Fairport Convention
A meditation on mortality and constancy, written by Sandy Denny and here performed by Fairport Convention (who backed her on the…
mortality and impermanence the passage of time constancy in love
Lana Del Rey
This is Lana Del Rey's faithful, lightly reworked cover of Sublime's 1996 track, itself a reggae-inflected reimagining of the…
betrayal and possessiveness local pride and belonging romantic disillusionment
Sandy Denny
A Bob Dylan song given to Sandy Denny's voice becomes a study in absence: the singer measures every image of beauty and time…
longing and absence time as burden identity dissolved by loss
Roberta Flack
A slow, hymn-like meditation on falling in love, told through three escalating 'first times' — seeing, kissing, and lying with a…
romantic awakening the sacredness of intimacy time and permanence
Margo Price
Margo Price lays out an autobiographical ballad of leaving home, losing a farm, and surviving hard years in the city, all in…
economic loss and displacement family loyalty grief and mortality
Angel Olsen
A breakup song that refuses the genre's usual apology, opting instead for flat, exhausted clarity about a relationship that has…
emotional exhaustion the end of a long relationship refusal of guilt
Daft Punk
A vocoder-processed voice loops a handful of phrases about celebration and dancing until the words stop functioning as narrative…
release through repetition collective celebration dissolution of self via technology (vocoder)
Tom Petty
A meditation on departure and reinvention, built around a plain, almost mantra-like refrain that insists on forward motion even…
restlessness self-liberation uncertainty
Merle Haggard
This is a plainspoken gospel prayer sung from a position of exhaustion and humility, asking for the strength to survive the…
religious surrender humility and human limitation present-moment endurance
Simon Jäger
A young songwriter watches a single year of his life pass and turns that small span of time into a meditation on mortality and…
impermanence aging and time lost love
Jamie xx
This Jamie xx track builds a euphoric, sample-driven dance anthem around a simple mantra of anticipated joy, then hands the mic…
anticipation and collective release hedonism and excess class and hustle
Nina Simone
A meditation on impermanence set as a slow, incantatory song rather than a story. Simone (performing a standard she didn't…
impermanence time and aging acceptance
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
Depeche Mode
A meditation on mortality and impermanence dressed in soft, dreamlike imagery, written and released in the shadow of a…
mortality and impermanence grief and remembrance spiritual uncertainty
Brandi Carlile
A road-worn singer addresses someone left behind, weighing the cost of a touring life against a vow of permanent devotion. The…
distance and longing touring life vs. domestic life fidelity and devotion
The Beach Boys
A slow, mournful address to a woman the singer once loved, mourning a change in her that he can't name directly. It closes Pet…
loss of innocence nostalgia disillusionment
Carly Simon
Carly Simon's version of this old folk standard strips it down to a hushed, almost prayer-like lullaby, trading the song's usual…
fragile love fear of loss comfort and vulnerability
Lorde
A song about the terror of leaving adolescence, built from a single house party that becomes a stand-in for the whole passage…
fear of aging nostalgia for childhood female friendship
Cassandra Wilson
This is a meditative, almost devotional song built around a simple ritual: each day's mundane and sensory acts are catalogued by…
impermanence ritual and routine art as anchor
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
Sturgill Simpson
A father addresses his infant son with a promise of enduring presence and love, framed as spiritual reassurance against the…
parental love mortality and continuity spiritual comfort
Sly & Robbie
This is a single proverbial statement stretched into a full song: the idea that any given force in life -- pleasure, sustenance,…
duality of experience impermanence skepticism toward truth
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
Frank Ocean
A soft, wandering meditation on maternal love and mortality, built around the image of a hurricane and the small acts of…
maternal love survival and resilience impermanence
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
Madonna
A cosmic dance track that fuses spiritual searching with astronomical imagery, using the image of light and celestial motion to…
spiritual awakening cosmic scale vs. personal feeling impermanence
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
James Taylor
A quiet, unadorned lullaby that doubles as a farewell, offering reassurance through simple natural imagery rather than grand…
reassurance impermanence simplicity as sincerity
A restless self-portrait of an artist who treats identity as provisional, staged against a generational standoff between an…
self-reinvention generational conflict impermanence
Aphex Twin
Avril 14th is a brief solo piano piece by Aphex Twin, built from a simple, halting melodic phrase that repeats with small…
memory fragility impermanence
A Leonard Cohen composition rendered here as a slow, aching meditation on a relationship's dissolution, delivered without…
romantic separation impermanence tenderness amid loss
Jason Isbell
A meditation on the fragility of everything a person builds—relationships, careers, a sense of stability—delivered through a…
impermanence mortality self-deception
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
Big Thief
"Not" is a song built entirely out of negation, circling an unnamed thing by naming everything it isn't. Lenker piles up sensory…
negation and unnameability impermanence desire and its objects
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
Fleet Foxes
The closing track of Helplessness Blues describes a visionary dream-state of peace and permanence, set against a waking world of…
dreams versus waking life longing for peace impermanence and mortality
Beck
A hazy breakup meditation built on repetition and stasis, where time itself seems to have stopped moving. Beck uses flat,…
emotional numbness the end of love stalled time
Pink Floyd
An opening address that sounds like gentle life-advice slowly reveals itself as a warning about the trap of compulsive labor and…
existential dread conformity and labor the passage of time
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
A torch song written for a film about doomed excess, this track poses one anxious question over and over: does love survive once…
impermanence of beauty conditional love nostalgia for lost youth