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
Fleetwood Mac
A breakup song delivered as calm prophecy rather than complaint. The singer grants her departing partner the freedom he asked…
romantic separation loneliness as consequence foresight and prophecy
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
Ann Peebles
A gratitude song built on a rescue narrative: the singer describes emerging from despair into a redemptive love, framing the…
romantic salvation gratitude rebirth/renewal
Tom Waits
A wandering man confesses to a lover that he's constitutionally unable to take the straight path home, in love or in life. Waits…
restlessness and wanderlust romantic unreliability the tension between domesticity and freedom
Richard Thompson
A wry, uptempo account of a breakup told from the battered-but-wisecracking side, where physical comedy stands in for emotional…
romantic aftermath toxic love masculine bravado as deflection
Laura Marling
This is a cover of a mid-1960s folk standard, sung here in Laura Marling's plainspoken, weary register, about the impossibility…
itinerancy and escape addiction as self-medication romantic longing and loss
Joni Mitchell
A three-part meditation in which the speaker sets a naive, image-drunk way of seeing against a disenchanted one, then refuses to…
disillusionment the limits of knowledge aging and changed perception
Aretha Franklin
This is a driving-metaphor party song: sex and romance recast as a joyride down an open highway in a pink Cadillac. It's…
romantic/sexual liberation escape and momentum playfulness and flirtation
Bruce Springsteen
A young man stands in a driveway trying to talk a woman named Mary into getting in his car and leaving town with him. Over five…
escape and flight the limits of romantic promise small-town decay
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