Guided by Voices
A compact power-pop confession about being trailed by an old, adolescent version of oneself. The narrator can't explain why…
arrested development loss of self-control in relationships surveillance of the self
Creedence Clearwater Revival
A cover of the Gene Pitney-penned, Ricky Nelson-popularized 1961 pop-rock standard, this Mardi Gras rendition is CCR playing it…
love at first sight teenage infatuation nostalgia for early rock and roll
Blondie
A cover of a 1963 girl-group style bubblegum tune, reworked by Blondie into a knowing new wave valentine that trades on…
infatuation surface pleasure and artifice girl-group nostalgia
Mariah Carey
A buoyant celebration of infatuation that lives entirely in the space between attraction and consummation, where the pleasure…
infatuation escapism desire and daydream
The xx
A duet-style track built around the exhilaration and risk of falling into infatuation, with the two vocalists trading lines that…
infatuation vulnerability risk-taking in love
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
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
Queen
A slight, groove-driven vignette about attraction to someone effortlessly stylish and self-possessed, filtered through…
infatuation cool detachment vs. desire surface style over substance
Madonna
A slow-dance ballad built around a single moment: crossing a crowded room toward someone and closing the distance between…
infatuation vulnerability physical desire
The Replacements
A scrappy, two-minute blast of teenage bravado that barely holds together as a song, which is the point: Westerberg sketches a…
adolescent defiance self-destructive pride desire disguised as indifference
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
Deep Purple
This is a straightforward garage-pop cover turned hard-rock workout, built almost entirely from nonsense syllables and a simple…
obsessive infatuation powerlessness in love physical desire
James Blake
A hazy meditation on romantic infatuation so intense it blurs into hallucination, James Blake's song treats intimacy as…
infatuation and disbelief dissolution of time psychedelic imagery of love
Big Star
A deceptively simple slice of teenage boredom set to a chiming, anthemic riff, this song turns the aimlessness of small-town…
teenage boredom small-town aimlessness friendship
Tears for Fears
A love song that keeps interrupting itself, veering between romantic infatuation and anxious social commentary before dissolving…
infatuation and vulnerability fear of loss social conscience amid personal desire
Björk
Björk's cover reworks a 1951 Betty Hutton novelty tune into a dynamic set piece where hushed, orchestral verses collapse into…
the volatility of infatuation quiet vs. chaos as emotional states the absurdity of romantic obsession
Curtis Mayfield
A late-70s disco-soul love song built almost entirely around physical and emotional surrender, with Curtis Mayfield trading his…
romantic and sexual devotion surrender of control obsession/infatuation
XTC
A giddy, image-drunk love song that describes a single overwhelming encounter through a barrage of unrelated historical and…
sudden infatuation the inadequacy of language before wonder celestial imagery displaced onto a person
Ramones
A three-minute cover of a 1958 rock and roll standard, stripped down and sped up until the invitation to dance becomes an…
teenage romance dance as ritual nostalgia for 1950s rock and roll
Kendrick Lamar
A relatively unguarded pop-leaning track for DAMN., LOVE. sets a domestic, romantic duet (with Zacari) against the album's…
conditional vs. unconditional love fame and material status as tests of loyalty domestic intimacy amid instability
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 quiet, unglamorous portrait of teenage isolation, framed around confusion about sexuality and identity. Instead of anthemic…
adolescent alienation sexual confusion loneliness
Mos Def
A breezy account of a teenage joyride that stalls on an absurd, deflating detail: a jammed seatbelt that thwarts the narrator's…
adolescent desire freedom and mobility comic frustration
Mott the Hoople
A glam-rock anthem that gathers a cast of restless, damaged teenagers and turns their drift into a rallying cry. Bowie's song,…
youth disaffection generational divide glam identity and androgyny
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
A dancefloor anthem built on the friction between infatuation and impatience, where the singer clocks every second spent waiting…
romantic impatience obsession versus self-respect time as torment
The Beach Boys
An early Beach Boys car song that treats a Chevrolet engine like a lover and a racehorse at once, built almost entirely on chant…
car culture masculine pride and status consumerism/saving toward a goal
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
Van Morrison
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
Frank Ocean
A meditation on a formative teenage love, remembered from the vantage of adulthood with all the contradictions of nostalgia…
nostalgia and lost innocence first love memory's unreliability
Mercury Rev
A driving, hypnotic song built almost entirely on repetition, tracking a headlong romance the narrator already knows is doomed.…
doomed romance velocity and recklessness impermanence
A teenage summer romance is revisited a year later, but the narrator has learned to guard himself against the sting of…
seasonal romance emotional self-protection adolescent inconstancy
Traffic
A straightforward blues-rock come-on built around infatuation and helplessness in the face of a magnetic, emotionally elusive…
desire and obsession loss of control emotional manipulation
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
A narrative rap unfolding like a short film in three scenes, tracking a pursuit-and-fallout romance with a woman the narrator…
desire versus discernment the performance of masculinity and vulnerability cynicism eroded by intimacy
Frank Sinatra
A Cole Porter standard in which a jaded sophisticate catalogs every conventional pleasure that fails to move him, only to admit…
ennui and sophistication unrequited or unequal love irony of excess
Kraftwerk
A deadpan, synth-driven character sketch of a fashion model, delivered with the same flat affect Kraftwerk applies to machines…
commodification of beauty surveillance and consumption media and celebrity
Underworld
A euphoric, almost devotional chant built on a single repeated affirmation gives way to a strange prose interlude describing…
ecstatic love/devotion light versus darkness found language and overheard speech
Blondie's debut single reframes a streetwalker's infatuation with a police officer as a giddy crime narrative, blurring the…
desire as transgression policing and power irony of legal language repurposed as romance
Fairport Convention
A young band's meditation on mortality and friendship disguised as a simple folk-rock singalong, written by a teenage Richard…
mortality and remembrance friendship and community loss of youthful idealism