Results for “unrequited or asymmetrical connection”

Songs

Parallel Lines

Todd Rundgren

Todd Rundgren uses the geometry of parallel lines as a controlling metaphor for a connection that can never quite converge, even…

unrequited or asymmetrical connection the limits of empathy acceptance versus surrender

Start!

The Jam

A brief, almost accidental human connection is offered as a small act of resistance against isolation and cynicism. The song…

fleeting connection alienation reciprocity

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

Since I Fell for You

Gladys Knight

A slow, torch-song lament about loving someone who no longer returns the feeling, sung with the weary authority of a performer…

unrequited love emotional entrapment regret and self-knowledge

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

Waiting In Vain

Annie Lennox

This is Annie Lennox's reading of the Bob Marley & the Wailers song, retooled from reggae original into a slower,…

unrequited devotion patience versus self-respect power imbalance in courtship

Swingin Party

The Replacements

A wallflower's confession dressed up as a party invitation, this song uses the image of a never-ending bash to talk about…

social anxiety self-deprecation isolation within community

One Day

Sharon Van Etten

A quiet, circling meditation on an unresolved relationship, where family support is contrasted against a partner's ambivalence.…

emotional avoidance family vs romantic love self-doubt

Creep

Radiohead

A song of self-loathing built around a single obsessive comparison: the speaker idolizes someone he sees as flawless while…

self-loathing unrequited desire alienation

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

Chase the Tear

Portishead

A brief, incantatory piece built from fragmentary phrases rather than a clear narrative, tracking a speaker moving between…

shame and self-reckoning emotional withdrawal cyclical time / seasons as feeling

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl

Broken Social Scene

A brief, mantra-like lament for someone who has traded rebellious authenticity for polish and distance, sung by a narrator who…

nostalgia for authenticity loss of innocence desire and longing

Hunger

Florence + the Machine

An opening confession about adolescent anorexia expands into a wider meditation on addiction, performance, and the human need to…

eating disorders and body control addiction and substitution performance versus intimacy

This City Never Sleeps

Eurythmics

A hypnotic, almost droning meditation on urban anonymity, built from a handful of repeated fragments rather than a conventional…

urban alienation anonymity insomnia/restlessness

I Don't Live Here Anymore

The War on Drugs

A song about outgrowing a former self and a former place, told through the loosening grip of memory and the strange comfort of…

self-transformation nostalgia and its unreliability displacement

High Days

Bert Jansch

A quiet song of apology and remembrance, addressed to someone the narrator once let down and now recalls through fragments of…

regret and apology memory and nostalgia aging and loss of connection

I Get a Kick Out of You

Frank Sinatra

A Cole Porter standard in which a jaded sophisticate catalogs every conventional pleasure that fails to move him, only to admit…

ennui and sophistication unrequited or unequal love irony of excess

Lovers Rock

Sade

Sade builds an entire song out of a single sustained image: a lover as bedrock stability amid emotional chaos. The lyric barely…

emotional refuge isolation vs connection stability in love

Washing Machine Heart

Mitski

A short, disco-tinged plea for someone to use and abandon her, framed through the odd domestic metaphor of a washing machine…

self-abasement in desire substitution and being a stand-in longing disguised as invitation

Forgiven/Forgotten

Angel Olsen

A short, driving song that circles a single unresolved feeling: the narrator loves someone who is present in her thoughts but…

unrequited or distant love self-doubt forgiveness as an open question

Be Good (Lion's Song)

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter builds an extended allegory of romantic self-diminishment around the image of a caged lion taming itself for a…

self-suppression for love power and taming unrequited or unequal affection

Smokestack Lightning

Howlin’ Wolf

This is one of the foundational texts of Chicago blues: a hypnotic, one-chord vamp built around the image of a train's…

migration and trains as symbol unrequited or faithless love isolation and being unheard

Afro-Blue

Abbey Lincoln

Oscar Brown Jr.'s lyric to Mongo Santamaría's polyrhythmic tune turns a percussion pattern into a vision of ancestral homeland…

ancestral memory and diaspora eroticism as metaphor for connection to homeland Black beauty and self-affirmation

Hypnotized

Fleetwood Mac

A drifting, unhurried meditation on the pleasure of unexplained phenomena, built from a series of loosely connected anecdotes…

the appeal of the unexplained imagination versus proof folklore and hearsay

Got to Be There

Chaka Khan

A devotional, almost ceremonial love song built on a single vow of presence: to be there at the first light of a relationship,…

devotion presence and belonging new beginnings

A Letter to Elise

The Cure

A breakup song built on exhaustion rather than anger: the speaker addresses a partner named Elise and admits that whatever…

emotional exhaustion failed intimacy self-deception

Water Curses

Animal Collective

A dreamlike wish-song built around water as an image of fluidity, ease, and self-erasure, drifting through loosely connected…

desire for formlessness/transformation mortality and impermanence creativity and artistic longing

Say You Will

Fleetwood Mac

A plea for reconciliation built almost entirely out of repetition, where the speaker asks a former lover for one more chance and…

romantic pleading nostalgia for lost intimacy persuasion through repetition

Under Pressure

Queen

A collaboration between Queen and David Bowie built around a rolling bass riff, the song treats societal pressure as a physical…

collective anxiety urban alienation the erosion of love as a value

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

Sex, Drugs and Violence

Public Enemy

Public Enemy uses three loosely connected vignettes of unsolved shootings tied to hip-hop culture to indict the industry and…

media complicity violence in hip-hop culture commercialization of black death

Simulation Swarm

Big Thief

A hazy, image-drenched love song that treats intimacy as something both cosmic and fragile, staged inside a metaphor of the…

impermanence and renewal love as refuge from unreality memory and childhood

Saturnz Barz

Gorillaz

A collaboration between Gorillaz and Jamaican dancehall artist Popcaan, the track fuses a patois-inflected verse about hard-won…

survival and upward mobility fame's emptiness isolation within relationships