Results for “Native Tongues solidarity”

Songs

Stakes Is High

De La Soul

A weary state-of-hip-hop address from De La Soul, cataloguing everything the group has grown sick of in mid-90s rap culture…

disillusionment with commercial rap materialism and misplaced love urban survival and violence

On the Turning Away

Pink Floyd

A gentle, hymn-like protest song that addresses complacency toward poverty and suffering directly, using the recurring image of…

social indifference collective responsibility moral awakening

Breakadawn

De La Soul

A loose, free-associative posse-cut style track from De La Soul's most abstract album, built on stream-of-consciousness wordplay…

identity and origin hip-hop lineage and Native Tongues affiliation industry skepticism

Silent Night

Johnny Cash

This is Johnny Cash's straightforward reading of the traditional carol, sung without irony or reinterpretation. The interest…

nativity reverence light versus darkness

It's Gonna Get Better

Genesis

A closing-track anthem of forced optimism, built on simple exhortations to hold on and reach out against a backdrop of urban…

urban alienation perseverance solidarity

F.U.B.U.

Solange

F.U.B.U. is a direct address to Black listeners, reclaiming the phrase 'for us, by us' as a statement of cultural ownership. The…

Black solidarity cultural ownership racial profiling

UMI Says

Mos Def

An intimate, unguarded address that opens as a direct confession about mortality and imperfection before widening into a…

mortality and urgency authenticity over performance Black solidarity and liberation

Jumpers

Sleater‐Kinney

"Jumpers" turns the Golden Gate Bridge into a site of collective and personal despair, framing California's mythic sunshine as a…

suicide and despair California mythology vs. reality isolation within crowds

Androgynous

The Replacements

A quietly tender ballad from a famously loud punk band, this song imagines two gender-nonconforming lovers with a gentleness…

gender nonconformity acceptance and tolerance love as constancy

Don't Give Up

Peter Gabriel

A duet built as an argument between despair and consolation: one voice details the humiliation of joblessness and displacement,…

unemployment and economic shame loss of identity and belonging depression and suicidal ideation

To Hell With Poverty!

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

You Need To Calm Down

Taylor Swift

A bright, bubblegum pop track that pivots halfway through from scolding online trolls to a broader plea for LGBTQ acceptance.…

online harassment LGBTQ solidarity celebrity feuds

The First Noel

Emmylou Harris

This is a straightforward reading of the traditional English carol, with Emmylou Harris's plainspoken vocal treating the…

nativity narrative revelation and light humility of shepherds

The Rising

Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen writes from inside the body of a firefighter climbing a burning tower on September 11, fusing physical labor,…

9/11 and collective trauma duty and physical sacrifice faith and doubt

Surface Envy

Sleater‐Kinney

A song about clawing back from personal collapse through collective effort, built on an extended drowning-and-resurfacing…

collective resilience self-doubt and recovery reinvention

We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue

Curtis Mayfield

A sermon set to music, this track has Curtis Mayfield addressing Black America directly about internal divisions that threaten…

racial solidarity colorism self-determination

Sandusky

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 Eton Rifles

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

A Rose Is Still a Rose

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin plays elder counselor to a wounded young woman, using the image of a rose to insist that sexual betrayal doesn't…

self-worth after betrayal intergenerational female solidarity resilience

The Joke

Brandi Carlile

Brandi Carlile addresses two vulnerable young people—a boy who doesn't fit masculine norms and a girl navigating a world still…

marginalization and difference gender expectations resilience

All the Young Dudes (David Bowie & Ian Hunter Vocal)

Mott the Hoople

A glam-rock anthem that gathers a cast of restless, damaged teenagers and turns their drift into a rallying cry. Bowie's song,…

youth disaffection generational divide glam identity and androgyny

Message Of Love

The Pretenders

A live rendering of a Pretenders anthem that treats love as a communal, almost civic obligation rather than a private feeling.…

love as mutual obligation solidarity amid hardship romantic devotion

Work It

Missy Elliott

Missy Elliott's signature single is a maximalist celebration of sexual confidence and self-invention, built on a literal sonic…

sexual agency self-invention and reinvention female solidarity and hustle

Jolene

Dolly Parton

A direct plea from one woman to another, sung by a narrator who feels powerless against a rival's beauty and her partner's…

romantic insecurity female rivalry and solidarity powerlessness

We the People....

A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest opens their comeback album with a song that fuses street-level survival talk with a chorus that mimics the…

racism and xenophobia economic precarity media distortion

Excursions

A Tribe Called Quest

Q-Tip opens The Low End Theory with a genealogy lesson, tracing hip-hop back through his father's love of bebop and framing rap…

lineage and continuation of Black music integrity versus phoniness time and history repeating

Waitress In the Sky

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

Blogging

Wire

Wire recast the nativity story as a satire of digital-age commerce and self-promotion, splicing biblical imagery with the…

technology and faith commodification of belief surveillance and self-branding

Strangers

The Kinks

A meditative song written by Dave Davies for the Kinks' 1970 album, built around the image of two travelers on the same road who…

companionship amid alienation spiritual searching impermanence and mortality

Jesus Christ

Big Star

A Christmas carol built from borrowed and paraphrased hymn imagery, recorded by a band whose songwriter was in visible crisis at…

rebirth and renewal faith versus despair tradition and inheritance

Somewhere

Jimi Hendrix

A hallucinatory vision of social collapse filtered through a drinker's blurred perception, where reaching hands never quite…

social unrest spiritual longing alienation

Hellacious Acres

Kris Kristofferson

A carnival-barker satire that reimagines hell as a theme park, complete with billboards, ticket lines, and celebrity attractions…

moral corruption as entertainment consumerism and commodified sin celebrity and infamy

Where You'll Find Me Now

Neutral Milk Hotel

A dense, image-clogged confession of shame and diminishment inside a fraught intimacy, where the speaker imagines himself…

guilt and self-punishment voicelessness corrupted intimacy

Alpha Beta Gaga

Air

A synth-pop instrumental duo's track gets hijacked by hip-hop guest verses, turning a woozy French electronic groove into a…

status and exclusivity clubland escapism playful bravado