Al Green
Al Green frames a romantic relationship as a sacred event, thanking a higher power for a love that feels chosen rather than…
sacred love gratitude devotion
Nina Simone
A traditional African-American spiritual reworked into a nearly ten-minute incantation, tracking a sinner's frantic search for…
judgment and reckoning futility of escape divine justice vs. mercy
Interpol
A murky, incantatory song built around two women's names -- Rosemary and Sandy -- that Interpol never fully reconciles into a…
complicity and denial seduction as manipulation guilt and judgment
Television
This is Television's first single, a hazy character sketch built on a shuffling, unresolved guitar figure rather than a…
outsider mystique visionary madness voyeurism and judgment
Gillian Welch
A short, circling song about a young woman stalling against the pressure to settle down—marriage, respectability, the expected…
deferred adulthood female autonomy vs. domestic expectation escape and mobility
Steve Earle
A defiant survivor's anthem in which the narrator refuses to be pitied or contained, casting himself as a storyteller-outlaw…
survival and defiance inherited identity addiction and recovery