David Bowie
A propulsive novelty-funk number written for the film Labyrinth, in which a chant-like spell is cast to soothe a crying infant…
childhood fear transformation through play ritual and incantation
Abbey Lincoln
A late-career meditation from Abbey Lincoln that treats music itself as a spiritual refuge rather than a subject to be…
music as sanctuary interiority spirituality
De La Soul
De La Soul turns Schoolhouse Rock's arithmetic lesson into a manifesto for the trio itself, using the number three as a stand-in…
group identity and unity originality vs. imitation in hip-hop numerology/mysticism as playful device
Heart
A young woman narrates her seduction by an older, magnetic man, tracing her passage from girlhood to sexual awakening over the…
sexual awakening loss of innocence maternal anxiety
Stereolab
A short, almost mantra-like piece that treats a dream or ideal as something that must travel from intellect to feeling before it…
mind versus feeling ideal versus lived experience language's limits
Ella Fitzgerald
This is Ella Fitzgerald's swinging take on the beloved children's Christmas novelty song, complete with an extra descriptive…
childhood wonder impermanence and mortality (softened) magic versus rationality
Wire
A deceptively sweet pop song from a band known for angular art-punk, built around the tiny natural phenomenon of a leaf-mining…
nature observation hiddenness and exposure innocence versus threat
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
Sonic Youth
A tribute song built from fragments of grief, aggression, and dark humor, written in memory of a scene figure lost to violence.…
violent death and its aftermath rock scene mythology and idolization gender and predation within a music subculture
Pulp
A comeback statement dressed as a meditation on vocation, in which the singer reflects on a past crisis of purpose and reaffirms…
vocation and calling self-doubt versus instinct reunion/comeback
Röyksopp
A minimalist electro-pop meditation on love as a present-tense gamble, oscillating between dread that a relationship is doomed…
uncertainty in love presentism versus fear of the future doubt and surrender
Emmylou Harris
A mother's warning becomes a hard-won personal confession, as the narrator traces her own failures to heed advice about…
inherited wisdom moral compromise self-possession versus loss of self
The Beach Boys
This is a straightforward cover of the 1950 novelty Christmas standard, delivered by The Beach Boys with their signature vocal…
childhood wonder impermanence seasonal magic
The Adverts
A fast, self-aware punk anthem about the band's own formation and the grind of making it, delivered with equal parts bravado and…
youth and its expiration date the mechanics of punk as a career ambivalence about performance
Robert Johnson
A restless, hunted man narrates his own flight from unnamed pursuit, mixing weather imagery, hoodoo folk magic, and longing for…
persecution and pursuit restlessness/displacement folk magic and superstition
Eric B. & Rakim
Rakim builds a boast track around a single conceit: he is the beginning of an infinite alphabet with no closing letter, meaning…
linguistic self-mythologizing battle-rap supremacy infinity versus finitude
Atmosphere
Slug narrates a surreal, almost hallucinatory encounter with a solitary older woman whose hand tattoos come to embody the…
duality of good and evil sexual autonomy and self-pleasure voyeurism versus empathy
Alison Krauss
A young narrator rehearses her own exit from a doomed relationship, arguing herself into leaving before she can be hurt again.…
self-protection versus vulnerability romantic disillusionment pride as armor
Nirvana
A hushed, almost inert closer to Nevermind that trades the album's loud-quiet-loud dynamics for a single sustained murmur. The…
isolation destitution moral numbness
Thom Yorke
A short, jittery meditation on denial in the face of looming crisis, built around the image of someone stopping or turning back…
denial time and mortality powerlessness disguised as control
The Supremes
A whimsical children's-style Christmas novelty in which a tree-top star sings in the first person about descending from the sky…
childlike wonder generosity and giving holiday magic
Todd Snider
A broke narrator hits up a wealthier acquaintance for cash, mixing hustler charm with barely-veiled resentment. Todd Snider…
class resentment hustling and charm as survival poverty vs. wealth
Genesis
A slight, hazy pop song from Genesis's most commercial period, built on a chorus of impossible images and a coy premise about a…
romantic idealization altered perception the impossible/surreal
Judee Sill
A late, posthumously released Judee Sill song that treats spiritual awakening as a physical journey westward, toward light and…
spiritual longing freedom versus captivity resurrection as metaphor for awakening
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
Randy Newman
A miniature, deadpan ballad built around the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire, in which Newman turns an environmental disaster into a…
industrial pollution irony of civic pride environmental degradation
Broadcast
A hypnotic, repetition-driven track that offers reassurance while sounding faintly unsettling, as if the comfort on offer might…
dependency isolation reassurance versus control
Carole King
A counting rhyme turned into a miniature farce: a boy who wants to be alone finds his home invaded by an absurd, escalating…
solitude and independence order versus chaos assertiveness
Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox reworks a Motown-era declaration of romantic helplessness into a stark, brooding torch song, stripping away The…
romantic longing powerlessness disguised as power emotional isolation
Brandi Carlile
A meditation on a romance that idealizes itself even as it self-sabotages, built around the tension between two people who…
self-sabotage in love idealization versus reality fear of vulnerability
New Order
A song about a relationship curdling under the weight of unspoken resentment, built on the tension between wanting release and…
emotional withholding breakup and loss communication breakdown
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
Kris Delmhorst
A self-aware confession of unreliability, built almost entirely from a string of practical-object metaphors -- umbrella,…
emotional unavailability self-knowledge as excuse commitment avoidance
Todd Rundgren
A lonely Friday-night bar excursion turns into something closer to a ghost story or wish-fulfillment dream, as a mysterious…
loneliness desire and fantasy the uncanny
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
Leonard Cohen
A spare, almost prose-like meditation on the September 11 attacks, in which the speaker refuses to endorse any explanatory…
9/11 and national trauma refusal of ideology complicity of the observer
Mission of Burma
Mission of Burma turns the Surrealist painter Max Ernst into both subject and method, building a song out of collaged,…
art and irrationality collage and fragmentation the outsider artist
A jaunty, unguarded pledge of loyalty written for the Toy Story soundtrack, sung in the voice of a companion (originally Woody,…
loyalty friendship as identity reassurance in the face of fear
Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse builds a shaky optimism out of wreckage imagery, insisting that even a broken-down vehicle still gets you…
near-disaster and survival willed optimism emotional evasiveness
A confession and an apology run together as the speaker compares himself to a series of unstable, straining images to explain…
freedom versus commitment guilt and self-forgiveness instability of the self