Results for “trust versus infatuation”

Songs

Show Me Love

Robyn

A teenage Robyn's breakout single is a straightforward Eurodance declaration of romantic surrender, built around a repeated plea…

romantic vulnerability independence versus surrender demand for reciprocity

LOVE.

Kendrick Lamar

A relatively unguarded pop-leaning track for DAMN., LOVE. sets a domestic, romantic duet (with Zacari) against the album's…

conditional vs. unconditional love fame and material status as tests of loyalty domestic intimacy amid instability

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

It's All Right

Sam Cooke

A deceptively simple reassurance song built almost entirely on a single repeated phrase, in which the narrator talks himself…

romantic insecurity self-persuasion trust versus doubt

Sexy Boy

Air

A woozy, vocoder-warped taunt built almost entirely out of one phrase, "Sexy Boy" pokes at masculine vanity and celebrity…

vanity and self-image celebrity and consumerism irony versus seduction

All That You Have Is Your Soul

Emmylou Harris

A mother's warning becomes a hard-won personal confession, as the narrator traces her own failures to heed advice about…

inherited wisdom moral compromise self-possession versus loss of self

Denis

Blondie

A cover of a 1963 girl-group style bubblegum tune, reworked by Blondie into a knowing new wave valentine that trades on…

infatuation surface pleasure and artifice girl-group nostalgia

Are You Even Real?

James Blake

A hazy meditation on romantic infatuation so intense it blurs into hallucination, James Blake's song treats intimacy as…

infatuation and disbelief dissolution of time psychedelic imagery of love

Head Over Heels / Broken

Tears for Fears

A love song that keeps interrupting itself, veering between romantic infatuation and anxious social commentary before dissolving…

infatuation and vulnerability fear of loss social conscience amid personal desire

Can't Take My Eyes Off of You (I Love You Baby)

Lauryn Hill

This is Lauryn Hill's rendition of the 1967 Frankie Valli classic, placed on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a brief,…

infatuation gratitude vulnerability

Cool Cat

Queen

A slight, groove-driven vignette about attraction to someone effortlessly stylish and self-possessed, filtered through…

infatuation cool detachment vs. desire surface style over substance

Hush

Deep Purple

This is a straightforward garage-pop cover turned hard-rock workout, built almost entirely from nonsense syllables and a simple…

obsessive infatuation powerlessness in love physical desire

How Can I Be Sure of You (Previously unreleased)

Harry Nilsson

A small argument about the color of the sun spirals into a meditation on epistemic vertigo -- how do you trust anything,…

epistemological doubt trust and betrayal perception vs. reality

It's Oh So Quiet

Björk

Björk's cover reworks a 1951 Betty Hutton novelty tune into a dynamic set piece where hushed, orchestral verses collapse into…

the volatility of infatuation quiet vs. chaos as emotional states the absurdity of romantic obsession

Then She Appeared

XTC

A giddy, image-drunk love song that describes a single overwhelming encounter through a barrage of unrelated historical and…

sudden infatuation the inadequacy of language before wonder celestial imagery displaced onto a person

I Feel It All

Feist

A short, buoyant song about taking full responsibility for one's own emotional risk-taking, framed as both liberation and…

self-determination in love emotional exposure ambivalence toward commitment

Ms. Fat Booty

Mos Def

A narrative rap unfolding like a short film in three scenes, tracking a pursuit-and-fallout romance with a woman the narrator…

desire versus discernment the performance of masculinity and vulnerability cynicism eroded by intimacy

Superstar

Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth's cover of the Carpenters' "Superstar" strips the original's lush orchestration down to a slow, droning haze,…

one-sided obsession loneliness the falseness of mediated intimacy

Foolish Heart

Alison Krauss

A young narrator rehearses her own exit from a doomed relationship, arguing herself into leaving before she can be hurt again.…

self-protection versus vulnerability romantic disillusionment pride as armor

Hung Up

Madonna

A dancefloor anthem built on the friction between infatuation and impatience, where the singer clocks every second spent waiting…

romantic impatience obsession versus self-respect time as torment

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Death Cab for Cutie

A quiet, acoustic vow of companionship extended past death, stripped of religious comfort. The narrator promises to follow a…

mortality secular love versus religious afterlife doubt and disillusionment with organized religion

Somebody Already Broke My Heart

Sade

A wary plea from someone entering a new relationship while still bruised from the last one. The song works less as a love song…

emotional guardedness vulnerability in new love fear of repetition

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on grace and surrender disguised as a portrait of a woman by a river, Cohen's song moves from intimate seduction…

spiritual longing disguised as romance the sacred in the everyday trust and surrender

Archangel

Burial

Built almost entirely from pitch-shifted vocal samples looping a handful of phrases, this track uses repetition and vocal…

isolation longing for belonging fragile intimacy

The Unsinkable Fats Domino

Guided By Voices

A cryptic, riddling GBV track that uses Fats Domino's real-life survival of Hurricane Katrina as an emblem of resilience, then…

survival and resilience flood/water imagery as threat and purification fame versus obscurity

Sandusky

Uncle Tupelo

A grim, working-class dirge about exhaustion and dead ends, delivered in the voice of someone addressing a person on the verge…

industrial despair class fatigue futility versus endurance

Raid

Madvillain

"Raid" is a two-verse showcase built around boastful self-mythologizing, with MF Doom opening and MED closing over a woozy,…

outlaw persona and contradiction poverty and hustling reputation and legend-building

Still D.R.E.

Dr. Dre

A comeback statement dressed as a boast, in which Dr. Dre answers years of speculation about his relevance by cataloguing…

reputation and legacy authenticity versus commercialism loyalty to origin/streets

Vienna

Billy Joel

A weary older voice counsels a driven young person to ease off the throttle, arguing that ambition pursued without patience…

ambition versus patience fear of mortality burnout

As the World Falls Down

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

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

Gimme Shelter

Patti Smith

This is a cover of the Rolling Stones' 1969 apocalyptic ballad, and Patti Smith treats it less as a rock anthem than as an…

apocalypse and dread the fragility of shelter violence versus tenderness

Big Yellow Taxi (Original A Cappella with Guitar)

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell's early environmental protest song works as a series of loosely connected complaints -- about development,…

environmental loss commodification of nature nostalgia and regret

Can't Help Falling in Love

Kacey Musgraves

Kacey Musgraves' rendition of this 1961 standard, recorded for the 2022 Elvis biopic soundtrack, strips the song down to its…

surrender to love fate versus choice vulnerability

Excursions

A Tribe Called Quest

Q-Tip opens The Low End Theory with a genealogy lesson, tracing hip-hop back through his father's love of bebop and framing rap…

lineage and continuation of Black music integrity versus phoniness time and history repeating

Earthbound

Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell weighs the pull of escape—into fantasy, death, or transcendence—against the stubborn pleasures of ordinary life,…

mortality and mid-life reflection gratitude versus escapism love and social barriers

Corona

Minutemen

A terse, two-minute political sketch that moves from a stark statement about poverty and inherited injustice to a small, almost…

economic inequality inherited guilt survival

Oops! I Did It Again

Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson's version strips a bubblegum pop hit down to voice and guitar, exposing lyrics about romantic manipulation that…

manipulation dressed as innocence performance versus sincerity gender and blame

The Frozen Man

James Taylor

James Taylor spins a science-fiction folk tale about a 19th-century sailor revived after a century frozen in ice, using the…

mortality and the fear of dying twice technology versus nature alienation and displacement in time

Superstition

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