Results for “longing/unanswered desire”

Songs

I Won't Be Long

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

Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time)

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

Tomorrow Is a Long Time

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

Mary Long

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

Long Division

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

Long May You Run

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

Long Legged Larry

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

Four Long Years

Wire

A short, elliptical piece built from fragmented statements about breakdown -- of attention, feeling, and communication. It reads…

mental exhaustion alienation failure of language

Love Is a Long Road

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

Long Black Veil

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

Long Way Home

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

Just Like Water

Lauryn Hill

Performed live and introduced almost as an experiment in vulnerability after the confrontational 'Rebel', this song builds an…

surrender spiritual longing conflated with romantic desire purification

Cowgirl

Underworld

"Cowgirl" is less a song with a story than a mantra built from repeated phrase-fragments that dissolve meaning through…

dissociation and invisibility longing/unanswered desire erasure of self via love or substance

Right In Time

Lucinda Williams

A slow-building meditation on desire built from small domestic gestures rather than declarations. Williams narrates a private…

longing memory and its physical trace solitary desire

The Nearness of You

Sarah Vaughan

A standard by Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington, here rendered by Sarah Vaughan as an intimate meditation on physical presence…

desire and presence the inadequacy of romantic cliché vulnerability

I’m In the Mood

John Lee Hooker

A hypnotic, one-riff blues built almost entirely on a single confession of desire, repeated until it becomes incantation rather…

desire and longing nighttime intimacy defiance of parental authority

Ansiedad

Nat King Cole

A bolero of pure longing, built almost entirely around the word "ansiedad" (anxiety/yearning) as the singer describes the…

longing and desire separation romantic devotion

Never Be Mine

Angel Olsen

A torch song built on the gap between wanting and having, sung to someone who will never be fully possessed. Angel Olsen stages…

unrequited longing jealousy and triangulated desire self-deception and resignation

Honey

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

Fly Me to the Moon

Frank Sinatra

A love song that uses cosmic imagery as an elaborate courtship metaphor, translating grand celestial longing into the plainest…

romantic devotion longing and desire the vastness of space as metaphor for feeling

I Want You (Vocal)

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning plea for mutual desire, built almost entirely on repetition of a single wish stated and restated until it becomes…

unreciprocated desire longing for mutuality vulnerability in seduction

Acércate Más

Nat King Cole

A bolero of pure romantic pleading, built almost entirely on two commands: come closer, kiss me. Nat King Cole recorded this in…

romantic longing impatience and desire vulnerability in love

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on grace and surrender disguised as a portrait of a woman by a river, Cohen's song moves from intimate seduction…

spiritual longing disguised as romance the sacred in the everyday trust and surrender

I'm On Fire

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

Pretty Baby

Blondie

A hazy, glam-inflected reverie built around the phrase "pretty baby," the song watches a young, cinematic figure from a distance…

obsession with youth and beauty unrequited longing the cinematic gaze

In the Flesh

Blondie

A slight, doo-wop-inflected pop song about physical longing dressed up as teenage romantic melodrama. Blondie plays it as a…

desire and physical longing romantic jealousy performance of innocence vs. sexuality

The Shrine / An Argument

Fleet Foxes

This two-part suite pairs a quiet devotional wandering through orchards and fountains with a raw, sonically ravaged breakup…

longing and unfulfilled devotion loss of connection possessiveness and withdrawal

Water Curses

Animal Collective

A dreamlike wish-song built around water as an image of fluidity, ease, and self-erasure, drifting through loosely connected…

desire for formlessness/transformation mortality and impermanence creativity and artistic longing

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl

Broken Social Scene

A brief, mantra-like lament for someone who has traded rebellious authenticity for polish and distance, sung by a narrator who…

nostalgia for authenticity loss of innocence desire and longing

Are You Alright?

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

Perfidia

Nat King Cole

A jilted lover appeals past his unfaithful partner to God and the sea as witnesses to his grief, then trails off into…

betrayal in love unanswered devotion isolation and distance

Wolf

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A brief, incantatory song that uses the wolf as a figure for a hunger that is both predatory and vulnerable. Karen O's narrator…

desire as predation vulnerability disguised as ferocity spiritual longing

Come Live with Me Angel

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning seduction song built almost entirely on a single proposition: move in with me. Marvin Gaye layers a soft, almost…

seduction and desire domestic fantasy emotional vulnerability masked as pleasure-seeking

A Certain Girl

Warren Zevon

This is a straight-ahead cover of the Ernie K-Doe R&B classic, built almost entirely on a call-and-response tease between a…

unrequited longing secrecy as flirtation stuck-in-the-friend-zone frustration

Sanctified Lady

Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye sketches a wish list for a monogamous, church-going partner against a mid-80s backdrop of promiscuity and disease…

sexual anxiety in the AIDS/herpes era the sacred vs. the profane desire for domestic stability

Remedy

The Band

A late-period Band track that dresses up desire as desperate need, using the language of addiction and salvation to describe…

romantic obsession as addiction powerlessness and surrender spiritual language repurposed for desire

Asleep

The Smiths

A short, spare piece built almost entirely around a lullaby request that gradually reveals itself as a farewell to life.…

suicidal despair desire for release loneliness

Coffee Blues

Mississippi John Hurt

A talking-blues that starts as an ad-jingle riff on a coffee brand and quietly turns into an extended sexual pun, with the…

desire disguised as domestic ritual double entendre longing and pursuit

Don't Know Why

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

Touch

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