Results for “patience as desire”

Songs

Almost Had to Start a Fight / In and Out of Patience

Parquet Courts

This is really two linked songs stitched into one track: an anxious, stuttering account of near-violence and existential…

urban anxiety exhaustion of patience alienation and numbness

Faith

George Michael

A dance-pop declaration of self-preservation dressed up as a love song: the narrator is attracted to someone but refuses to hand…

romantic self-protection distrust of surface attraction patience versus desire

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

Easy, Easy, Got to Take It Easy

Teddy Pendergrass

A slow-burning seduction ballad built almost entirely around a single piece of self-advice: don't rush. Teddy Pendergrass…

patience as desire vulnerability in intimacy self-restraint

The Panties

Mos Def

A slow-burn seduction song built almost entirely on repetition and murmured reassurance rather than narrative incident. Mos Def…

seduction and patience presence over words physical intimacy as the only true communication

Cool It Down

The Velvet Underground

A loose, easy-rolling shuffle about romantic patience versus urgency, dressed in vague hints of bureaucratic or criminal…

desire vs. patience urban anonymity casual detachment

Lay Lady Lay

Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes takes Dylan's spare, folk-country invitation and rebuilds it as a slow-burning soul seduction, stretching the…

seduction and invitation patience and waiting domestic intimacy

Just Like Water

Lauryn Hill

Performed live and introduced almost as an experiment in vulnerability after the confrontational 'Rebel', this song builds an…

surrender spiritual longing conflated with romantic desire purification

So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings

Caroline Polachek

A breakup-adjacent pop song that treats long-distance longing as a comic, almost physical ailment — attraction itself becomes a…

long-distance desire emotional overexposure humiliation as intimacy

It's Going to Take Some Time

Carole King

A quiet post-breakup meditation in which the narrator refuses easy resolution, choosing patience over self-pity. Carole King…

heartbreak recovery self-forgiveness patience

I Want

Chaka Khan

A straightforward declaration of romantic devotion and desire, built almost entirely on the call-and-response between the words…

desire devotion reassurance

Rockin' After Midnight

Marvin Gaye

A late-night dance-floor come-on built almost entirely from repeated affirmations of desire, this track functions less as a…

desire nightlife/escapism romantic pursuit

Harvest Moon

Cassandra Wilson

Cassandra Wilson's cover transforms Neil Young's rustic love song into a slow, smoky meditation on enduring desire, stretching…

enduring love desire and memory nature as intimacy

Give Me Your Love (Love Song)

Curtis Mayfield

A slow-burning soul ballad built almost entirely around a single plea, this track works less through storytelling than through…

romantic devotion vulnerability refuge from hardship

Pearls

Jessie Ware

Pearls is a disco-pop invitation to abandon restraint, built on a central image of literally dancing hard enough to snap a pearl…

liberation through pleasure multiplicity of female identity risk-taking

Out of My Head

Lupe Fiasco

A straightforward pop-rap infatuation song in which Lupe Fiasco uses the language of songcraft itself—hooks, choruses, verses—as…

infatuation obsession music as metaphor for love

Tie Your Mother Down

Queen

A hard-rock stomper about sneaking past disapproving parents to get to a girl, played entirely for comic, cartoonish swagger.…

teenage rebellion forbidden romance comic machismo

Cabin Down Below

Tom Petty

A stripped-down invitation song built almost entirely on repetition and a single image: a secluded cabin as the destination for…

seduction escape desire

Like Sugar

Chaka Khan

A pure dancefloor invitation built on a single sensory equation: funk equals sugar equals irresistible pull. Chaka Khan spends…

physical pleasure dance as surrender desire

Wild Thing

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

Fortunate

Maxwell

A neo-soul love song built almost entirely from negation and comparison: the singer catalogs firsts and never-had-befores to…

gratitude romantic awe transformation through love

In the Sun

Blondie

A breezy, almost novelty-pop daydream in which the singer imagines escaping gray urban New York for a sunlit, surf-and-luau…

escapism urban alienation fantasy vs. reality

Surgeon

St. Vincent

A woman narrates a summer of collapse—medication, isolation, avoidance of family and mail—while a chorus repeats a request to be…

depression and isolation medicalization of the self desire for external repair

Feel Like Makin' Love

Roberta Flack

A slow-building meditation on desire that treats ordinary moments — a walk, a candlelit dinner, a touch — as triggers for…

desire and intimacy the sensuality of the ordinary seasonal renewal as metaphor

Right In Time

Lucinda Williams

A slow-building meditation on desire built from small domestic gestures rather than declarations. Williams narrates a private…

longing memory and its physical trace solitary desire

I'm On Fire

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

Human Nature

Michael Jackson

A nocturnal meditation on urban restlessness and desire, framed as a defense against unnamed accusers who question the…

urban alienation desire and impulse self-justification

Feathered Indians

Tyler Childers

A hazy, sensory account of a night of intoxicated intimacy that keeps circling back to a plea for reassurance and permanence.…

desire and intoxication vulnerability beneath bravado longing for stability

Rid of Me

PJ Harvey

A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…

obsession codependency possessiveness

Anymore

Goldfrapp

A hypnotic, minimal-lyric track built almost entirely on desire and impatience, where sexual and mystical/transcendent longing…

desire and impatience transformation through another the sacred and the carnal merged

Dreams

Brandi Carlile

A hushed confession about desire that can only surface in sleep, this song is built around the gap between what the narrator…

repressed desire unrequited longing self-restraint

Bad Habits (Uncut)

Maxwell

Maxwell casts desire as an addiction that the singer both craves and cannot escape, framing love as a compulsion with real costs…

addiction as metaphor for love loss of control guilt and self-awareness

The Nearness of You

Sarah Vaughan

A standard by Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington, here rendered by Sarah Vaughan as an intimate meditation on physical presence…

desire and presence the inadequacy of romantic cliché vulnerability

More

The Sisters of Mercy

A chant-like meditation on insatiability, built around a mantra that keeps restating need in two contradictory forms at once.…

insatiable desire emotional withholding transaction vs. intimacy

By the Rivers Dark

Leonard Cohen

A short, incantatory prayer-song in which the speaker surrenders the illusion of being the one who loves and comes to see love…

surrender of ego divine or transcendent love exile and punishment

100 Yard Dash

Raphael Saadiq

Raphael Saadiq turns a classic Motown-style running metaphor into a study of romantic panic, using the sprint as both flight and…

desire as pursuit loss of control romantic obsession

This Charming Man

The Smiths

A stranded young man with a broken bicycle is picked up by an older, wealthier stranger, and the encounter becomes a charged,…

class anxiety closeted desire vanity and self-consciousness

Little Girl

Muddy Waters

A raw, low-slung blues courtship number in which the narrator badgers a woman with flirtatious questions, building desire…

flirtation and pursuit sensual desire Southern imagery

Kanga Roo

Big Star

A woozy, half-collapsed love song built from disconnected snapshots rather than a story, drifting through washes of noise and…

fractured attention desire as disorientation voyeurism and observation

Barely Legal

The Strokes

A slack, half-confessional monologue about a lopsided romance where guilt, desire, and self-sabotage tangle together without…

failed responsibility desire and control guilt and self-justification