Nick Drake
A brief autobiographical arc compressed into a handful of couplets, tracing a movement from innocence through disillusionment to…
loss of innocence depression and fatigue dependency on another
Paul Simon
A reunion single from Simon and Garfunkel that reads as a bitter anti-nostalgia song, dismantling the idea of small-town…
small-town disillusionment loss of faith suppressed violence
John Prine
Prine elegizes a real Kentucky town erased by strip mining, using a child's plea to his father as the frame for a broader story…
environmental destruction loss of home/place industrial 'progress' vs. nature
Gram Parsons
A hymn-structured elegy that mourns three losses in succession -- a young man killed in a car crash, a musician taken too soon,…
mortality and premature death grief and mourning faith and supplication
Simon Jäger
A miniature allegory that maps the arc of a love affair onto the months of a calendar year, from spring arrival to autumn…
impermanence the natural cycle as metaphor for love loss and memory
Fleetwood Mac
A breakup song delivered as calm prophecy rather than complaint. The singer grants her departing partner the freedom he asked…
romantic separation loneliness as consequence foresight and prophecy
Bob Dylan
A six-minute address to a woman who has fallen out of privilege into destitution, delivered by a narrator who alternates between…
loss of status the fraudulence of privilege freedom through destitution