Elvis Costello
This is Elvis Costello's reading of the 1937 Rodgers and Hart standard, a love song built on backhanded compliments that somehow…
backhanded affection imperfection as intimacy permanence amid doubt
R.E.M.
A bubblegum-bright chorus of togetherness repeated to the point of hollowness, this is R.E.M. at its most deliberately…
manufactured happiness conformity propaganda and slogans
Pixies
A deliberately dumb, bubblegum-pop pastiche sung by drummer David Lovering, this is Pixies parodying the sincerity of teenage…
parody of pop convention adolescent sexuality irony vs sincerity
Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson's version strips a bubblegum pop hit down to voice and guitar, exposing lyrics about romantic manipulation that…
manipulation dressed as innocence performance versus sincerity gender and blame
Big Star
A gratitude anthem that plays like a mock-showbiz thank-you speech, thanking unnamed collaborators in language so formal it…
gratitude and its limits dependency vs. self-sufficiency showbiz artifice
Pavement
A loose, digressive song built from non-sequiturs and internal rhyme games that only occasionally resolves into something like…
evasion of intimacy irony versus sincerity pop-cultural detritus
The Cure
A jittery funk-pop novelty from The Cure's most eclectic album, built on a repeated image of lightning strikes that destroy…
destruction as pleasure compulsive repetition escape and displacement
Peter Gabriel
This is a cover of the Magnetic Fields song, and Gabriel's version strips away Stephin Merritt's deadpan irony in favor of a…
romantic convention vs. lived intimacy tedium redeemed by love marriage and commitment
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
Billy Joel
Billy Joel builds a mock-heroic Wild West ballad complete with outlaw legend and hanging, then in the final verse reveals it as…
mythmaking self-deprecation Americana pastiche
Nirvana
A grunge anthem built almost entirely out of non-sequiturs and slogans, the song channels teenage apathy and irony rather than…
apathy and irony alienation consumerism and spectacle
MF DOOM
MF DOOM turns a satirical eye on rap's tough-guy posturing, mocking MCs whose lyrics function as confessions that could be used…
hip-hop authenticity and posturing self-incrimination and surveillance street credibility vs. performance
Judee Sill
A short, dense allegory in which cosmic and mythological imagery (a phoenix, dragons, an implied battle with the Devil) stands…
spiritual struggle self-doubt and sincerity transformation and rebirth
Air
A woozy, vocoder-warped taunt built almost entirely out of one phrase, "Sexy Boy" pokes at masculine vanity and celebrity…
vanity and self-image celebrity and consumerism irony versus seduction
Thin Lizzy
A tender, almost devotional love song built on simple repeated vows, addressed to someone named Sarah. Its plainness is the…
unconditional love parental/romantic tenderness devotion
Magazine
A short, jagged meditation on the trap of self-consciousness, where the singer's supposed clarity of vision becomes a curse…
self-consciousness detachment perception vs reality
Tom Waits
A domestic wreck of a song dressed in the sunniest possible title: the narrator is broke, abandoned, and effectively parenting…
irony of optimism poverty and abandonment loneliness
Boards of Canada
An instrumental piece from Boards of Canada's third album that trades on the gap between its title's cheerful theatrical…
nostalgia childhood media artifice versus memory
James Taylor
James Taylor spins a science-fiction folk tale about a 19th-century sailor revived after a century frozen in ice, using the…
mortality and the fear of dying twice technology versus nature alienation and displacement in time
Van Morrison
A gentle, almost devotional love song built on plain vows rather than complicated imagery. Morrison stacks simple declarations…
devotion and commitment romantic idealization simplicity as sincerity
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
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
Bill Withers
A short, riff-driven soul cut in which Bill Withers turns groaning and moaning — sounds normally associated with pain or…
romantic satisfaction understated devotion surprise at being proven wrong
A wry, deadpan tour through the small humiliations of dating, class anxiety, and suburban aspiration, filtered through Malkmus's…
class and status anxiety suburban aspiration irony and detachment
A brief, almost naive love song stripped of metaphor and complication, where a man expresses plain astonishment at feeling love…
first love emotional vulnerability simplicity as sincerity
The Fall
This is The Fall's 1988 cover of the Kinks' 1969 song, a mock-anthem that impersonates Victorian-era patriotic sentiment so…
empire and nationalism class and inequality irony and pastiche
Modest Mouse
A meandering, self-lacerating meditation on complacency and missed opportunity, delivered with Modest Mouse's trademark mix of…
missed opportunity self-deception complacency
Built to Spill
A short, circling meditation on how received wisdom persists even when it no longer fits reality. Built to Spill uses plain,…
conformity vs. change epistemic humility the persistence of habit
A quiet, unadorned lullaby that doubles as a farewell, offering reassurance through simple natural imagery rather than grand…
reassurance impermanence simplicity as sincerity
New Order
A soldier narrates his homecoming from war in earnest, patriotic terms, only for the song to reveal in its final verse that he…
war and its human cost irony of patriotism death and denial
D'Angelo
A slow-groove love song built almost entirely from a single circling phrase, promising that romantic devotion is enough to…
romantic devotion as survival domestic intimacy sensuality
Simon Jäger
Simon adapts Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem into a song about class envy and its blind spot: a factory worker idolizes a…
class envy the emptiness of wealth irony of appearances
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
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
Sharon Van Etten
This is Sharon Van Etten at her loosest and most winking, a track built on a single sardonic refrain about self-sabotage rather…
self-sabotage domestic disorder irony and deflection
Wire
Wire recast the nativity story as a satire of digital-age commerce and self-promotion, splicing biblical imagery with the…
technology and faith commodification of belief surveillance and self-branding
Randy Newman
Randy Newman puts on the voice of a bigot ranting about short people, using the absurdity of the target to expose how prejudice…
prejudice and bigotry satire of hatred's logic unreliable narration
Randy Newman voices a slave trader luring West Africans onto a ship bound for Charleston with a mock-seductive sales pitch about…
slavery and the slave trade American exceptionalism as propaganda irony and complicity
Tom Petty
Tom Petty turns a chorus of romantic devotion into a punchline by surrounding it with a comic gallery of failed relationships.…
romantic complacency divorce and dysfunction irony as affection
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift turns a self-lacerating confessional into a singalong chorus, cataloguing her worst self-perceptions—insomnia,…
self-loathing and self-awareness fame and disproportion fear of abandonment