Eric B.
Rakim narrates a first-person tour through the Gulf War, moving from a soldier's disciplined combat rhetoric to disorientation…
war and disillusionment PTSD and paranoia religious and racial contradiction
Thom Yorke
A minimal, unsettled address to someone (or to a fractured part of oneself) urging escape from a cycle of paranoia,…
self-deception paranoia emotional avoidance
Nirvana
A hazy invitation dissolves into contradiction as soon as it's offered: the singer welcomes you exactly as you are, then…
contradiction and self-cancellation false reassurance identity as unstable
Creedence Clearwater Revival
A blues-rock talisman song in which the narrator feels dogged by an ominous, unshakeable premonition of death even as good…
superstition and fate paranoia fear of death
Television
"Careful" stages a nervy standoff between protest and confession: a narrator insists he doesn't care about anything while the…
denial and self-deception paranoia emotional withdrawal
Magazine
A song about ideological homelessness, built around a narrator who has infiltrated a crowd or movement only to find himself…
ideological disillusionment alienation from crowds and movements cynicism about political certainty
Massive Attack
An almost-instrumental interlude built from a single repeated proverb about the unknowability of other people. The track…
opacity of others distrust and self-protection the gap between appearance and interior life
Talking Heads
"Swamp" plays like a fever-dream noir, David Byrne narrating a shadowy transaction with the devil and a cast of menacing,…
paranoia moral corruption identity dissolution
Pixies
A minimal, chant-driven fragment built almost entirely from four repeated phrases, this song trades narrative for atmosphere --…
paranoia violence betrayal
A jittery, funk-driven interrogation of what it means to trust information at all, framed through a narrator who feels…
epistemological doubt information overload identity dissolution
A frantic, barely two-minute sketch of a roommate whose grip on reality is slipping, delivered with the manic energy and…
mental illness paranoia housing instability
The Notorious B.I.G.
A victory-lap posse cut that doubles as a meditation on the isolation success brings. Over a buoyant, sample-driven groove,…
success and isolation envy and betrayal paranoia/surveillance
Radiohead
A three-part suite that moves from claustrophobic paranoia to vindictive fantasy to a kind of exhausted, apocalyptic prayer.…
technological/social overload status anxiety and greed alienation and paranoia
Frank Ocean
"Chanel" is a loose, associative track built around the Chanel logo's interlocking C's as a metaphor for bisexuality and duality…
bisexuality and duality surveillance and paranoia wealth as armor
Nas
This is Nas mapping the mythology of the drug trade from the inside, tracking a narrator's rise through dealing, the trappings…
the drug economy as a distorted American dream inevitability and fatalism in ghetto life materialism as compensation for scarcity
Aesop Rock
Aesop Rock builds a dense allegory around farm-animal escape and surveillance-state paranoia, using the imagery of Animal Farm…
surveillance and control anxiety and hypervigilance complicity versus escape
Ice Cube
Ice Cube stitches together a barrage of boasts, sci-fi imagery, and political fury into a chant demanding Donald Trump's removal…
political corruption distrust of institutions black survival and defiance
Echo & the Bunnymen
A dense, incantatory piece of post-punk imagery in which the speaker pleads for mercy from some undefined judging or cutting…
self-doubt judgment and punishment survival
The Fall
A Mark E. Smith sound-poem built almost entirely around one phrase, worked through its multiple possible meanings — a drug, a…
ambiguity of language youthful drift surveillance/paranoia
A hushed, paranoid elegy widely understood to be about the death of UK weapons inspector David Kelly, sung partly in the voice…
state power and expendability conspiracy and doubt surveillance/paranoia
Michael Jackson
A first-person account of a man accused of fathering a child by a woman he insists was never his lover, told as a paranoid,…
paranoia and fame denial and guilt seduction and manipulation
Spoon
A driving garage-rock riff underpins a song about leaving under duress and the psychic toll of resisting outside pressure to…
escape and departure conformity vs. independence paranoia and surveillance
A dense, image-flooded piece from a concept album about visions and threshold spaces, in which the speaker positions himself at…
liminality and thresholds exhaustion/burnout distrust of moral binaries
Mercury Rev
"Holes" is a hazy, impressionistic meditation on loss and the failure of memory to hold together, built almost entirely from…
memory and forgetting grief disorientation
Pavement
A loose, half-improvised sketch from Pavement's most polished album, built around family lineage, corrupt authority, and a wry…
inherited guilt paranoia and surveillance authority and corruption
Danny Brown
Danny Brown turns his own addiction into dark comedy, stacking dense, cartoonish wordplay over a queasy hook that keeps asking…
addiction and dependency irony and dark humor wealth versus self-destruction
A funk-driven complaint about gossip and betrayal, built almost entirely from repetition and chant rather than narrative detail.…
gossip and rumor paranoia and persecution betrayal
Black Sabbath
This closing track from Paranoid pairs a lurching instrumental jam with a half-comic, half-paranoid account of drug-induced…
drug paranoia unreliable perception self-deception
Animal Collective
A collage of surreal pastoral images and chanted refrains that circles around resistance to withdrawal—refusing to 'go…
entrapment vs. freedom embracing imperfection nature as omen
Pink Floyd
A pounding, paranoid rocker from the second half of The Wall, built almost entirely on a chanted command to flee. It stages the…
paranoia and surveillance fascism and mob violence guilt and self-disgust
Cream
This is Cream's electrified cover of a pre-war country blues (originally by Blind Joe Reynolds), turned into a slow-burning…
sexual jealousy infidelity folk wisdom/proverb
Jamie xx
KILL DEM is less a song with a plot than a piece of dancehall-derived sound sculpture, built from a stuttering patois vocal…
violence as ritual/rhythm paranoia and evasion dancehall/soundsystem lineage
Gang Starr
Gang Starr's title track is a meditation on accountability and betrayal dressed as street philosophy, moving from meditative…
betrayal and loyalty accountability/karma paranoia at success
Interpol
Interpol pairs one of their most euphoric, propulsive arrangements with a lyric that keeps circling wounds, surveillance, and…
obsessive love surveillance and paranoia self-destruction
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
MF DOOM
A boozy, freewheeling posse-cut of a track built on the pun of "one beer" doubling as "one beer left" and a coded jab at fake…
intoxication as metaphor for scarcity/competition hip-hop authenticity vs. imitation supervillain persona
Todd Rundgren
A blunt satirical broadside against Donald Trump's rise to the presidency, built as a mock-triumphant chorus song that skewers…
political satire authoritarianism media spectacle and disinformation
The Kinks
The Kinks revive Lola from their earlier hit only to trap her in a nervous, self-lacerating anthem about anxiety and…
paranoia and mental illness self-sabotage fame and surveillance anxiety
A cold dissection of a relationship built on mutual anxiety rather than affection, where love and fear are treated as…
fear as currency in relationships codependency and power imbalance paranoia and media culture
The War on Drugs
A hazy meditation on emerging from isolation and self-doubt into something resembling love or clarity, built on Granduciel's…
emerging from depression tentative love self-doubt and paranoia