Kate Bush
A song about the gulf of misunderstanding between two lovers, imagined as something so vast it could only be closed by a…
miscommunication in intimacy empathy and its limits bargaining with fate
Cat Stevens
A two-voice dialogue between an aging father urging patience and a son desperate to leave home and forge his own path. Cat…
generational conflict the ache of leaving home paternal love versus control
A song about the gulf of misunderstanding between two lovers, imagined as a problem that could be solved by literally trading…
empathy and its limits gender and relational miscommunication bargaining with fate
Pavement
A loose, digressive song built from non-sequiturs and internal rhyme games that only occasionally resolves into something like…
evasion of intimacy irony versus sincerity pop-cultural detritus
The Doors
A short, propulsive rock song built almost entirely around a single command repeated until it becomes a mantra. It uses images…
transcendence limits of perception desire and entrapment
Minnie Riperton
A love song built around the gap between feeling and expression, in which the narrator worries that her devotion isn't landing…
communication anxiety reassurance devotion
Joni Mitchell
A three-part meditation that uses clouds, love, and life as parallel case studies in disillusionment, each verse moving from…
disillusionment the limits of experience loss of innocence
Marvin Gaye
A plea rather than a protest anthem, the song addresses family members directly to voice grief over war and civil unrest at…
Vietnam-era war weariness generational conflict police brutality
Yes
Starship Trooper is a three-part suite that moves from an invocation of natural, cosmic imagery into a meditation on inherited…
transcendence the limits of language/knowledge nature as cosmic messenger
Bruce Springsteen
A young man on a porch pleads with a woman named Mary to leave their fading town with him, framing an escape by car as both…
escape and flight romantic persuasion as salvation small-town limitation
Gladys Knight
Gladys Knight catalogs the domestic labor of a woman keeping a household running while her partner grows cold and indifferent,…
emotional labor and domestic care withheld affection self-respect and pride