Ann Peebles
A stark relationship ultimatum built almost entirely on a single conditional refrain, this song treats mutual suspicion as a…
trust and suspicion jealousy relationship ultimatums
Muddy Waters
A slow, grinding blues in which Muddy Waters uses a strange, oversized cat as a comic stand-in for suspicion and sexual…
jealousy and suspicion infidelity domestic surveillance
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
Gram Parsons
A jealous, wounded narrator catalogs small betrayals -- a new man in town, a broken date, a no-show -- each one triggering the…
jealousy and suspicion romantic betrayal anticipatory dread
John Lee Hooker
A slow, brooding solo blues meditation built almost entirely on repetition and a single fixed image: a man alone at a window,…
abandonment jealousy and suspicion loneliness
Michael Jackson
A frantic, groove-driven complaint disguised as a love song: the narrator is exhausted not by manual labor but by the endless…
overwork as metaphor for unreciprocated effort suspicion and jealousy exhaustion
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
Mos Def
This is Mos Def's rendition of Chuck Berry's rock-and-roll foundational text, recorded for the Chess Records biopic soundtrack.…
infidelity and suspicion pursuit and competition American car culture
Kate Bush
Kate Bush tells a compact fable of a wife who sets a trap for her own marriage by inventing a mysterious alter ego, only to…
jealousy and self-sabotage disguise and identity the decay of romantic feeling
Japanese Breakfast
A bruised, self-aware account of wanting someone who has already made clear they want someone else, or something else entirely.…
unrequited desire self-loathing jealousy
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
Mariah Carey
A holiday novelty song that recasts Santa Claus as a matchmaker rather than a gift-giver, with the narrator petitioning him to…
romantic longing holiday nostalgia wish-fulfillment
Chet Baker
This is Chet Baker's reading of Irving Berlin's 1924 standard, a spare lament built almost entirely around a single repeated…
separation and longing romantic insecurity jealousy
Massive Attack
A hushed, circling meditation on romantic ambivalence, sung from the position of someone who claims to wish an ex-lover well…
ambivalence possessiveness disguised as tenderness jealousy
Cream
A straight twelve-bar blues built on stock lyric formulas about romantic suspicion and departure, delivered by Cream as a…
infidelity suspicion masculine detachment blues tradition
This is Cream's electrified cover of a pre-war country blues (originally by Blind Joe Reynolds), turned into a slow-burning…
sexual jealousy infidelity folk wisdom/proverb
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
Thin Lizzy
This is Thin Lizzy in full riff-driven bravado mode, a Saturday-night anthem that fuses schoolyard aggression, romantic…
masculine bravado violence as ritual working-class nightlife
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
David Bowie
A voyeuristic narrator watches a street-corner seduction unfold from a hotel window, alternately mocking and envying the…
voyeurism and surveillance queer desire and rivalry gender performance and camp
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
Thom Yorke
A fractured, glitchy meditation on trying to erase someone from consciousness only to find them multiplying under the pressure…
denial and obsession the futility of erasure suspicion and manipulation
Free
A blues-rock warning shot aimed at a rival encroaching on the narrator's relationship. It's less a fully worked lyric than a…
jealousy and possessiveness masculine pride confrontation
Spoon
A pulsing title track built almost entirely around a single obsessive phrase, tracking a mind hijacked by desire while it's set…
obsession and infatuation loss of control urban nightlife / travel
Bad Company
A late-80s Bad Company arena-rock track built around a single accusatory conceit: suspicious behavior is proof of infidelity.…
infidelity and suspicion wounded masculine pride desire versus self-respect
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
Little Feat
A blues-rooted meditation on romantic rivalry, told through the extended image of two trains running on the same line. Little…
romantic rivalry jealousy and restraint uncertainty and waiting
Lead Belly
An old Southern folk ballad, filtered through Lead Belly's version, that turns a simple question about infidelity into something…
betrayal and suspicion death and unexplained violence isolation/exile
Jamie xx
A dance-floor breakup song built around a single wounded question: how can the person you loved find transcendence with…
loss and jealousy nightlife as substitute intimacy memory attached to place
Creedence Clearwater Revival
This is CCR's cover of Bo Diddley's blues standard, a talking-back rebuttal in a domestic argument where the accused turns the…
infidelity and suspicion hypocrisy romantic desperation
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
A fast, riff-driven character sketch of a small-time hustler named Valentino, a bookmaker or gambler who lives by evasion and…
deception and self-justification gambling and compulsion moral ambiguity
Pearl Jam
A song about the aftermath of a devastating breakup, built on the image of a world drained of color and identity once a lover is…
heartbreak and loss loss of identity grief's distortion of perception
Angel Olsen
A torch song built on the gap between wanting and having, sung to someone who will never be fully possessed. Angel Olsen stages…
unrequited longing jealousy and triangulated desire self-deception and resignation
Mississippi John Hurt
A traditional blues plea for shelter and intimacy that hides a tangle of romantic complications beneath its plain domestic…
itinerancy and homelessness secret or illicit love jealousy and threatened violence
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
Big Thief
An acoustic meditation that opens Big Thief's 2021 double album by asking whether permanence is even desirable. Adrianne Lenker…
impermanence and mortality acceptance versus fear of loss romantic jealousy and letting go
R.E.M.
A country-tinged plea to someone about to leave town, in which the narrator's stated reasons for wanting them to stay keep…
fear of abandonment small-town stagnation vs. escape emotional denial
Magazine
A short, jagged meditation on the trap of self-consciousness, where the singer's supposed clarity of vision becomes a curse…
self-consciousness detachment perception vs reality