Results for “the gap between want and need”

Songs

I Want You (Vocal)

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning plea for mutual desire, built almost entirely on repetition of a single wish stated and restated until it becomes…

unreciprocated desire longing for mutuality vulnerability in seduction

I Want You

Tom Waits

This piece reads less like a finished lyric than a raw studio artifact: a repetitive, formulaic love song built almost entirely…

longing distance repetition as devotion

The Want of a Nail

Todd Rundgren

Rundgren takes an old proverb about a chain of small failures leading to catastrophe and grafts it onto a personal confession…

loneliness cause and effect personal responsibility

Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely

Hüsker Dü

A breakup song built on a contradiction: the narrator claims he wants distance from an ex-partner but keeps monitoring her…

ambivalence after a breakup emotional self-protection denial

You Need To Calm Down

Taylor Swift

A bright, bubblegum pop track that pivots halfway through from scolding online trolls to a broader plea for LGBTQ acceptance.…

online harassment LGBTQ solidarity celebrity feuds

I Don't Want to Know

Gladys Knight

Gladys Knight delivers a hard-edged breakup address to a partner who is leaving for someone else, refusing to grant him the…

betrayal and infidelity emotional exhaustion self-respect after sacrifice

I Don't Want to Know

Fleetwood Mac

A folk-rock kiss-off built on willful avoidance: the narrator insists they won't ask why a relationship is ending, framing that…

denial as self-protection romantic exhaustion emotional withholding

If You Needed Somebody

Bad Company

A late-period Bad Company track built around a simple, almost adolescent premise: a narrator paralyzed by unspoken feelings for…

unrequited longing fear of rejection romantic timidity

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven

Loretta Lynn

A gospel-tinged novelty hymn that turns a folk saying into a meditation on the human fear of death, even among the faithful.…

fear of death faith versus human nature salvation

Honey

Robyn

"Honey" is a slow-burning dance track that turns sensual invitation into a philosophy of pleasure and self-repair. Built from…

desire and surrender self-care as sensuality the gap between want and need

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

The Smiths

A short, almost prayer-like song built from just two brief verses and a repeated plea, this track compresses a lifetime of…

longing and deprivation fatalism the erosion of goodness by circumstance

Car

Built to Spill

A hazy meditation on wanting revelation secondhand, "Car" pairs a plainspoken opening about borrowing a vehicle with a spiraling…

passive longing vicarious experience escape and inertia

Can We Pretend

Bill Withers

A quiet plea for a fresh start in a relationship that both partners know is damaged. Withers doesn't argue that the past didn't…

emotional avoidance fragile intimacy hope against evidence

Eden

Talk Talk

"Eden" opens Spirit of Eden with a fragmentary, hymn-like meditation on loss and belief, using biblical imagery of Eden and…

loss of innocence religious doubt and faith death and rebirth

Philadelphia

Neil Young

A spare, hymn-like address to fear and mortality, written for Jonathan Demme's film about a man dying of AIDS-related illness…

mortality stigma and shame need for belonging

Kamera

Wilco

A short, disoriented piece about someone trying to locate himself through self-deception and memory failure, using the image of…

self-deception disorientation distorted memory

Dollar Bill Blues

Townes Van Zandt

A ramshackle blues about a broke, drink-craving gambler whose fantasies of easy money and easy love curdle into a confession of…

poverty and want drink and gambling as fate violence disguised as bravado

Pale Shelter

Tears for Fears

A song about emotional withholding, built as a plea disguised as a diagnosis. The narrator keeps demanding certainty and love…

emotional neglect need for control insecurity in relationships

Dashboard

Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse builds a shaky optimism out of wreckage imagery, insisting that even a broken-down vehicle still gets you…

near-disaster and survival willed optimism emotional evasiveness

Place to Be

Nick Drake

An opening-track confession that traces a single life arc—innocence, vitality, and eventual depletion—in four spare stanzas. The…

decline and aging loss of innocence spiritual exhaustion

Red Dirt Girl

Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris narrates the entire life of a childhood friend from rural Alabama, from adolescence to an early, unremarked…

rural poverty thwarted ambition female friendship

Paprika

Japanese Breakfast

A song about the strange hollowness of creative success, framed as an argument between two voices: one asking triumphant…

creative burnout impostor syndrome the cost of public adoration

Dancing On My Own

Robyn

A dance-floor confessional in which the narrator watches an ex kiss someone new from across the room, trapped between the…

unrequited longing self-erasure and invisibility public heartbreak

Beautiful

Carole King

A gentle self-help anthem disguised as a pop song, in which the narrator talks herself (and the listener) into projecting warmth…

self-affirmation urban alienation emotional resilience

1234

Feist

A deceptively bouncy pop song about the wreckage left by adolescent romance, where a childlike counting hook masks lyrics about…

lost innocence romantic disillusionment nostalgia

Don't Follow

Alice in Chains

A stripped-down acoustic confession from a narrator who insists on leaving while quietly begging to be brought back. The song…

addiction and self-destruction isolation vs. longing for home guilt and self-recrimination

I'm a Ram

Al Green

This is a lean, driving groove song built almost entirely around one animal metaphor: the singer as a ram, butting persistently…

persistence in desire masculine self-assertion obstacle and pursuit

Tunnel of Love

Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen turns a boardwalk carnival ride into an extended metaphor for marriage, using the mechanics of a funhouse tunnel to…

marriage and disillusionment intimacy versus isolation fear beneath romantic ritual

You and I

Betty Davis

A slow, confessional ballad in which Betty Davis strips away the funk-rock swagger of her usual persona to admit vulnerability…

emotional vulnerability the gap between maturity and desire dependency versus independence

Keep It Between the Lines

Sturgill Simpson

This is a father's list of hard-won advice to a young son, delivered as a string of practical warnings and folksy aphorisms…

fatherhood and inheritance cautionary wisdom addiction and self-destruction

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Frank Sinatra

A holiday standard that consoles rather than celebrates, urging cheer in the present tense while openly admitting that reunion…

separation and longing deferred hope resilience

Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time)

Elton John

A spaceman narrates the mundane dread of leaving home for another routine off-world shift, and finds the glamour of space travel…

alienation the gap between public and private self domestic loss

She

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

Cousin Dupree

Steely Dan

A slack, aging drifter moves onto his aunt's couch and develops an unseemly fixation on his young cousin, pitching her a…

arrested development delusional self-image taboo desire played for laughs

Ms. Jackson

OutKast

An apology addressed to a hostile mother-in-law figure that keeps curdling into self-justification, "Ms. Jackson" turns the…

fractured families co-parenting and custody conflict accountability vs. resentment

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Mariah Carey

This is Mariah Carey's 1994 cover of the Phil Spector/Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry classic, reworked as a Wall-of-Sound production…

loneliness during celebration longing and absence nostalgia for past happiness

Mad

Solange

"Mad" is a meditation on the exhaustion of having to justify one's own anger, built around a call-and-response between a…

the right to anger versus the demand for composure respectability and emotional policing of Black people survival and trauma disguised as success

Love Galore

SZA

Love Galore is SZA's clipped, cool-voiced meditation on wanting intimacy without wanting the vulnerability that comes with it.…

emotional detachment as self-protection transactional intimacy power and control in casual relationships

Hello

Adele

A one-sided phone call to an estranged lover becomes a meditation on the impossibility of real repair. The narrator rehearses an…

unresolved regret failed communication nostalgia for youth