Wire
A short, incantatory list of contradictory claims about love, built almost entirely on repeating a single grammatical…
ambivalence of love transformation and distortion paradox
Death Cab for Cutie
A breakup song dressed as a litany of paradoxes, where the singer catalogs contradictions in the world as a way of processing…
disillusionment after divorce contradiction and paradox forgiveness withheld
Willie Nelson
This is a cover of the Creedence Clearwater Revival standard, and Willie Nelson's version leans into its plainspoken, riddling…
paradox and contradiction impending trouble endurance through time
Fairport Convention
A Bob Dylan composition (famously covered rather than written by Fairport Convention) built around a gently insistent offer of…
seeking versus settling unspoken devotion time and transience
Broken Social Scene
A hazy meditation on a relationship that may have been more illusion than substance, built on a paradoxical central image of…
romantic ambivalence self-doubt and memory erosion under pressure
Thom Yorke
A fractured, glitchy meditation on trying to erase someone from consciousness only to find them multiplying under the pressure…
denial and obsession the futility of erasure suspicion and manipulation
Alison Krauss
A cover of John Hartford's classic drifter song, sung here by Alison Krauss with a woman's voice addressing a wandering lover…
freedom vs attachment memory as intimacy itinerancy
Paul Simon
A short, gospel-tinged homily built on a single paradox: mastery of failure precedes any real ascent. Simon frames the idea in…
failure as preparation humility versus ambition folk wisdom
Roberta Flack
A Leonard Cohen composition rendered here as a slow, aching meditation on a relationship's dissolution, delivered without…
romantic separation impermanence tenderness amid loss
Bert Jansch
This is a traditional Appalachian folk lament, here rendered by Bert Jansch in his hushed, weathered late-career voice, about a…
exile and rejection itinerancy social reversal of fortune
Creedence Clearwater Revival
A deceptively sunny-sounding song built on an unresolved paradox: rain falling from a clear sky. Beneath the gentle melody sits…
impending doom cyclical hardship confusion between calm and crisis
Judee Sill
Judee Sill turns a betrayal by a charming, elusive lover into a small theology, comparing him to a Jesus who literally built the…
betrayal and seduction sin and redemption entwined spiritual longing
Bill Callahan
A restless, aphoristic meditation on identity and self-narration, borrowing its title's initials to nod toward the noir novelist…
self-mythology impermanence of mood the unreliability of narrative
Black Sabbath
This is Black Sabbath's title track marking the arrival of Ronnie James Dio, trading the band's earlier horror-movie doom for…
moral ambiguity illusion versus reality corrupted power