The Triffids
A meditation on memory's unreliability, built around a man clutching physical relics of a lost woman while admitting each…
memory and distortion obsession idealization vs reality
Neutral Milk Hotel
A distorted, obsessive love song that swings between tenderness and revulsion, built around the fixation of a narrator who both…
obsessive desire idealization vs. disgust possession and control
Mercury Rev
A short, hypnotic song built almost entirely from repeated phrases about speed, doom, and a woman elevated to mythic status…
impermanence obsession/idealization speed and momentum as metaphor for a relationship
Blondie
A study in control disguised as romance: the narrator insists nothing between her and the person she's watching is chance,…
control vs. fate obsession and surveillance determinism
PJ Harvey
A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…
obsession codependency possessiveness
Vince Gill
A country love song built around the physical panic of infatuation rather than its resolution. The narrator never gets to…
unrequited longing vulnerability idealization
Suede
A short, hallucinatory B-side that circles a single obsessive refrain about someone's departure, delivered through disjointed,…
obsession loss and absence drug culture
Radiohead
A song of self-loathing built around a single obsessive comparison: the speaker idolizes someone he sees as flawless while…
self-loathing unrequited desire alienation
Todd Rundgren
A blues-drenched confession addressed to a personified nocturnal terror—likely obsessive desire or a destructive relationship…
obsession fear and desire intertwined loss of control
Depeche Mode
A blues-electro stalker's chant built almost entirely around a single fixation: sexual compulsion framed as addiction and…
obsession addiction desire as compulsion
Waylon Jennings
A short, obsessive breakup lament built almost entirely around one plea repeated over and over: some accusation aimed at a…
heartbreak escape and flight self-destruction
Led Zeppelin
A folk-inflected ballad about chasing an idealized woman and a fresh start in California, only to find the search shading into…
romantic idealization escape and reinvention California mythology
Billy Joel
A young narrator describes a destructive, one-sided infatuation using imagery of physical danger — electrified rails, hidden…
obsessive infatuation self-destruction adolescent isolation
The Postal Service
A love song built on cosmic-scale metaphor that keeps colliding with mundane domestic detail: the singer stretches to find…
long-distance love faith versus skepticism idealization
Death Cab for Cutie
An extended, deliberately monotonous instrumental build frames a lyric spoken by someone who refuses to accept another person's…
obsession denial of rejection unreciprocated desire
Bert Jansch
A late-period Bert Jansch song that treats courtship as sorcery, built from a wandering, almost dreamlike set of images rather…
enchantment and desire the limits of language to capture love folkloric imagery
A short, mantra-like song built almost entirely from a single repeated claim of near-arrival, set against an image of racing an…
pursuit of an unreachable goal time pressure and mortality obsession
Prince
A pulsing, funk-driven fantasy in which lustful thought itself becomes a punishable crime, with the narrator gleefully accepting…
desire as transgression punishment and pleasure obsession
The Cure
"Push" is largely an instrumental-driven track with sparse, cryptic lyrics that arrive late and function more as texture than…
self-protection alienation obsession
Cassandra Wilson
This is Cassandra Wilson's 2015 reading of the 1938 Coots/Gillespie standard, delivered as part of a tribute to Billie Holiday.…
intoxication as metaphor for desire self-awareness versus helplessness obsession
Harry Nilsson
A short, incantatory set of lines about the impossibility of escape gets stretched into a nearly six-minute groove, with the…
inescapability codependency self-destruction
The Decemberists
A rangy, harmonica-flecked folk-rock tune built around a single refrain that fixes the action in one riverside, working-town…
desire and self-destruction place and memory erosion/nature as metaphor
Roxy Music
A short, hypnotic track built almost entirely around a single repeated phrase, using minimal lyrical content to evoke a mood of…
obsession romantic devotion ambiguity of desire
Sturgill Simpson
A retro-soul come-on built around a single, overworked double entendre, this theme song for HBO's Vinyl trades on 1970s funk…
desire as addiction performance of seduction decay behind glamour
The Stooges
A slow-burning ballad of surrender, "Ann" strips The Stooges' usual noise down to a hypnotic drone so Iggy Pop can perform total…
erotic surrender loss of control obsession
Joan Armatrading
A love song built almost entirely on declaration rather than incident: a narrator confesses an all-consuming attachment, admits…
infatuation self-aware sentimentality gratitude/luck
A blunt, riff-driven declaration of desire that keeps colliding with the speaker's own disbelief at how simple and overwhelming…
desire versus complexity secrecy and shame repetition as devotion
Faithless
A trip-hop confession of romantic addiction, built on a hypnotic looping chorus and a spoken-sung verse that describes love as…
addiction as metaphor for love codependency and control self-deception
Eurythmics
A minimal, incantatory sketch of a woman rendered almost entirely through color, repeated like a chant until a single image of…
absence obsession dissolution of identity
Minutemen
A brief, aphoristic piece in which the Minutemen compress a whole philosophical argument about human self-regard into a handful…
human self-image skepticism vs idealism scale and insignificance
Lucinda Williams
A song about the gap between knowing a relationship is finished and being unable to act on that knowledge. Built almost entirely…
romantic obsession denial versus awareness emotional paralysis
Built to Spill
A meditation on obsessive thinking and the indifference of the natural world, built around a repeated denial that functions…
obsessive thought indifference of nature anxiety over decision-making
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
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
The Teardrop Explodes
A brisk, bright pop-psych song about romantic fixation, where longing tips into something more obsessive and unstable. The lyric…
obsessive longing distance and return emotional instability
Deep Purple
This is Deep Purple's cover of the Neil Diamond original, a straightforward blues-rock love song built around a repeated title…
idealized love devotion simplicity/contentment
A hypnotic, dread-soaked incantation in which the speaker is consumed nightly by obsession, grief, and something like…
obsessive love death and the afterlife possession and loss of will
This is a straightforward garage-pop cover turned hard-rock workout, built almost entirely from nonsense syllables and a simple…
obsessive infatuation powerlessness in love physical desire
Röyksopp
This is a lyric built almost entirely from fragments and repetition, functioning more as an incantation than a narrative song.…
idealization and unattainability transcendence bodily/sensory ecstasy
Deerhunter
The title track of Deerhunter's 2013 album is less a song than a controlled breakdown: verses of fractured pleading and…
obsessive fixation psychic disintegration romantic desperation