Free
This is a bare-bones jealousy anthem built around a menacing catchphrase — a working man warning off a rival who's been sniffing…
jealousy and possessiveness masculine pride working-class self-assurance
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
Lauryn Hill
This is Lauryn Hill's faithful cover of the 1967 Frankie Valli pop standard, tucked into The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a…
romantic infatuation gratitude vulnerability
The Band
A narrator in a fading, mob-shadowed Atlantic City weighs a desperate financial choice against a fragile romantic vow, using…
economic desperation moral compromise decay and renewal
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
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
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
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
Van Morrison
An ecstatic, almost breathless love lyric built from a chain of future-tense vows rather than a plot. The singer imagines a walk…
romantic rapture renewal/rebirth innocence regained
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
A breakup song built on willful avoidance: the narrator repeatedly insists they don't want an explanation for why the…
denial as self-protection romantic dissolution emotional exhaustion
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
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
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
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
The Beatles
A meditation on memory that moves from cataloguing remembered places and people to a declaration of present love, arguing that…
memory and nostalgia mortality the persistence of the past
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
Elliott Smith
A quiet, almost lullaby-like address to someone (or something) that promises comfort while actually describing a kind of…
addiction and dependency seduction and control erased identity
Nick Drake
A brief autobiographical arc compressed into a handful of couplets, tracing a movement from innocence through disillusionment to…
loss of innocence depression and fatigue dependency on another
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