Aretha Franklin
A late-career Aretha Franklin love song built almost entirely on the sensation of new romantic disbelief, sung as direct address…
new love disbelief and wonder vulnerability
Carole King
A simple, effusive love song built almost entirely around one repeated phrase, this track (originally a hit for The Drifters and…
ineffability of love physical intimacy as communication contentment and gratitude
Maxwell
A love song built almost entirely on reassurance, where the narrator repeats a single vow of devotion until it becomes…
romantic devotion reassurance and doubt idealization of a partner
Digable Planets
A loose, jazz-inflected posse cut in which the Digable Planets crew trade boasts about style, borough pride, and lyrical…
borough/regional pride Afrocentric and cosmic imagery lyrical dexterity as identity
Stevie Wonder
A funk vamp built on a single clavinet riff turns a catalog of folk superstitions into an argument against irrational belief.…
superstition and irrational belief fear versus knowledge self-deception
A buoyant, danceable love song built from Stevie Wonder's signature optimism, framed here as a duet-style celebration (the track…
romantic optimism self-possession and confidence admiration turning to love
A deceptively simple birthday singalong that Stevie Wonder uses as a political vehicle, campaigning for a U.S. national holiday…
civil rights memory collective celebration as protest racial justice and equality
A simple, deliberately unadorned love song built on a single conceit: stripping away every calendar occasion that might justify…
unconditioned love everyday devotion anti-occasion romance
A tender, understated love song built around a single confession that keeps almost apologizing for itself before landing anyway.…
romantic vulnerability imagination vs. reality self-consciousness in love
A slick mid-80s dance-pop track built around the mechanics of a secret affair, complete with coded signals and cover stories.…
infidelity and secrecy coded communication double standards in relationships
A funk sermon built on a clavinet riff, the song frames spiritual urgency as physical momentum: the narrator treats a second…
reincarnation and second chances social corruption vs. individual awakening urgency of moral time
A new father's unguarded celebration of his infant daughter's birth, structured as a series of rhetorical questions that answer…
fatherhood and new life gratitude love as creative force
A love song that scales up from natural cycles to cosmic impossibilities in order to make permanence tangible, then widens into…
eternal love natural law as metaphor spiritual/religious affirmation
A loose, Latin-tinged groove built around a single reassurance that repeats until it becomes a mantra. The spoken intro's comic…
self-reliance reassurance/comfort authenticity vs. performance
A love song built almost entirely on affirmation rather than narrative, this track uses simple, sun-and-heart imagery to…
romantic devotion deliverance from loneliness gratitude
Calexico
A quiet meditation on a nighttime car journey through the Southwest, where a small mishap and a slow, starlit drive become a…
memory and time gratitude toward a companion landscape as emotional space
Emmylou Harris
This is a straightforward reading of the traditional English carol, with Emmylou Harris's plainspoken vocal treating the…
nativity narrative revelation and light humility of shepherds
R.E.M.
A hazy recollection of a dream that blurs into music itself, built almost entirely from sensory fragments and a nonsense chant…
dream logic memory and doubt transcendence through sound
Neutral Milk Hotel
A meditation on love, mortality, and impermanence that blurs the line between romantic address and elegy, filtered through Jeff…
mortality and impermanence romantic devotion memory and loss
Gregory Porter
A soft, devotional love song that treats a romantic partner as a near-mythical arrival — someone who seems to have literally…
romantic wonder divinity/transcendence in love healing through love
Brandi Carlile
A meditative folk song built entirely from a series of gentle questions about solitary encounters with nature. Each verse offers…
solitude existential wonder nature as mirror for inner life
Joan Baez
This is a straightforward, sunny cover of the Bellamy Brothers' soft-pop hit, built entirely around an extended nature metaphor…
romantic surrender nature as metaphor seasonal renewal
Sarah McLachlan
A gentle, almost hymn-like children's-film song that treats the mundane workings of nature -- rain, sunrise, the seasons -- as…
wonder in the everyday cycles of nature gratitude
XTC
A cascade of small domestic and historical fantasies stacked into one long conditional wish, this song imagines romantic…
romantic devotion role-play and historical fantasy growth through love
The xx
A sparse, almost hymn-like love song built around a single repeated claim of devotion, sung by a narrator who seems…
devotion the ineffability of love fear of loss
Sade
A quiet lullaby written for a Disney film adaptation, this song addresses a child in cosmic, almost devotional terms, framing…
maternal love cosmic wonder protection
Randy Newman
This is the instrumental main title cue for Pixar's Monsters, Inc., a bouncy, brass-and-piano-driven theme meant to set the…
playfulness childhood wonder comic mischief
Animal Collective
A woozy meditation on connection and the strangeness of being alive, delivered with the giddy, slightly overwhelmed voice of…
interconnectedness altered perception wonder and overwhelm
The Temptations
This is The Temptations' rendition of the standard often called "The Christmas Song" (though it borrows the familiar Mel Torme…
nostalgia childhood wonder seasonal comfort
Willie Nelson
A cover of the Muppet Movie standard, rendered here by Willie Nelson as an unhurried, weathered meditation on faith and longing…
longing for meaning faith versus doubt the pull of the unseen
Aesop Rock
A children's-book superhero story about a heroic frog who rescues people (and a poodle) from peril, delivered with a straight…
heroism as ritual childlike wonder absurdism
Cat Stevens
A hymn of thanksgiving that treats an ordinary sunrise as if it were the first morning of creation. Cat Stevens' recording turns…
gratitude renewal and rebirth nature as sacred
Kacey Musgraves
A quiet domestic love song shadowed by disbelief that happiness can last. Musgraves catalogs small, tender proofs of a…
fear of happiness ending vulnerability after past hurt domestic intimacy
The Beach Boys
This is a straightforward cover of the 1950 novelty Christmas standard, delivered by The Beach Boys with their signature vocal…
childhood wonder impermanence seasonal magic
Vashti Bunyan
A short pastoral lullaby that treats a night walk as a kind of gentle initiation into a longer, seasonal commitment. Vashti…
pastoral wonder transient love made durable nocturnal enchantment
The Supremes
A whimsical children's-style Christmas novelty in which a tree-top star sings in the first person about descending from the sky…
childlike wonder generosity and giving holiday magic
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
A brief, cheerful Christmas novelty about a passerby who peeks in on Santa's workshop and reports back what he saw. It's less a…
Christmas wonder secrecy and restraint childlike observation
Joe Williams
This is the standard Johnny Mercer/Richard Whiting torch-song standard, given a warm, unhurried reading by Joe Williams. The…
ineffability of love the limits of language playful hyperbole
Carly Simon
Carly Simon covers the classic Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg standard on her 2007 lullaby album, stripping it down to its essential…
longing for elsewhere childhood wonder escapism