Frank Ocean
A hazy, sun-warmed meditation on being shaped and protected by someone else's love, set against a backdrop of natural disaster…
maternal or protective love survival and disaster memory and childhood
Sonic Youth
Kim Gordon plays a seductive, sardonic call-and-response with a fetishized male icon, using come-ons and spoken interruptions to…
fetishization of Black masculinity gender and power celebrity worship
Nina Simone
A catalogue of natural images -- birds, rivers, blossoms, stars -- builds into a declaration of personal liberation and renewal.…
renewal freedom self-possession
Jethro Tull
This is a sardonic protest against the commercial and violent hijacking of Christian imagery in American culture, pairing…
religious hypocrisy American mythology and violence commercialization of faith
Erykah Badu
A meditation on getting lost, both literally and existentially, that refuses to resolve into a tidy moral. Badu treats…
self-doubt and self-trust fate versus choice spiritual wandering
Aretha Franklin
This is a driving-metaphor party song: sex and romance recast as a joyride down an open highway in a pink Cadillac. It's…
romantic/sexual liberation escape and momentum playfulness and flirtation