Chet Baker
Chet Baker's reading of this Rodgers and Hart standard turns a bright, playful showtune into something hushed and interior.…
anticipation of love imagination versus reality romantic idealism
Bad Company
A late-period Bad Company track built around a simple, almost adolescent premise: a narrator paralyzed by unspoken feelings for…
unrequited longing fear of rejection romantic timidity
Nick Drake
A quiet, almost unbearably direct song built entirely around a single repeated question, addressed to someone the narrator loves…
romantic uncertainty fear of rejection self-doubt
Fleet Foxes
A breakup song built from small, deflating images of self-worth, sung by someone who has resigned themselves to having been…
romantic rejection self-deprecation memory and haunting
Mississippi John Hurt
This is Mississippi John Hurt's spare, fingerpicked take on the traditional blues standard "Corrina, Corrina," a song about a…
romantic longing abandonment fidelity despite rejection
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
A deceptively simple breakup anthem built on repetition and plain declarative statements, John Deacon's song uses the language…
liberation romantic disillusionment self-assertion
Steve Earle
A wry character sketch of an unrepentant romantic drifter told from the outside, by a narrator warning a woman about the man's…
romantic recidivism performance vs. sincerity the myth of the outlaw lover
Waylon Jennings
A plainspoken defense of romantic independence, delivered in Waylon Jennings' outlaw drawl. The narrator explains, without…
romantic independence resistance to conformity outlaw self-mythology
Roxy Music
A quiet plea for romantic risk-taking from a narrator who has been burned by love before. The song trades Roxy Music's earlier…
romantic vulnerability emotional fatigue hope after disappointment
Smokey Robinson
A straightforward declaration of romantic devotion, built on the classic Smokey Robinson template of certainty and fidelity. The…
romantic devotion certainty/fate fidelity
Blondie
A slight, doo-wop-inflected pop song about physical longing dressed up as teenage romantic melodrama. Blondie plays it as a…
desire and physical longing romantic jealousy performance of innocence vs. sexuality
The Shins
A love song built on plain, almost naive declarations that gradually reveal a deeper argument about vulnerability and rescue.…
romantic gratitude vulnerability vs. toughness rescue and renewal
Robyn
A teenage Robyn's breakout single is a straightforward Eurodance declaration of romantic surrender, built around a repeated plea…
romantic vulnerability independence versus surrender demand for reciprocity
Gladys Knight
A plainspoken plea for reassurance, this song strips romantic anxiety down to one repeated question: is there enough love here…
romantic uncertainty need for validation fear of wasted devotion
Nat King Cole
A classic Cuban bolero of romantic frustration, in which a lover demands a straight answer about the future of the relationship…
romantic indecision frustration and waiting time slipping away
Ella Fitzgerald
A Gershwin standard delivered as a quiet meditation on romantic longing, framed through the image of a lost lamb searching for a…
romantic longing vulnerability self-deprecating humor
Talib Kweli
A breezy, radio-ready love-and-lust song built around a repeated hook praising a woman's heat and appeal. Talib Kweli trades his…
desire and attraction romantic idealization pop culture reference as flattery
Whitney Houston
A devotional love ballad built almost entirely on a single act of assertion: repeated declarations of faith in a partner rather…
romantic devotion faith and belief as metaphor for love surrender/vulnerability
Neutral Milk Hotel
A meditation on love, mortality, and impermanence that blurs the line between romantic address and elegy, filtered through Jeff…
mortality and impermanence romantic devotion memory and loss
The Fall
This is a plainspoken cautionary tale about romantic self-deception: a man ignores his own instincts, falls hard for a woman who…
self-deception romantic ruin pride and consequence
Angel Olsen
A driving, garage-pop declaration of romantic persistence, in which the narrator refuses to let a faltering relationship end…
romantic persistence refusal to quit desire versus communication
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A stripped-down plea built almost entirely on repetition, "Maps" strips romantic longing down to a handful of phrases repeated…
romantic insecurity possessiveness disguised as devotion fear of abandonment
The Strokes
The title track of The Strokes' debut is a woozy, deadpan meditation on romantic and existential exhaustion, delivered in a…
disaffection romantic dishonesty generational ennui
Led Zeppelin
A folk-inflected ballad about chasing an idealized woman and a fresh start in California, only to find the search shading into…
romantic idealization escape and reinvention California mythology
Television
Television's "Glory" plays a lopsided, almost cartoonish romantic squabble against a chant that sounds like religious…
romantic confusion transcendence vs. absurdity surrender of anxiety
Kendrick Lamar
Built around a Luther Vandross/Cheryl Lynn duet sample, this GNX track finds Kendrick trading his usual combative persona for…
romantic devotion escapism through fantasy protection and provision
Tom Petty
Tom Petty turns a chorus of romantic devotion into a punchline by surrounding it with a comic gallery of failed relationships.…
romantic complacency divorce and dysfunction irony as affection
Frank Sinatra
A classic torch-song-turned-swing-standard about loneliness resolved by sudden romantic arrival, addressed to the moon as silent…
loneliness romantic transformation fate and chance
Massive Attack
A stripped, weary meditation on romantic inertia, sung by Sara Jézéquel (credited as Sarah Jay) with Robert Del Naja's added…
emotional numbness romantic dependency self-dissolution
A late-period Bad Company arena-rock love song that borrows the language of religious ecstasy to describe romantic and sexual…
romantic devotion sacred/profane confusion obsession and disbelief
Carly Simon
Carly Simon splices the nursery rhyme about the persistent spider into the title track's refrain from her own 'Coming Around…
resilience cyclical hope romantic disappointment
Frank Ocean
"Chanel" is a loose, associative track built around the Chanel logo's interlocking C's as a metaphor for bisexuality and duality…
bisexuality and duality surveillance and paranoia wealth as armor
Lana Del Rey
This is Lana Del Rey's faithful, lightly reworked cover of Sublime's 1996 track, itself a reggae-inflected reimagining of the…
betrayal and possessiveness local pride and belonging romantic disillusionment
Joni Mitchell
A meditation on romantic infatuation that refuses to resolve into either full escape or full surrender, built around the central…
romantic obsession self-sufficiency amid heartbreak creative identity as refuge
Madvillain
Meat Grinder is a woozy, off-kilter showcase for MF DOOM's dense internal rhyme, wrapped around a strange recurring image of…
surreal domesticity/confinement hustler bravado alter-ego mythmaking
Death Cab for Cutie
A gentle, folk-inflected love song built around a fantasy of full integration - body and spirit, self and other - as the…
union of body and soul romantic devotion mortality and shared fate
Joan Baez
A meditation on romantic disillusionment framed as a story about overhearing someone else's cynical wisdom and slowly coming to…
disillusionment with romantic love loss of innocence cyclical time and memory
George Michael
A dance-pop declaration of self-preservation dressed up as a love song: the narrator is attracted to someone but refuses to hand…
romantic self-protection distrust of surface attraction patience versus desire
Peter Gabriel
A love song that treats romantic devotion as a form of spiritual salvation, where another person's gaze becomes the only stable…
romantic devotion as salvation spiritual longing expressed through eros restlessness and escape