The Jam
A savage class-conflict narrative disguised as a sports report: a ragtag group of protesters or strikers clashes with the Eton…
class conflict failed solidarity British class system
The Replacements
A cranky airline passenger gripes about being served by a flight attendant, sneering at her job title and demanding the…
class resentment entitlement euphemism and job-title inflation
Rodney Crowell
A plainspoken proposal song built almost entirely around one repeated pledge: that devotion, not money, will be the measure of a…
romantic devotion class and money courtship and destiny
Townes Van Zandt
This is a Rolling Stones cover (Jagger/Richards) performed live by Townes Van Zandt on Roadsongs, and in his hands the song's…
class resentment addiction and self-destruction romantic betrayal
Steve Earle
Steve Earle threads together three young men from three different fronts of the post-9/11 war on terror — a working-class…
class and war economic desperation propaganda vs. lived reality
Weezer
A self-described nobody fantasizes about the glamour of Beverly Hills while admitting, almost in the same breath, that the class…
class envy celebrity worship self-deprecation
Uncle Tupelo
A grim, working-class dirge about exhaustion and dead ends, delivered in the voice of someone addressing a person on the verge…
industrial despair class fatigue futility versus endurance
The Smiths
A stranded young man with a broken bicycle is picked up by an older, wealthier stranger, and the encounter becomes a charged,…
class anxiety closeted desire vanity and self-consciousness
Pet Shop Boys
A cold, hypnotic portrait of London's class and consumer divide, delivered in a near-rap monotone over a synth-pop groove. The…
class division urban alienation consumption and desire
Pavement
A wry, deadpan tour through the small humiliations of dating, class anxiety, and suburban aspiration, filtered through Malkmus's…
class and status anxiety suburban aspiration irony and detachment
Minutemen
A punk band's origin story told without irony or distance, this song insists that ordinary friendship and local geography are as…
friendship and collaboration punk rock lineage and influence self-mythologizing vs. humility
Curtis Mayfield
A eulogy and a warning delivered in the same breath, this song uses the death of a minor drug-trade casualty from the Superfly…
addiction and exploitation systemic racism/economic entrapment urban despair
Gang of Four
A tightly wound post-punk anthem that turns economic hardship into a rallying cry, pairing a jagged, funk-inflected groove with…
economic hardship class solidarity escapism as resistance
Bessie Smith
A direct address from the working poor to the wealthy, this 1928 blues sides a plea for economic justice with an implicit…
class inequality economic desperation war and sacrifice
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk turn a numbing exercise in counting into a protest song, framing the reduction of a person to a numeral as a kind of…
dehumanization by bureaucracy loss of identity surveillance and control
Fairport Convention
This is the Fairport Convention electric-folk arrangement of the ancient English/Scottish ballad about adultery, betrayal, and…
class inequality adultery and its consequences honor and vengeance
A terse, two-minute political sketch that moves from a stark statement about poverty and inherited injustice to a small, almost…
economic inequality inherited guilt survival
Jamie xx
This Jamie xx track builds a euphoric, sample-driven dance anthem around a simple mantra of anticipated joy, then hands the mic…
anticipation and collective release hedonism and excess class and hustle
Vampire Weekend
A jaunty, harpsichord-inflected pop song that uses a grammar joke as a launching pad for a satire of upper-crust pretension and…
class and privilege cultural tourism and appropriation linguistic pedantry vs authenticity
Johnny Cash
A first-person prison lament in which the narrator, confined and hopeless, is tormented by the sound of a train he cannot board.…
confinement and freedom guilt and moral consequence class resentment
A brisk, brand-strewn snapshot of prep-school desire, where a narrator sketches a young woman's privileged upbringing before the…
class and privilege cultural appropriation and borrowing adolescent desire
Lorde
A teenager from an unglamorous town catalogs the luxury clichés of contemporary pop and mass media, then refuses them, proposing…
class and aspiration media saturation and celebrity excess authenticity versus performance
Randy Newman
A booming, boosterish anthem that turns out to be a satire of boosterism itself: the narrator's civic pride is so shallow and…
civic pride as delusion class blindness American boosterism
Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris narrates the entire life of a childhood friend from rural Alabama, from adolescence to an early, unremarked…
rural poverty thwarted ambition female friendship
A short, blunt punk song about wage labor as a form of daily indignity. The narrator describes clocking in and out for a boss he…
wage labor and exploitation class resentment dignity versus survival
The Fall
This is The Fall's 1988 cover of the Kinks' 1969 song, a mock-anthem that impersonates Victorian-era patriotic sentiment so…
empire and nationalism class and inequality irony and pastiche
Bob Dylan
A six-minute takedown song that watches a once-privileged woman lose every social prop that made her feel untouchable. Dylan…
fall from privilege social exposure and humiliation freedom through loss
Kanye West Tribute Band
A Ray Charles sample and a party-ready hook frame a much darker set of verses about money, sex, race, and resentment between men…
gender and money distrust and betrayal black masculinity and provider anxiety
Kate Bush
A mother buries her son, a young soldier killed in service, and the song moves between her grief at the funeral and a bitter…
class and limited opportunity maternal grief futility of war
John Prine
A young man's ventriloquized portrait of an aging woman worn down by a marriage and a life that never became what she imagined.…
aging and disillusionment domestic entrapment lost youth
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton uses her own famously exaggerated image as the subject of a plainspoken self-defense, arguing that artifice and…
appearance vs. substance class and self-invention self-defense against stereotype
Chris Stapleton
A road-trip song about leaving a stale life behind for the sake of a relationship, built on plainspoken folk-country imagery of…
renewal and reinvention risk and commitment partnership over place
The Clash
A ska-inflected celebration of a London rude boy who refuses to reform, structured as a call-and-response between disapproving…
youth rebellion respectability politics working-class identity
The Pretenders
A restless, mid-career reckoning song in which Chrissie Hynde's narrator refuses both the comfort of settled domesticity and the…
compromise and aging class and global inequality celebrity exhaustion
Guy Clark
Guy Clark builds a heartbroken travelogue out of restlessness, cataloguing cities and cultural landmarks as a way of avoiding…
heartbreak and longing restlessness and travel as avoidance pride versus vulnerability
George Jones
A workingman's release-valve anthem: cash burning a hole, a weekend lover waiting, and a chorus that treats Friday night as a…
escapism the work week grind hedonism vs. routine
Danny Brown
A three-part posse-cut style flex track (featuring Ab-Soul and Kendrick Lamar on the full version, though only Danny Brown's…
success and its authenticity hedonism as armor class ascension from poverty
Roberta Flack
A furious, jazz-inflected protest song that catalogs the hypocrisies of American life—consumerism, war, religion, race—and keeps…
social hypocrisy war and dissent religious skepticism
Guy Clark builds a plainspoken inventory of worn, dependable objects and people, using them as a working definition of value…
durability vs novelty authenticity friendship and loyalty
An old Irish ballad, arranged by Fairport Convention with Sandy Denny's vocal at its centre, in which a young woman's parting…
death and mourning premonition lost love