Elvis Costello
This is Costello's recording of a song originally written by Charles Aznavour, best known in English through Herbert Kretzmer's…
the elusiveness of the beloved identity as multiplicity devotion despite uncertainty
Fleetwood Mac
A quiet, aching meditation on a love that keeps retreating even as it beckons, sung by someone who has decided that pain is…
romantic devotion as endurance elusiveness and withdrawal sacrifice
Erykah Badu
A breezy, sample-driven cut about chasing an elusive love interest, built almost entirely around a single extended sweetness…
romantic pursuit elusiveness/unavailability desire and craving
Caroline Polachek
A hypnotic mantra built around an untraceable character called Bunny, who functions as an alter ego for elusiveness itself. The…
elusiveness and self-protection commodification of intimacy alter-ego/persona play
Tony Bennett
A wandering singer catalogs the great cities of Europe and the loneliness of New York only to reject them all in favor of one…
homesickness idealized place as beloved urban loneliness
Billie Holiday
A standard from the Kern-Fields songbook, delivered here as a hushed, intimate meditation rather than a big romantic…
romantic devotion memory as consolation vulnerability
Dinosaur Jr.
This is Dinosaur Jr.'s cover of The Cure's 1987 single, rendered here with fuzzed-out guitar squall replacing the original's…
dream logic loss of the beloved romantic devotion
The Cars
A closing-track meditation on a relationship (or self) that never quite resolves into anything solid, built almost entirely on…
emotional confusion unreliable intimacy self-deception
The Velvet Underground
A hushed, plainly strummed confession about loving someone who is unavailable, oscillating between tenderness and quiet…
forbidden love longing and loss guilt and self-justification
Mos Def
Mos Def's take on the Chuck Berry classic turns a simple chase-through-the-city into a breathless comic monologue about pursuit…
romantic pursuit urban mobility desire and elusiveness
Shirley Horn
This is a slow, hushed apostrophe to a season, treated as a lover whose absence the speaker will endure with quiet fidelity.…
seasonal longing love as devotion beyond presence nature personified as beloved
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
Percy Sledge
A soul lament built on a simple 12-bar-blues frame, this song catalogs a man's sleepless devastation after being betrayed by a…
betrayal and infidelity insomnia as emotional symptom obsessive devotion
Jackson Browne
A meditation on an elusive woman remembered less for who she was than for what her voice could do -- a song that turns the…
idealization vs reality impermanence the consolations of art
Sarah Vaughan
A standard by Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington, here rendered by Sarah Vaughan as an intimate meditation on physical presence…
desire and presence the inadequacy of romantic cliché vulnerability
Leonard Cohen
A meditation on the pull between transcendent, near-mystical intimacy and the noisy, transactional churn of ordinary life. The…
sacred vs. profane transience of ecstasy spiritual longing
Tori Amos
A woman addresses a departing or emotionally elusive lover, refusing to grasp at him while insisting on her own worth. The song…
romantic autonomy fear of abandonment masked by composure flight and distance as metaphor for emotional withdrawal
Röyksopp
This is a lyric built almost entirely from fragments and repetition, functioning more as an incantation than a narrative song.…
idealization and unattainability transcendence bodily/sensory ecstasy
The xx
A short, spare meditation on the way absence corrodes trust in a relationship, where the beloved's reality becomes…
insecurity in intimacy fear of abandonment the unreliability of perception
Nat King Cole
A classic Cuban bolero of romantic frustration, in which a lover demands a straight answer about the future of the relationship…
romantic indecision frustration and waiting time slipping away
Led Zeppelin
A restless folk-rock meditation on wanting and wandering, built around the word "many" as a kind of incantation. The song moves…
wanderlust romantic ambivalence experience versus wisdom
The Band
A rough-edged talking blues in which the narrator defends a beloved vice—loosely figured as 'strawberry wine'—against the…
addiction as loyalty outlaw bravado romantic substitution
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
The Cure
A grief-drenched meditation on a lost relationship, told entirely through the act of staring at photographs and the memories…
grief and loss memory versus reality obsessive love
Waylon Jennings
This is a traditional Civil War-era ballad, recorded by Waylon Jennings for a tribute album, in which a soldier addresses his…
war and loss homesickness romantic devotion
Carly Simon
This is Carly Simon's rendition of the Rodgers and Hart standard, a love song built entirely on negation: it lists the trappings…
romantic sufficiency anti-cliché love presence versus fantasy
David Bowie
A courtly, almost hypnotic love song written for the film Labyrinth, in which the speaker offers cosmic gifts to a beloved while…
seduction and enchantment love as surrender impermanence
The Jam
A brief, almost hymn-like ballad in which a wandering narrator catalogues distant travels only to insist, again and again, on…
homecoming fidelity romantic idealization
Roberta Flack
A love song built almost entirely on devotional imagery, casting a romantic partner as a sacred, protective presence against…
devotion as religion romantic certainty protection from outside judgment
Mississippi John Hurt
This is less a full performance than a fragment captured on tape: Mississippi John Hurt sings the familiar gospel chorus of the…
incompleteness oral tradition humility
A classic Mexican bolero of total devotion, in which the speaker surrenders his heart, his being, and even his sense of the…
romantic surrender idealized love devotion as faith
Fred Neil
A weary, gentle meditation on a world stuck in cycles of conflict, in which the singer's longing for an elusive, almost mythic…
longing for peace futility and resignation spiritual searching
The Beach Boys
A love song built on an admission rather than a boast: the singer refuses to promise eternal devotion outright, instead…
dependence and self-erasure in love uncertainty as a form of honesty devotion expressed through negation
This is Carly Simon's vocal reading of the Glenn Miller-era standard, a courtly, formal love lyric built entirely around a…
romantic devotion longing and anticipation nature as backdrop for love
Judee Sill
Judee Sill turns a betrayal by a charming, elusive lover into a small theology, comparing him to a Jesus who literally built the…
betrayal and seduction sin and redemption entwined spiritual longing
Ella Fitzgerald
This is Ella Fitzgerald's swinging take on the beloved children's Christmas novelty song, complete with an extra descriptive…
childhood wonder impermanence and mortality (softened) magic versus rationality
Wilco
A stark chant-driven monologue in which a speaker pledges escalating sacrifice—going, fighting, killing, dying—for an unnamed…
sacrifice and its cost devotion versus self-erasure religious martyrdom
A standard-era love song built entirely around the idea of infatuation rather than the beloved's physical presence: the singer…
idealized love longing and absence daydreaming as escape
George Michael
A wary, self-protective ballad about a narrator who has been burned by intimacy and now treats love as a dangerous lesson he'd…
fear of vulnerability emotional self-protection power imbalance in relationships
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