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
Deep Purple
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
Curtis Mayfield
A late-70s disco-soul love song built almost entirely around physical and emotional surrender, with Curtis Mayfield trading his…
romantic and sexual devotion surrender of control obsession/infatuation
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
Spoon
A pulsing title track built almost entirely around a single obsessive phrase, tracking a mind hijacked by desire while it's set…
obsession and infatuation loss of control urban nightlife / travel
Björk
Björk's cover reworks a 1951 Betty Hutton novelty tune into a dynamic set piece where hushed, orchestral verses collapse into…
the volatility of infatuation quiet vs. chaos as emotional states the absurdity of romantic obsession
Percy Sledge
A soul ballad that describes, almost clinically, the self-destructive logic of male devotion: a man surrenders judgment, money,…
obsessive devotion self-deception in love sacrifice and loss of self
Whitney Houston
A dance-pop track built around uncontrollable physical attraction rather than romance in any tender sense. The narrator catalogs…
obsessive desire loss of self-control infatuation vs. commitment
The Stooges
Little Doll is a two-minute blues-punk grind built on a simple crush and a raw, repeated command to move. Its lyric barely…
infatuation objectification desire vs. distance
PJ Harvey
A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…
obsession codependency possessiveness
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
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
Blondie
A cover of a 1963 girl-group style bubblegum tune, reworked by Blondie into a knowing new wave valentine that trades on…
infatuation surface pleasure and artifice girl-group nostalgia
X
This is X's version of the garage-rock standard, stripped down and repeated almost to the point of incantation. Rather than…
infatuation desire uncertainty about love
Mariah Carey
A buoyant celebration of infatuation that lives entirely in the space between attraction and consummation, where the pleasure…
infatuation escapism desire and daydream
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
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
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
The xx
A duet-style track built around the exhilaration and risk of falling into infatuation, with the two vocalists trading lines that…
infatuation vulnerability risk-taking in love
Madonna
A buoyant early-80s dance-pop confection that turns a childhood wishing-star rhyme into an adult love song, celebrating…
infatuation luck and fate celestial imagery
Michael Jackson
A buoyant, physically driven declaration of infatuation built almost entirely around a single hook that gets repeated, echoed,…
infatuation desire and pursuit possessiveness
Traffic
A straightforward blues-rock come-on built around infatuation and helplessness in the face of a magnetic, emotionally elusive…
desire and obsession loss of control emotional manipulation
Beirut
A brief, deceptively cheerful pop song built almost entirely from a wordless vocal hook, with a single quatrain of lyric…
infatuation uncertainty urgency
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
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
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
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
A slow-dance ballad built around a single moment: crossing a crowded room toward someone and closing the distance between…
infatuation vulnerability physical 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
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
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
Mercury Rev
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
Humble Pie
A short, almost skeletal love song built around the old rock-and-roll conceit of the heart skipping a beat, borrowed and…
infatuation the body as evidence of love repetition and ritual
Lauryn Hill
This is Lauryn Hill's rendition of the 1967 Frankie Valli classic, placed on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a brief,…
infatuation gratitude vulnerability
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
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
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
Queen
A slight, groove-driven vignette about attraction to someone effortlessly stylish and self-possessed, filtered through…
infatuation cool detachment vs. desire surface style over substance
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