Nat King Cole
A classic bolero of romantic desolation, sung as a direct address to the moon, asking it to carry a message to an absent lover.…
romantic abandonment longing and waiting nocturnal solitude
Alison Krauss
A quiet ballad about someone pleading with a former lover to stay rather than chase whatever new horizon has caught their…
lost love longing the pull of the new versus the familiar
Queen
A ballad of direct, almost naked pleading, structured as a repeated appeal to a departing lover rather than a story with events.…
romantic loss pleading and supplication devotion despite rejection
Marvin Gaye
A slow-burning soul lament built almost entirely on repetition and vocal ad-lib, in which the narrator addresses a lover who has…
longing and absence romantic betrayal memory versus present loss
Gregory Porter
A meditation on a love the narrator can't will himself out of, even when guilt, fatigue, and a bruised past argue for release.…
involuntary devotion emotional exhaustion guilt and self-reproach
Fleetwood Mac
A plea for reconciliation built almost entirely out of repetition, where the speaker asks a former lover for one more chance and…
romantic pleading nostalgia for lost intimacy persuasion through repetition
A late-night plea from a lover trying to keep a partner from leaving after what sounds like a one-night or transient encounter.…
transient intimacy romantic pleading vulnerability masked as seduction
Angel Olsen
A short, incantatory song built almost entirely from repeated questions, pressing someone to let light and movement back into a…
emotional withdrawal depression or shutdown persistence and pleading
The Flaming Lips
This is a reading of the Madonna song "Borderline" as performed by The Flaming Lips, a cover that repurposes a glossy 1984…
romantic ambivalence emotional dependency longing for freedom
Al Green
A young man begs a train conductor to reverse course so he can return to a lover he left too hastily. Al Green, still developing…
regret and reversal longing isolation
Tom Waits
A wandering, guilt-soaked ballad in which a restless narrator confesses his inability to settle down even as he pleads for…
restlessness and wanderlust guilt and self-forgiveness domestic responsibility vs freedom
PJ Harvey
A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…
obsession codependency possessiveness
Christine McVie's ballad is a quiet confession of self-abasement inside a relationship, sung to a partner who holds all the…
romantic submission self-doubt power imbalance
Kate Bush
Kate Bush voices Cathy Earnshaw's ghost from Emily Brontë's novel, pleading at a window for reunion with Heathcliff. The song…
possessive love death and haunting nature as emotional mirror
Minnie Riperton
A soft, incantatory love song built almost entirely from direct address and imperative pleading, in which the singer asks a…
romantic surrender identity through the other sensuality
Patsy Cline
A brief, plainspoken country ballad in which a woman watches the man she wronged walk off with someone else. There's no anger…
regret and self-blame lost love infidelity's consequences
The Supremes
A woman demands release from a relationship that has already died in everything but name, pleading with an ex to stop stringing…
emotional limbo demand for closure toxic attachment
XTC
A working-class narrator pleads, almost prayerfully, for the financial stability to hold onto his relationship and growing…
economic precarity class and dignity love under financial strain
The Louvin Brothers
A plain, pleading country ballad built entirely around a single conditional wish: to win the love of someone who remains just…
unrequited love longing devotion
Prince
A slow-burn seduction track built almost entirely around anticipation, in which the narrator promises total sexual surrender to…
erotic surrender impatience and urgency fantasy fulfillment
Echo & the Bunnymen
This is a self-titled album's late, throwaway-sounding track built almost entirely from paired nouns and nonsense refrains…
nonsense/wordplay power and submission repetition as meaning
Eurythmics
A withering breakup address in which the speaker refuses to justify the end of a relationship, cataloguing the addressee's…
emotional exhaustion refusal of explanation wasted time and regret
Amy Winehouse
This is Amy Winehouse's cover of the 1963 Ruby & the Romantics doo-wop standard, recast in her contralto as a slow, hazy soul…
young love patience and deferred happiness faith against doubt
Bruce Springsteen
A young man on a porch pleads with a woman named Mary to leave their fading town with him, framing an escape by car as both…
escape and flight romantic persuasion as salvation small-town limitation
B.B. King
B.B. King uses a first-person narrator identified as an aging traveling musician to plead for dignity and recognition, framing…
itinerant hardship dignity under judgment aging and endurance
A dense, incantatory piece of post-punk imagery in which the speaker pleads for mercy from some undefined judging or cutting…
self-doubt judgment and punishment survival
Otis Redding
Otis Redding takes the Impressions' original devotional ballad and turns it into a raw, almost pleading testimony of gratitude…
devotion gratitude doubt from outsiders
A breakup song written from a position of eerie calm rather than anguish, in which the departing partner's bid for freedom is…
romantic dissolution detachment as self-protection cyclical nature vs. human choice
A bolero of pure romantic pleading, built almost entirely on two commands: come closer, kiss me. Nat King Cole recorded this in…
romantic longing impatience and desire vulnerability in love
Maxwell
Maxwell's Unplugged reading of Kate Bush's ballad turns a song about a man helplessly watching his wife through a dangerous…
helplessness in the face of mortality regret over words and gestures withheld gendered division of labor and pain
Mississippi John Hurt
This is Mississippi John Hurt's spare, guitar-picked reading of the Carter Family standard, stripping the hymn down to a single…
grief and mourning death and the afterlife family loss
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan's 1950 reading of the Harold Arlen–Johnny Mercer standard treats the lyric's blunt vow of permanence as an…
unconditional devotion acceptance of hardship romantic fatalism
A breakup song built on the tension between raw admission of dependency and a hard-won claim to self-sufficiency. Amy Winehouse…
self-respect after heartbreak emotional dependency resignation and acceptance
A young rock-and-roller pleads with his girlfriend to sneak out past her disapproving parents, turning a neighborhood escape…
young love versus parental authority escape and liberation class resentment and vindication
Fairport Convention
A first-person narrator learns a friend has been sentenced to ninety-nine years for a fatal car crash and travels to plead his…
injustice and arbitrary punishment powerlessness before institutions loyalty and friendship
Gorillaz
A prayer-like protest song set against the anxious aftermath of the 2016 US election, in which a Black narrator addresses a…
racial violence and police brutality political despair faith and doubt
Harry Nilsson
Nilsson's reading of the Pomus-Shuman standard takes a song already built on a tension between generosity and possessiveness and…
jealousy disguised as devotion possessiveness trust and its limits
De La Soul
"Eye Know" is De La Soul's sunniest love song, built on a Steely Dan sample and playful Daisy Age slang. Both Posdnuos and…
courtship and seduction wordplay as intimacy group identity and self-naming