Results for “romantic love as culmination”

Songs

Isn't She Lovely

Stevie Wonder

A new father's unfiltered, almost breathless reaction to the birth of his daughter, rendered as a series of rhetorical questions…

fatherhood and new birth gratitude love as creative/generative force

Can't Take My Eyes Off of You (I Love You Baby)

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

Freeway of Love

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

Love, Reign O'er Me

The Who

This is the climactic closing statement of Quadrophenia, a plea for emotional deliverance disguised as a weather report. The…

spiritual longing emotional exhaustion love as elemental force

Baby, This Love I Have

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

In My Life

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

You're the One for Me (feat. Joss Stone)

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

Tear-Stained Letter

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

Tomorrow Is a Long Time

Sandy Denny

A cover of Dylan's early ballad, rendered here as a hushed meditation on longing and self-erasure in absence. Sandy Denny's…

longing and absence loss of self idealized love

Long Way Home

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

Until You Came Into My Life

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

Yesterday

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

Christmas In the Room

Sufjan Stevens

A quiet domestic love song that strips Christmas of all its commercial and social trappings and relocates the holiday's meaning…

intimacy vs. commercialism presence over spectacle domestic love as sanctuary

Flagship

Jason Isbell

Isbell uses a fading hotel as an extended metaphor for a long marriage at risk of going stale, watching an older couple's silent…

marital complacency the labor of sustaining love aging and decline

Pink + White

Frank Ocean

A hazy, sun-warmed meditation on being shaped and protected by someone else's love, set against a backdrop of natural disaster…

maternal or protective love survival and disaster memory and childhood

Both Sides Now

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

Gimme Shelter

The Rolling Stones

An apocalyptic weather report that turns into a plea for cover. Over a coiling, tremolo'd guitar figure and a hammering rhythm,…

apocalyptic dread violence as imminent, not distant the need for refuge

Can We Pretend

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

Superwoman

Gladys Knight

A domestic monologue in which a woman catalogs the daily labor she performs for a partner who has grown cold and inattentive,…

emotional labor and domestic care the myth of female self-sufficiency withdrawal and neglect in a relationship

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

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

Distant Lover

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

Dreams

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

Keep Me in Your Heart

Warren Zevon

A dying man's direct, unsentimental request to be remembered, framed as a farewell letter set to a gentle, almost lullaby-like…

mortality memory and legacy love as continuity

Blues Run the Game

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

The Kiss

Judee Sill

Judee Sill's 'The Kiss' fuses erotic and devotional language until they become indistinguishable, imagining spiritual union as a…

sacred and profane love transcendence death as release

Thunder Road

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

Boogie Street

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on the pull between transcendence and the grinding routine of ordinary commerce and appetite, imagined as a street…

sacred vs. profane mortality and impermanence spiritual longing amid worldly routine

What's Going On

Marvin Gaye

A returning-soldier's-eye plea addressed to family members in turn — mother, brother, father — asking why grief and violence…

war and its cost at home generational misunderstanding police brutality and protest

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen

A three-part meditation in waltz time that moves from a woman by a river, to Christ walking on water, and back to the woman…

erotic love as spiritual apprehension faith and doubt surrender to a guide

Running Up That Hill

Kate Bush

A song about two lovers who keep wounding each other without meaning to, and the narrator's fantasy of a supernatural fix: a…

empathy as an impossible exchange the violence hidden inside love gendered misunderstanding

You Keep Me Hanging On

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

Cranes in the Sky

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

Superheroes

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

Purple Rain

Prince

A slow, gospel-shaped ballad in which a speaker apologizes for hurting someone, then gradually widens the address from a single…

apology and regret failed intimacy that could not become friendship spiritual deliverance

God Only Knows

The Beach Boys

A love song that opens by admitting its own limits "" the singer won't promise permanence "" and then spends the rest of its…

conditional devotion dependence and identity uncertainty as a form of honesty