Peggy Lee
This is a light, novelty-leaning pop-jazz tune built almost entirely on scat syllables and playful nonsense rhyme, using the act…
playfulness as seduction music-making as courtship nonsense/scat as expressive language
Bilal
A neo-soul love song built almost entirely on a single repeated affirmation, treating physical and spiritual intimacy as…
spiritual intimacy sensual desire authenticity vs. language
Bon Iver
A hushed, elliptical piece built from fragmented images of rural decay and seasonal change, standing in for something closer to…
decay and memory rural isolation seasonal cycles as emotional metaphor
Iron & Wine
A hushed devotional addressed to a partner whose identity and appearance keep shifting, where the singer asks only to remain…
impermanence of self and partner inadequacy of language devotion as humility
King Crimson
Adrian Belew turns a nonsense abecedarian exercise into a satire of verbal noise, marching through the alphabet with synonyms…
communication breakdown language as noise satire of discourse
Bill Callahan
A meditation on grief and the failure of language to console it, built around a dream in which the narrator writes down what he…
grief and mourning the limits of language dreams versus waking reality
Car Seat Headrest
A song about the failure of language to carry romantic and sexual desire, so the narrator retreats into the physical -- dancing,…
failure of language desire and physical intimacy mortality and fragility of the body
Dirty Projectors
The song splits into two distinct halves: a fragmented, imagistic opening that treats a woman as a collage of precious objects…
fragmented perception devotion and surrender language breaking down
Little Feat
This medley pairs a lean, bluesy lament about romantic and financial destitution with a loose, absurdist jam that dissolves…
poverty and isolation romantic disappointment touring life and rootlessness
Rickie Lee Jones
A fragmentary, almost cinematic sketch of two street characters, Woody and Dutch, moving through a nocturnal Los Angeles soaked…
nostalgia for vanished music scenes street mythology and male bonding language as rhythm and disguise
Sufjan Stevens
A brief, understated love song about the impossibility of naming a feeling that doesn't fit any available category. The narrator…
unspoken love platonic vs romantic intimacy inadequacy of language
Guided by Voices
A hazy, fragmented meditation on a relationship curdling into distrust, wrapped around a nonsensical-sounding refrain that…
romantic distrust paranoia disintegration
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode's "Angel" describes a visitation - an overwhelming spiritual or erotic encounter that strips the narrator of…
religious ecstasy surrender and dissolution erotic/spiritual conflation
St. Vincent
A voice built entirely of negation insists on its own indeterminacy while a second, quieter voice tries to soothe or scold it…
self-negation and identity refusal power and submission emotional volatility
Talking Heads
A breezy, mid-80s Talking Heads pop song built around a woman who slips through logic and expectation without apparent friction.…
surrender to irrationality enigmatic femininity detachment vs. desire
Fiona Apple
A breakup song that refuses to be a breakup song, insisting its subject is power rather than romance even as nostalgia for the…
manipulation and control self-deception reclaiming language
Fugazi
A tense, elliptical piece built around the image of a man walking a psychological margin, caught between admiration and violence…
obsession and surveillance jealousy self-destruction
Arlo Guthrie
A deliberately silly, nonsense talking-blues built almost entirely on rhyme-driven wordplay and a repeated chorus that insists…
absurdism nonsense wordplay freedom/mobility
Creedence Clearwater Revival
This is a cover of the Roy Orbison/Wade Moore rockabilly novelty tune, recast by Creedence as a loose, party-time throwaway on…
nonsense/playfulness dance-craze novelty physical abandon
Joe Williams
This is the standard Johnny Mercer/Richard Whiting torch-song standard, given a warm, unhurried reading by Joe Williams. The…
ineffability of love the limits of language playful hyperbole
Massive Attack
This is a fragmentary, almost liturgical piece built around a single stammered command—obedience—repeated until it dissolves…
power and submission ritual/liturgy loss of individual voice
Ramones
A cover of a novelty doo-wop hit turned into a blunt-force punk exercise, this track strips a already-nonsensical 1963 single…
nonsense as content repetition and ritual pop history as raw material
Small Faces
A breezy mid-60s pop song on the surface, this track is widely understood as a coded tribute to a drug dealer, dressed up in the…
drug culture adoration and dependency coded language
Broadcast
A brief, riddling lyric from Broadcast that treats language almost like an incantation or children's counting rhyme, numbering…
language and instruction innocence and its passing surveillance by nature or fate
Louis Armstrong
Armstrong takes a nonsense-syllable Disney novelty tune and turns it into a loose, warm vocal performance built on repetition…
uncomplicated joy sunshine/optimism nonsense as pleasure
Ride
Opening track on Ride's debut album, "Seagull" moves from physical collapse and failed language into an assertion of…
transcendence through pain failure of language power imbalance in love
Wilco
A song about the gap between feeling and articulation, built around a narrator trying to write a love letter he can't finish.…
failure of language romantic devotion self-doubt
Minnie Riperton
A love song built around the gap between feeling and expression, in which the narrator worries that her devotion isn't landing…
communication anxiety reassurance devotion
A terse, angry meditation on the failure of language to guarantee anything, 'Promises' treats verbal commitment as a kind of…
distrust of language broken commitment individual autonomy vs. mutual obligation
Steppenwolf
This is a party track built almost entirely on rhythm and nonsense syllables rather than narrative or meaning. Steppenwolf,…
dance and physical release nonsense as pleasure working-class party culture
Echo & the Bunnymen
This is a nonsense song built almost entirely out of paired animal and object names chanted in reversible order, interrupted by…
nonsense/absurdity submission and pleading repetition as ritual
The Beatles
A meditative lyric that treats consciousness itself as an overflowing, uncontainable stream, moving from language to imagery to…
meditation and detachment the limits of language transcendence of the self
Interpol
A clipped, cryptic breakup song built from disjointed images of departure and detachment, delivered in Paul Banks' flat, ominous…
dissolution of a relationship emotional detachment power and control
Roxy Music
A stripped-back ballad of loss and devotion, built almost entirely from plain declarative phrases and a repeated title-hook that…
romantic loss memory and permanence the inadequacy of language
Aphex Twin
Iz - Us reduces language to a single barked command, looping and mangling it until the phrase stops functioning as speech and…
dehumanization of language surveillance and shame childhood discipline
A short, wintry song built around an odd, almost clinical meet-cute at a blood bank that gradually reveals itself as a…
intimacy and secrecy blood and kinship as metaphor for love the limits of language
Cream
A whimsical, deadpan spoken-word piece from Cream's most experimental album, narrating the forced closure of a surreal curiosity…
absurdism and nonsense loss of livelihood arbitrary authority
A bouncy, deliberately artificial ska-pop tale of a market-stall trader and a band singer who fall in love, marry, and settle…
everyday romance domesticity gender roles
Pete Seeger
This is one of the most recognized folk songs in the American repertoire, a work song turned nursery singalong whose origins…
manual labor folk tradition domestic/communal life
Boston
A hard-edged love song about a guarded man forced open by attraction he can't fully articulate. Boston pairs arena-rock bombast…
emotional repression vulnerability in masculinity loss of control