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
Feist
A chant-like nursery rhyme built almost entirely around a single nonsense word repeated as a call-and-response hook, tracking a…
ritual and repetition femininity as costume romantic transaction
J. Cole
A club-and-bedroom track built on interpolated Vanessa Carlton hooks, where a rapper on the come-up frames casual sex and…
casual sex versus emotional attachment material success as leverage fame and status anxiety
Queen
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
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
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
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
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
Billie Holiday
A standard from the Kern-Fields songbook, delivered here as a hushed, intimate meditation rather than a big romantic…
romantic devotion memory as consolation vulnerability
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
Mitski
A song about the vertigo of infatuation, where love feels less like comfort than like standing on a ledge. Mitski's narrator…
romantic obsession fear of vulnerability arrested emotional development
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
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
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
Florence + the Machine
A song about the void left by someone's silence, and the scale of belief or need required to fill it. Florence Welch turns…
romantic obsession spiritual emptiness unrequited longing
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
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
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
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 Flaming Lips
This is a reading of the Madonna song "Borderline" as performed by The Flaming Lips, a cover that repurposes a glossy 1984…
romantic ambivalence emotional dependency longing for freedom
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
Lana Del Rey
An early, previously shelved Lana Del Rey track built almost entirely on a single plea for devotion and surrender, framed as a…
devotion and surrender romantic idolization fate versus choice
Irving Berlin's standard is a compact declaration of romantic relief, built almost entirely on the pun between 'blue' as color…
romantic joy transformation of perception time and its acceleration in love
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
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
A late-career Smokey Robinson love song that turns a simple plea into a multilingual serenade, cycling through French, Spanish,…
romantic devotion universality of love gratitude
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
Pet Shop Boys
A duet between two mismatched voices — one flatly transactional, one emotionally raw — turns a breakup into a study of…
mismatched desire emotional detachment aftermath of separation
Gregory Porter
A soft, devotional love song that treats a romantic partner as a near-mythical arrival — someone who seems to have literally…
romantic wonder divinity/transcendence in love healing through love
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
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
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
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
A love song built around a single, faintly absurd predicament: a man waiting on a street corner for someone who never shows,…
misplaced faith romantic anxiety self-deception
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