Bad Company
This is a lean, riff-driven blues-rock strut built almost entirely around a single confession of desire repeated until it…
desire and appetite masculine bravado transactional love
Deep Purple
This is a cover of Joe South's garage-pop original, reworked by Deep Purple into a driving rock jam built around a simple…
obsessive infatuation powerlessness in love desire vs. self-control
Bob Dylan
Dylan's cover of a call-and-response children's Christmas polka builds a cumulative list of Santa's attributes through a…
holiday ritual and repetition Americana and civic satire nonsense/novelty performance
Marvin Gaye
A slow-burning soul lament in which the narrator addresses an absent lover across an unspecified distance, moving from tender…
romantic longing separation and absence memory and nostalgia
Townes Van Zandt
A ballad about a Mexican bandit's death and the shadowy figure who may have betrayed him, told with the flat affect of folklore…
betrayal and complicity myth-making versus truth exile and diminishment
Queen
A piano ballad structured as a direct plea to a departing lover, built almost entirely on repetition rather than narrative…
romantic loss supplication and pleading possessiveness in love
Bill Withers
A wounded plea for a fresh start with a partner whose affection is unreliable, built almost entirely around one conditional…
conditional love emotional ambivalence denial as coping
The Supremes
A woman demands her own release from a dead relationship, addressing an ex who refuses to fully let go even though he no longer…
emotional limbo asymmetry of feeling demand for autonomy
Jimi Hendrix
This is Hendrix's take on the Booker T./William Bell blues standard, a compact statement of fatalism delivered through the…
fatalism poverty and misfortune blues tradition/lineage
Minnie Riperton
A love song built around the anxiety of being misunderstood -- the singer insists that her feelings are genuine even if her…
communication and its failure reassurance devotion
Randy Newman
Written for the animated film 'Toy Story,' this is a plain-spoken pledge of loyalty from one companion to another, stripped of…
loyalty reassurance humility versus devotion
Donny Hathaway
This is a live soul reinterpretation of the Beatles standard, in which Donny Hathaway strips the song of its chamber-pop…
loss and regret nostalgia as refuge romantic bewilderment
Smokey Robinson
A straightforward duet declaration of romantic certainty and fidelity, built around a duet pairing Smokey Robinson's classic…
romantic devotion fidelity certainty in love
Neil Young
A domestic sketch collides with a highway fantasy: the narrator remembers a diner waitress and imagines her alternate, freer…
restlessness and rootlessness domestic confinement vs. freedom idealization/myth-making
Ethan Whitney
This is a straightforward pop declaration of devotion that borrows superhero mythology to dress up a fairly conventional promise…
devotion and support escapism fantasy of destiny
Solange
Solange catalogs a long list of failed coping mechanisms for an unnamed sorrow, building an inventory of avoidance that…
avoidance and denial depression/emotional exhaustion consumerism as false comfort
The Staple Singers
This is the Staple Singers' rendition of the traditional African American spiritual, built almost entirely on call-and-response…
deliverance and salvation collective faith and community crossing over / transition between states
Otis Redding
Otis Redding's rendition of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem transforms a carefully wrought protest song into a raw,…
racial injustice and endurance faith versus doubt family and disappointment
Betty Davis
Betty Davis takes a lover's insults—bitch, witch, alley cat, dirty dog—and turns them into a badge of honor, staging a…
sexual autonomy and shame reclaiming derogatory language power reversal in a relationship
Roberta Flack
A slow, hymn-like ballad that traces one relationship's progress through three ascending intimacies: first sight, first kiss,…
awakening love cosmic/natural imagery as emotional scale vulnerability and surrender