Results for “adolescent sexuality and shame”

Songs

5:15

The Who

A disoriented young man rides a commuter train while his mind fractures into fragments of memory, sexual anxiety, and social…

dissociation and identity collapse adolescent sexuality and shame class and Englishness

Sixteen Blue

The Replacements

A quiet, unglamorous portrait of teenage isolation, framed around confusion about sexuality and identity. Instead of anthemic…

adolescent alienation sexual confusion loneliness

Politician Man

Betty Davis

A raw funk vamp that turns the language of politics into an extended sexual come-on, with Davis playing a swaggering seductress…

sexual power and control satire of political rhetoric female sexual agency

La La Love You

Pixies

A deliberately dumb, bubblegum-pop pastiche sung by drummer David Lovering, this is Pixies parodying the sincerity of teenage…

parody of pop convention adolescent sexuality irony vs sincerity

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1

Neutral Milk Hotel

An opening track that fuses childhood memory with domestic violence and adolescent sexual awakening, all delivered in a run-on,…

childhood innocence and its loss domestic dysfunction sexual awakening

Casimir Pulaski Day

Sufjan Stevens

A young narrator recounts the slow death of a girl he loves from bone cancer, intercutting scenes of adolescent intimacy with…

mortality and illness adolescent love faith and doubt

Rockin' Daddy

Howlin’ Wolf

A boastful, sexually charged blues in which the singer claims mastery over both the physical act of "rocking" a partner and the…

sexual bravado transactional relationships masculine reputation

Candy Man

Mississippi John Hurt

A rollicking Piedmont blues built entirely on a single, transparent sexual double entendre. Mississippi John Hurt uses the…

sexual innuendo folk humor itinerant male desirability

In the Street

Big Star

A deceptively simple slice of teenage boredom set to a chiming, anthemic riff, this song turns the aimlessness of small-town…

teenage boredom small-town aimlessness friendship

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Vampire Weekend

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

It's a Sin

Pet Shop Boys

A confessional pop song built on the grinding logic of Catholic guilt, where every desire and action the narrator has ever had…

religious guilt internalized shame repression

Golden Gal

Animal Collective

A song built around a half-real, half-mediated female icon glimpsed through screens and reviews, with the narrator working out…

celebrity and mediated desire gender and sexuality fandom as devotion

Nasty Gal

Betty Davis

Betty Davis takes the insults an ex has thrown at her -- witch, alley cat, dirty dog -- and turns them into a badge of honor,…

sexual autonomy reclaiming slurs female desire vs. respectability

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

Hunger

Florence + the Machine

An opening confession about adolescent anorexia expands into a wider meditation on addiction, performance, and the human need to…

eating disorders and body control addiction and substitution performance versus intimacy

Chase the Tear

Portishead

A brief, incantatory piece built from fragmentary phrases rather than a clear narrative, tracking a speaker moving between…

shame and self-reckoning emotional withdrawal cyclical time / seasons as feeling

Ice Cream Man

Van Halen

A cover of John Brim's blues novelty tune, retooled by Van Halen as a live, stage-patter-heavy party anthem. The song trades on…

seduction as commerce summer as sexual awakening showmanship/performance

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

I Just Want To Make Love To You

Etta James

Etta James takes a Willie Dixon blues lyric written for a male singer and, sung from a woman's voice, turns a checklist of…

desire and domesticity gender role reversal possessiveness dressed as devotion

Got to Give It Up

Thin Lizzy

A confessional first-person account of addiction, framed as a series of messages sent to family members from someone who knows…

addiction and substance abuse shame and family self-destruction

I'm a King Bee

Muddy Waters

This is a blues standard built entirely on an insect conceit: the singer casts himself as a bee and his desired partner as a…

sexual boasting seduction male virility

That Place

Smokey Robinson

This is a late-career Smokey Robinson track built on a single conceit: a lover's body, or more precisely an intimate…

sexual exclusivity possessiveness as devotion intimacy as sanctuary

Start Me Up

The Rolling Stones

A relentless riff-driven come-on built almost entirely from a single mechanical metaphor: sex as an engine or vehicle that needs…

sexual desire machinery/car imagery as metaphor loss of control

The Real Me

The Who

An opening track that functions as a diagnostic scream: a young man cycles through the authority figures meant to know him —…

identity and authenticity institutional failure (medicine, family, religion) alienation

Girls

Beastie Boys

A cartoonishly juvenile chant dressed up as a party anthem, built on a nursery-rhyme hook and a rambling anecdote about a…

adolescent bravado misogyny as performance comic self-deprecation

Lola

The Kinks

A wide-eyed young narrator recounts a night at a Soho club where he meets a striking, ambiguous figure named Lola, and the song…

gender ambiguity sexual awakening urban nightlife

You Know I'm No Good

Amy Winehouse

A confessional soul number in which the narrator catalogues her own infidelities and self-sabotage inside a volatile…

infidelity self-sabotage guilt and shame

Loose

The Stooges

A two-minute blast of proto-punk swagger built almost entirely on a single boast repeated until it becomes incantation. The song…

sexual bravado loss of inhibition bodily sensation over meaning

Voodoo Chile Blues

Jimi Hendrix

This is the slow, extended blues incantation that Hendrix later compressed into 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return),' built around a…

self-mythology supernatural power cosmic/psychedelic imagery

Paul Revere

Beastie Boys

A cartoonish spaghetti-Western pastiche in which the three Beastie Boys members appear as characters in their own tall tale,…

mythmaking and self-invention outlaw fantasy adolescent bravado

Philadelphia

Neil Young

A spare, hymn-like address to fear and mortality, written for Jonathan Demme's film about a man dying of AIDS-related illness…

mortality stigma and shame need for belonging

Run Like Hell

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

Drop It Like It's Hot

Snoop Dogg

A minimalist club track built on a single triple-word command that gets reinterpreted verse to verse, moving between seduction,…

status and wealth display sexual conquest street/gang loyalty

Outside Woman Blues

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

No Particular Place to Go

Mos Def

A breezy account of a teenage joyride that stalls on an absurd, deflating detail: a jammed seatbelt that thwarts the narrator's…

adolescent desire freedom and mobility comic frustration

Pneumonia

Danny Brown

Pneumonia is a hard, boastful posse-cut-style track from Atrocity Exhibition that trades in rapid-fire flexing about money,…

excess and indulgence hustler bravado sexual conquest

Traveling Riverside Blues

Robert Johnson

A restless travelogue of the Mississippi Delta juke-joint circuit, this is Robert Johnson at his most physically direct — a…

itinerant desire sexual boasting bondage and debt

T.V. Eye

The Stooges

This is a song built almost entirely on repetition, groove, and physical grunt rather than narrative or wordplay. It circles a…

voyeurism and being watched sexual desire primal/animal imagery

Drop Dead Legs

Van Halen

A strutting party-rock throwaway built entirely around physical fixation, delivered with the band's trademark bravado and…

physical attraction sexual bravado hedonism