Stevie Wonder
A new father's unguarded celebration of his infant daughter's birth, structured as a series of rhetorical questions that answer…
fatherhood and new life gratitude love as creative force
Aretha Franklin
A joyous, motorized courtship song built around a single sustained conceit: romance as a drive on an open highway. Aretha…
romance as motion/escape freedom and self-determination playful flirtation
Curtis Mayfield
A slow-burning soul ballad built almost entirely around a single plea, this track works less through storytelling than through…
romantic devotion vulnerability refuge from hardship
PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey builds a self-mythologizing torch song out of biblical and folkloric imagery, casting devotion as a form of damnation.…
obsessive devotion blasphemy and sacrifice mythic self-invention
Sade
A slow, incantatory love song built almost entirely on a single declarative claim, repeated until it becomes its own proof. Sade…
contentment devotion sufficiency
Wilco
A song about the gap between feeling and articulation, built around a narrator trying to write a love letter he can't finish.…
failure of language romantic devotion self-doubt
SZA
Love Galore is SZA's clipped, cool-voiced meditation on wanting intimacy without wanting the vulnerability that comes with it.…
emotional detachment as self-protection transactional intimacy power and control in casual relationships
Bon Iver
A raw, fragmentary breakup address built from accusation and self-recrimination in equal measure, sung to a fading relationship…
dissolution of a relationship emotional exhaustion blame and self-blame
Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen turns a boardwalk carnival ride into an extended metaphor for marriage, using the mechanics of a funhouse tunnel to…
marriage and disillusionment intimacy versus isolation fear beneath romantic ritual
XTC
XTC's Andy Partridge stages a mock-confession, casting himself as an assassin who has killed off the very idea of romantic love…
disillusionment with romance performance of confession cynicism as self-defense
Mitski
A brief, hymn-like address to the moon in which the speaker asks that their love outlive their body. It works less as narrative…
mortality possession and dispossession love as legacy
Peter Gabriel
This is a cover of the Magnetic Fields song, and Gabriel's version strips away Stephin Merritt's deadpan irony in favor of a…
romantic convention vs. lived intimacy tedium redeemed by love marriage and commitment
Al Green
Al Green frames a romantic relationship as a sacred event, thanking a higher power for a love that feels chosen rather than…
sacred love gratitude devotion
Gang of Four
A first-person portrait of a man who joins the military not out of conviction but as a solution to unemployment, lost…
militarism as consumer choice economic desperation masculinity and self-worth
Buzzcocks
A power-pop punk song about the humiliation of loving someone who treats you badly, built around a chorus whose grammar…
romantic humiliation self-recognition through a partner codependency
The Who
A single, almost liturgical plea builds around one pun -- love as both sovereign force and literal downpour -- to dramatize a…
spiritual thirst emotional exhaustion love as redemptive force
The Temptations
A holiday standard built on a simple, almost sermon-like premise: material gifts are fine, but love is the only present that…
generosity versus materialism universal love seasonal community
Kacey Musgraves
Kacey Musgraves' rendition of this 1961 standard, recorded for the 2022 Elvis biopic soundtrack, strips the song down to its…
surrender to love fate versus choice vulnerability
Yes
A commercial-rock love song built on hesitation rather than certainty, in which the narrator wavers between wanting closeness…
romantic ambivalence reassurance through repetition emotional confusion
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
Randy Newman
A booming, boosterish anthem that turns out to be a satire of boosterism itself: the narrator's civic pride is so shallow and…
civic pride as delusion class blindness American boosterism
Minnie Riperton
A love song built around the gap between feeling and expression, in which the narrator worries that her devotion isn't landing…
communication anxiety reassurance devotion
Broken Social Scene
This is Broken Social Scene's rendition of Joy Division's 1980 classic, recorded for the soundtrack of The Time Traveler's Wife,…
romantic disintegration emotional stasis guilt and self-recrimination
Whitney Houston
A gospel testimony built almost entirely from a single scriptural refrain, this recording turns a short devotional statement…
divine refuge suffering and lament faith as action
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
Pixies
A deliberately dumb, bubblegum-pop pastiche sung by drummer David Lovering, this is Pixies parodying the sincerity of teenage…
parody of pop convention adolescent sexuality irony vs sincerity
Massive Attack
Sung by Elizabeth Fraser, this Mezzanine track uses fragmented, almost liturgical phrasing to circle around themes of…
maternal love spiritual devotion consumption/communion
Pearl Jam
This is a cover of The Who's 1973 track, rendered here for a film soundtrack about grief and recovery. Pearl Jam's version leans…
longing emotional drought catharsis
Lauryn Hill
This is Lauryn Hill's rendition of the 1967 Frankie Valli classic, placed on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a brief,…
infatuation gratitude vulnerability
New Order
A synth-pop anthem built on emotional gridlock: the narrator is caught between joy and dread in a relationship he can't name or…
emotional paralysis unspoken feelings fear of vulnerability
Rodney Crowell
A plainspoken proposal song built almost entirely around one repeated pledge: that devotion, not money, will be the measure of a…
romantic devotion class and money courtship and destiny
Feist
A short, buoyant song about taking full responsibility for one's own emotional risk-taking, framed as both liberation and…
self-determination in love emotional exposure ambivalence toward commitment
Sharon Van Etten
A quiet, circling meditation on an unresolved relationship, where family support is contrasted against a partner's ambivalence.…
emotional avoidance family vs romantic love self-doubt
Roberta Flack
A slow-building meditation on desire that treats ordinary moments — a walk, a candlelit dinner, a touch — as triggers for…
desire and intimacy the sensuality of the ordinary seasonal renewal as metaphor
A disco groove wraps around one of Mitski's bleakest lyrics, turning isolation into something you can dance to. The song tracks…
loneliness self-erasure longing for touch over love
Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan addresses a fragile, self-sabotaging figure imagined as a wounded angel, urging her toward emotional openness and…
emotional vulnerability self-acceptance healing through love
Guided by Voices
A short, deceptively simple lo-fi anthem in which the narrator cycles through professional identities—scientist, journalist,…
self-examination addiction and escape art as self-medication
Elliott Smith
A short, quiet song built around the phrase "morning after," which Smith turns from a hangover cliché into a metaphor for…
fragile hope fatalism vs. change romantic uncertainty
Gladys Knight
A slow, torch-song lament about loving someone who no longer returns the feeling, sung with the weary authority of a performer…
unrequited love emotional entrapment regret and self-knowledge
Simon Jäger
A quiet, confessional love song built around the sound of rain, in which the narrator, separated from his beloved, uses the…
distance and longing artistic self-doubt loss of faith/belief