longing distance repetition as devotion