Break On Through
The Doors
To the other side · 2:25
sixties psych-rock, organ, driving, urgent, feral
Moonlight Shadow
Mike Oldfield
Mandolin murder-elegy · 3:38
eighties folk-pop, mandolin, bright surface, buried grief, driving
Nacht voll Schatten
Juliane Werding
The German adoption · 3:23
German Schlager, eighties, translated grief, warm, mournful
Lo Stretto
Cassidy Diane
Northern Soul meets Italo disco · 3:30
Northern Soul meets Italo disco, sea spray, longing
Caruso
Lucio Dalla
A Neapolitan farewell · 5:14
Italian canzone, Neapolitan, swelling strings, mortal, tender
Careless Whisper
George Michael
Saxophone as camouflage · 5:00
eighties soul-pop, saxophone, glossy, guilty, secret
Hope There’s Someone
Antony and the Johnsons
Who will be there at the end · 4:21
chamber soul, tremulous, transcendent, piano, fragile
Martha
Tom Waits
A forty-year phone call · 4:28
piano ballad, weathered, nostalgic, smoke, barroom
Am Tag, als Conny Kramer starb
Juliane Werding
The first translation · 3:25
German folk-pop, seventies, plainspoken elegy, mournful
Il pescatore
Fabrizio De André
Bread for a fugitive · 2:18
Italian folk, Genoese, acoustic, ethical, wry
Famous Blue Raincoat
Leonard Cohen
A letter at four a.m. · 5:15
folk, hushed, epistolary, cold December, resigned
Into My Arms
Nick Cave
A prayer he doesn’t share · 4:16
piano ballad, devotional, spare, tender, godless faith
Forgiveness
Patty Griffin
The slow work · 5:00
American folk, weathered, plainspoken, quiet, redemptive
Weißes Papier
Element of Crime
The unsent letter · 3:21
German chanson, trumpet, rain, literate, melancholic
Dinner at Eight
Rufus Wainwright
The dinner that never happens · 4:31
chamber pop, ornate, father-son, aching, theatrical
Cucurrucucú Paloma
Caetano Veloso
Three tongues, no home lost · 4:00
Latin American, Almodóvar, live, trembling, transnational