Van Morrison
A rhapsodic, almost plotless celebration of communal joy, music, and firelight, built around a rolling gypsy caravan as an image…
communal belonging music as transcendence romantic longing
Big Thief
"Not" is a song built entirely out of negation, circling an unnamed thing by naming everything it isn't. Lenker piles up sensory…
negation and unnameability impermanence desire and its objects
Lana Del Rey
A woman narrates one glowing, precarious night with a lover she suspects she's about to lose, fusing sensory euphoria with an…
doomed romance hedonism as coping beauty and self-fashioning
A rapturous, almost weightless love song built from a single sustained feeling rather than a plot. Van Morrison strings together…
romantic rapture renewal and lost time nature as emotional mirror
Billie Holiday
A protest song built on a single sustained metaphor, comparing lynched Black bodies hanging from Southern trees to fruit ready…
racial violence and lynching complicity of the pastoral South witness and testimony