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
Patti Smith
A duet between erotic urgency and something closer to faith: the speaker asks a lover to take her as she is, and then defends…
erotic desire as sustenance night as sanctuary from harm doubt and belief
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
Gillian Welch
A short, circling ballad about a young woman fleeing domestic expectation for a taste of freedom before she settles into the…
deferred responsibility female autonomy vs. convention escape and fantasy
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
John Prine
Prine elegizes a real Kentucky town erased by strip mining, using a child's plea to his father as the frame for a broader story…
environmental destruction loss of home/place industrial 'progress' vs. nature
Neil Young
A domestic sketch collides with a highway fantasy: the narrator remembers a diner waitress and imagines her alternate, freer…
restlessness and rootlessness domestic confinement vs. freedom idealization/myth-making