Keeping score
What goes around comes around, and pop music has always loved watching it land. This list holds the songs about cosmic payback and poetic justice, the ones built on the quiet faith that people eventually get what they give. Karma by Taylor Swift is the feeling at its most gleeful, karma as a purring cat that finally sits on her side. Instant Karma! is John Lennon warning that the payback is coming fast, so straighten up now. The subject is old and satisfying, because everyone has waited for someone to get their due.
The revenge wing is the loudest. What Goes Around… Comes Around is Justin Timberlake watching a cheater catch the wheel on the way back around. Before He Cheats is Carrie Underwood delivering comeuppance to a truck’s paint job, one of the most gleeful acts of vengeance on record. Gives You Hell is a whole anthem of wishing a rough road on someone who earned it. These songs are not subtle, and they are not trying to be. They are the sound of the scoreboard finally evening out.
The uneasy kind
Karma is not always a celebration, and the sharper entries know it. Karma Police is Radiohead turning the idea into a darker, more nervous prayer, half hoping the person deserves what is coming. Ironic is Alanis Morissette cataloguing fate’s small, cruel jokes, the ones that land on people who did nothing to earn them. You Can’t Always Get What You Want is the Rolling Stones offering the consolation prize: the universe hands you what you need instead of what you asked for. These songs treat karma as a force you do not fully control, which is closer to how it actually feels.
The oldest entries fold karma into plain fate. Que Sera, Sera hands the whole future over to whatever will be. Bad Moon Rising is Creedence delivering a cheerful tune about trouble on its way, comeuppance you can hear coming from a mile off. Superstition is Stevie Wonder’s groove about believing the signs mean something. Whether you call it karma, fate, or just the way things shake out, the belief underneath is the same, and it has been giving songwriters material for a very long time.
Related lists
Karma keeps company with a few sharper subjects here. The wrong that so often sets the wheel turning runs through songs about cheating, and the deeper version of it lives in songs about betrayal. The forward motion after you let the universe handle it fills songs about moving on, and the grit to outlast a rough patch runs through songs about never giving up.
If a fragment brought you here, some line about payback or fate, the search bar on our home page finds songs from remembered words.
The songs here run from the fifties to the last few years, and the appeal never changes. There is deep satisfaction in the idea that the scales eventually balance, and music has always been happy to sing it, whether gleeful or uneasy. This shelf is where the scorekeeping lives.