Results for “PTSD and its aftermath”

Songs

Casualties of War

Eric B. & Rakim

Rakim narrates a soldier's tour through the Gulf War as a first-person combat diary, then reveals it as a psychological wound…

war and disillusionment PTSD and its aftermath racial identity and religious solidarity

Fragile

Cassandra Wilson

This is a cover of a song originally written by Sting, reframed here through Cassandra Wilson's smoky, unhurried phrasing on her…

violence and its aftermath fragility of human life memory versus forgetting

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Pet Shop Boys

A duet between two mismatched voices — one flatly transactional, one emotionally raw — turns a breakup into a study of…

mismatched desire emotional detachment aftermath of separation

Bodies

Sex Pistols

A brutal, non-narrative screed about abortion that refuses either a pro-life sermon or a clean feminist statement, instead…

abortion and its aftermath dehumanization class and institutional cruelty

All My Friends

Broken Social Scene

A brief, hazy track that sketches a kind of collective burnout among musicians and lovers who have turned intimacy into product.…

artistic disillusionment the commodification of love songs exhaustion and urgency

Another Brick In the Wall, Pt. 1

Pink Floyd

This short opening piece establishes the album's central image—the wall built from accumulated emotional injuries—by introducing…

paternal absence childhood grief war's aftermath

Jeremy

Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam's best-known single is a fragmented, first-person account of a neglected boy who becomes a spectacle of violence in…

childhood neglect violence and its aftermath isolation

Paris Is Burning

St. Vincent

A war-correspondent's letter home collides with a chant that watches a city burn while its people dance in the ashes. The song…

war and its aftermath seduction of false comfort collective denial

April Come She Will

Simon & Garfunkel

A miniature calendar poem that compresses an entire love affair into six months, each given a single verb of arrival, settling,…

transience of love nature as metaphor for emotion inevitability and cyclical time

Down Is Up, Up Is Down

The Delfonics

A jilted lover insists he's fine, but the song's central paradox — that up and down, blue and brown, have swapped places —…

denial and bravado emotional disorientation wounded pride

Taking It All Too Hard

Genesis

A mid-tempo Genesis album track that watches an ex-partner spiral into self-blame after a breakup, with a narrator who claims…

emotional distancing denial and self-blame breakup aftermath

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln's 1991 reading of the Depression-era standard strips the song back to its bare, bitter arithmetic: a man who built…

economic betrayal labor and disposability war and its aftermath

Crystalfilm

Little Dragon

Crystalfilm is a fragmented account of psychological unraveling after a relationship's end, where the speaker's grip on reality…

memory and its erosion loss of control dissociation

Everything In Its Right Place

Radiohead

An almost mantra-like opening track that trades verse-chorus songwriting for repetition and disorientation, using a handful of…

disorientation control versus chaos communication breakdown

Leave Me Alone

New Order

A closing-track meditation on isolation and exhaustion, built from fragmented, almost dissociated imagery rather than a clear…

isolation depersonalization communication failure

Things I Miss the Most

Steely Dan

A recently divorced narrator insists he's fine with solitude, then keeps undercutting himself by cataloguing everything lost —…

divorce and its aftermath denial versus admission materialism as emotional substitute

Hold Ya Head

The Notorious B.I.G.

This is Biggie's bleakest first-person confession, a suicidal monologue framed by a mournful sample of a mother grieving her…

suicidal ideation self-loathing street violence and its aftermath

Asking for Flowers

Kathleen Edwards

A woman tallies a decade-plus of unglamorous domestic labor and emotional endurance in a marriage that has quietly failed her,…

domestic labor and its invisibility marital exhaustion divorce/separation aftermath

100%

Sonic Youth

A tribute song built from fragments of grief, aggression, and dark humor, written in memory of a scene figure lost to violence.…

violent death and its aftermath rock scene mythology and idolization gender and predation within a music subculture

How Will I Ever Be Simple Again

Richard Thompson

A soldier or observer of war encounters a girl playing amid devastation, and her untouched joy becomes an unbearable rebuke to…

war and its psychological aftermath lost innocence the corruption of feeling by violence

Say Goodbye

Fleetwood Mac

A quiet ballad of delayed closure, in which the speaker finally answers an old parting with one of their own. It's less a…

belated closure resilience after loss the passage of time

Pictures of Bernadette

Talk Talk

A brief, searching lament in which the speaker circles the aftermath of a departure, unable to accept or fully articulate the…

loss and abandonment denial and disbelief memory as haunting

Should Have Known Better

Sufjan Stevens

A song about the aftermath of a mother's abandonment and death, staged as a private argument between numbness and the…

maternal abandonment and grief emotional repression childhood memory

Black

Pearl Jam

A song about the aftermath of a devastating breakup, built on the image of a world drained of color and identity once a lover is…

heartbreak and loss loss of identity grief's distortion of perception

What'll I Do

Harry Nilsson

This is Nilsson's reading of Irving Berlin's 1924 standard, delivered as part of his second collection of pre-rock pop songs.…

heartbreak loneliness memory and photographs

Early In the Morning

Harry Nilsson

A traditional-blues lament about the aftermath of a lovers' quarrel, delivered as a loose, almost improvisational vamp built…

heartbreak and regret isolation blues tradition

Me in 20 Years

Moses Sumney

A meditation on chronic loneliness addressed partly to a future self, the song sits inside the aftermath of a breakup and asks…

loneliness fear of permanence self-address across time

Motion Sickness

Phoebe Bridgers

A breakup song built on the whiplash of contradictory feelings toward an ex who wronged her, mixing bitterness, residual…

emotional ambivalence power imbalance in relationships toxic nostalgia

9 Crimes

Damien Rice

A duet between a man and woman (recorded here as a solo vocal) confessing an affair in the aftermath, framed as a confession of…

infidelity and guilt moral ambiguity desire versus loyalty

Riding for the Feeling

Bill Callahan

A meditation on leaving a performance and its aftermath, this song moves from the small social discomfort of saying goodbye to…

departure and farewell performance and audience self-justification vs. intuition

Where Do You Start

Shirley Horn

This is a torch song about the domestic aftermath of a breakup — not the dramatic rupture but the tedious, heartbreaking…

disentanglement after love grief as practical logistics memory and ownership

I'll Fight

Wilco

A stark chant-driven monologue in which a speaker pledges escalating sacrifice—going, fighting, killing, dying—for an unnamed…

sacrifice and its cost devotion versus self-erasure religious martyrdom

Black Dog

Led Zeppelin

A blues-boogie strut built almost entirely on riff and repetition, this song stages sexual pursuit and its exhausted aftermath…

desire and lust boasting and bravado romantic disillusionment

Closing Time

Fairport Convention

This is a bar-room parable about the last hour before closing, where drink, desire, and religious longing all blur into one…

desire and its exhaustion time running out sacred and profane collapsing together

The Tipping Point

Tears for Fears

A hushed meditation on grief and the threshold between holding on and letting go, written by Roland Orzabal in the aftermath of…

grief and mourning the limits of love in the face of death liminality/thresholds

Elemental

Tears for Fears

Elemental is a terse, riff-driven meditation on selling out and self-deception, written in the aftermath of Tears for Fears'…

disillusionment with fame/industry authenticity vs. performance spiritual doubt

Ms. Jackson

OutKast

An apology addressed to a hostile mother-in-law figure that keeps curdling into self-justification, "Ms. Jackson" turns the…

fractured families co-parenting and custody conflict accountability vs. resentment

Let Me Out

Gorillaz

A prayer-like protest song set against the anxious aftermath of the 2016 US election, in which a Black narrator addresses a…

racial violence and police brutality political despair faith and doubt