Results for “The Clean”

Artists

The Clean The Clean was a New Zealand indie rock band formed in Dunedin in 1978. They have been…

Songs

Do It Clean

Echo & the Bunnymen

A post-punk chant built on almost no semantic content, this song works by repetition and rhythmic insistence rather than…

repetition and ritual evasive bravado identity through motion rather than meaning

Stars

The Clean

A hazy, hypnotic meditation on stasis and repetition, built from almost nothing lyrically but a handful of phrases circling…

repetition and drift solitude time as texture rather than narrative

So Fresh, So Clean

OutKast

A hook-driven strut through vintage cars, retro cool, and pickup lines, where the chorus's braggadocio functions less as…

vanity and self-presentation seduction and courtship rituals nostalgia for Black pop-culture iconography

Dance Yrself Clean

LCD Soundsystem

An eight-minute slow-burn opener that begins as a bruised account of social exclusion at some gathering and gradually detonates…

social exclusion and cliques the failure of language catharsis through dance

Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely

Hüsker Dü

A breakup song built on a contradiction: the narrator claims he wants distance from an ex-partner but keeps monitoring her…

ambivalence after a breakup emotional self-protection denial

Wild Horses

The Rolling Stones

A ballad of exhausted devotion, where a narrator caught between wanting to leave and being unable to admits that love has…

ambivalent love emotional exhaustion freedom versus attachment

Starburster

Fontaines D.C.

Starburster runs on the syntax of a panic attack: gasped, run-on desire that never resolves into a clean feeling. It stacks a…

anxiety and panic desire versus revulsion self-destruction

Now And Then

The Beatles

A simple, unguarded love plea built from a demo John Lennon left behind, completed decades later by his surviving bandmates. The…

longing mortality and memory reunion

Ramblin' On My Mind

Robert Johnson

A traveling blues about the compulsion to leave a lover who has wounded the singer, and the ache that compulsion produces even…

compulsive wandering romantic betrayal ambivalence between love and self-preservation

I Hate U

SZA

SZA lays out a relationship curdled by resentment and dependency, where love and hatred are barely distinguishable and both…

toxic codependency ambivalence between love and hate sleeplessness and rumination

Holiday

Vampire Weekend

A breezy, upbeat melody carries a queasy set of images about escapism during wartime, contrasting the desire to tune out with…

escapism vs. political reality consumerism and war imagery anxiety and avoidance

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

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl

Broken Social Scene

A brief, mantra-like lament for someone who has traded rebellious authenticity for polish and distance, sung by a narrator who…

nostalgia for authenticity loss of innocence desire and longing

Treatment Bound

The Replacements

A shambling tour-van confessional in which The Replacements narrate their own dysfunction with wry resignation, treating…

self-sabotage touring exhaustion anti-professionalism

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Nirvana

A grunge anthem built almost entirely out of non-sequiturs and slogans, the song channels teenage apathy and irony rather than…

apathy and irony alienation consumerism and spectacle

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

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Kacey Musgraves

This is a cover of the 1953 novelty Christmas standard, performed straight rather than reinvented, letting a child's absurd,…

childhood wish-fulfillment comic absurdity holiday tradition

The Phoenix

Judee Sill

A short, dense allegory in which cosmic and mythological imagery (a phoenix, dragons, an implied battle with the Devil) stands…

spiritual struggle self-doubt and sincerity transformation and rebirth

Queen Bitch

David Bowie

A voyeuristic narrator watches a street-corner seduction unfold from a hotel window, alternately mocking and envying the…

voyeurism and surveillance queer desire and rivalry gender performance and camp