Pet Shop Boys
A jealous lover watches a partner flirt and toy with a string of admirers, using the image of dominoes toppling one after…
jealousy and possessiveness romantic betrayal seduction as a game
My Morning Jacket
A hazy, reverb-soaked ballad built almost entirely from a handful of repeated questions and pleas, this song uses the sparest…
jealousy and suspicion infidelity or fear of it isolation and longing
PJ Harvey
A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…
obsession codependency possessiveness
Chaka Khan
A meditation on jealousy and reassurance, sung by a partner who has just been told about some flirtation or attention from an…
jealousy possessiveness self-assurance
SZA
SZA turns a breakup confession into a deadpan murder fantasy, using the exaggerated violence of the title as a vehicle for…
obsessive love jealousy denial and self-deception
Lorde
Lorde's cover strips Tears for Fears' 1985 synth-pop anthem down to something colder and more brittle, turning a wry commentary…
power and control surveillance complicity
Harry Nilsson
Nilsson's reading of the Pomus-Shuman standard takes a song already built on a tension between generosity and possessiveness and…
jealousy disguised as devotion possessiveness trust and its limits
Mos Def
Mos Def builds a dense, statistics-driven indictment of American racial and economic injustice around the conceit of numbers,…
mass incarceration systemic racism economic inequality
B.B. King
A straightforward blues-soul declaration built almost entirely on the repeated phrase of devotion, this track trades narrative…
devotion fear of abandonment reassurance
Michael Jackson
A buoyant, physically driven declaration of infatuation built almost entirely around a single hook that gets repeated, echoed,…
infatuation desire and pursuit possessiveness
The Band
A blues-rooted warning song built almost entirely on one refrain: the woman you love will mistreat you, and that mistreatment is…
romantic mistrust resignation and complicity double standards in love
George Michael
A pop-funk plea from a partner watching a lover slide back into a destructive habit, with the habit personified as a rival for…
addiction as rival codependency frustrated love
The Rolling Stones
A blunt first-person account of having subdued a former partner into total compliance, delivered with a swagger that never…
domination and control gendered power imbalance possessiveness
Loretta Lynn
A wronged woman confronts her partner's infidelity by dismantling the appeal of the other woman, insisting the rival's power is…
betrayal and infidelity female rivalry possessiveness
Elvis Costello
A jealous, media-poisoned narrator watches a woman who watches TV crime dramas, and the two kinds of watching collapse into each…
voyeurism and media saturation emotional numbness jealousy and control
Elliott Smith
A hushed, seductive address that turns out to be spoken in the voice of addiction itself, offering comfort, oblivion, and…
addiction as intimate voice self-destruction disguised as tenderness loss of potential
Neutral Milk Hotel
A distorted, obsessive love song that swings between tenderness and revulsion, built around the fixation of a narrator who both…
obsessive desire idealization vs. disgust possession and control
Public Enemy
This track is Public Enemy's tribute to their DJ, built around a chant-and-scratch structure that treats turntablism itself as a…
black musical mastery as resistance surveillance and policing industry gatekeeping
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
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A short, incantatory track built around elemental imagery of fire and water, where a possessed or transformed narrator moves…
transformation purification possession/obsession
Deerhunter
A brief, jangly pop song that fuses the language of romantic infatuation with imagery of illness, possession, and death, so that…
obsessive love possession and illness death and reincarnation
Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox's reading of this Screamin' Jay Hawkins standard, cut for her covers album Nostalgia, strips the song down to its…
possessive love jealousy desperation
Interpol
Interpol pairs one of their most euphoric, propulsive arrangements with a lyric that keeps circling wounds, surveillance, and…
obsessive love surveillance and paranoia self-destruction
Underworld
This early, pre-techno Underworld track is a nervy pop-funk song about living small and invisible under the threat of…
Cold War anxiety surveillance and invisibility smallness/powerlessness
The Strokes
The opening track of The New Abnormal frames a generational and interpersonal standoff as one continuous scene of…
generational conflict surveillance and judgment romantic ambivalence
Nat King Cole
This is Nat King Cole's rendition of "La Adelita," one of the best-known corridos of the Mexican Revolution, sung from the…
devotion and possessiveness war and mortality folk heroism
R.E.M.
A stalker's boast dressed up as a superhero anthem: the narrator claims omniscience and inevitability in pursuing a woman who…
obsession disguised as devotion toxic masculinity/control surveillance and pursuit
Sharon Van Etten
"Serpents" is a slow-burning indictment of a manipulative partner, built from fragmented images of surveillance, control, and…
emotional abuse surveillance and suspicion self-protection
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
James Blake
A luxury-draped love song built on a Metro Boomin/Travis Scott feature that trades Blake's usual confessional ache for a more…
possessive intimacy material excess as emotional language fear of solitude
Aesop Rock
Aesop Rock builds a dense allegory around farm-animal escape and surveillance-state paranoia, using the imagery of Animal Farm…
surveillance and control anxiety and hypervigilance complicity versus escape
Patsy Cline
A wistful farewell that sends a traveling lover off around the globe while quietly staking a claim on his heart. Cline's reading…
longing and separation possession within love travel as distance
The Cure
A hypnotic, dread-soaked incantation in which the speaker is consumed nightly by obsession, grief, and something like…
obsessive love death and the afterlife possession and loss of will
Carly Simon
A woman confronts a partner who has just confessed some flirtation or infidelity, and instead of collapsing into jealousy she…
possessiveness disguised as devotion jealousy and self-assurance confession and its fallout
Wire
A clipped, paranoid vignette that fuses interrogation-room menace with pulp sci-fi imagery, built from disjointed phrases rather…
interrogation and coercion surveillance/security state paranoia
Richard Thompson
A brief, dense narrative-ballad about a woman who abandons a protest march to nurse and possess a sick, faithless man, offering…
codependency self-erasure in love hunger and deprivation
Magazine
Magazine's version of the Sly and the Family Stone song strips the original's funk exuberance down to something clipped and…
identity and self-possession violence and threat alienation from social gathering
Uncle Tupelo
A breakup song built around a simple exchange-of-belongings conceit, where the speaker asks for his possessions back while…
heartbreak addiction blame and self-justification
Emmylou Harris
A mother's warning becomes a hard-won personal confession, as the narrator traces her own failures to heed advice about…
inherited wisdom moral compromise self-possession versus loss of self
Roberta Flack
A furious, jazz-inflected protest song that catalogs the hypocrisies of American life—consumerism, war, religion, race—and keeps…
social hypocrisy war and dissent religious skepticism