Results for “alienation from self and culture”

Songs

Boredom

Buzzcocks

An early punk anthem that turns tedium itself into the subject and the method, with a narrator who insists on his own flatness…

boredom and nihilism alienation from self and culture anti-ambition as rebellion

Angel

Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan addresses a fragile, self-sabotaging figure she calls an angel, coaxing her toward vulnerability and self-acceptance.…

emotional fragility self-acceptance codependency and healing

In the City

The Jam

A brisk punk-era manifesto that frames the city as both battleground and stage for youthful self-assertion. The narrator speaks…

generational conflict youthful defiance urban alienation

Didn't Cha Know

Erykah Badu

A meditation on getting lost, both literally and existentially, that refuses to resolve into a tidy moral. Badu treats…

self-doubt and self-trust fate versus choice spiritual wandering

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Nirvana

Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough single is a rock anthem built on refusing to say anything anthemic. Over a four-chord riff that…

adolescent apathy and boredom the demand to be entertained self-loathing and self-sabotage

Superheroes

Ethan Whitney

This is a straightforward pop declaration of devotion that borrows superhero mythology to dress up a fairly conventional promise…

devotion and support escapism fantasy of destiny

The Weekend

SZA

SZA narrates an affair with candor rather than shame, positioning herself as the intermittent, exciting alternative to a primary…

infidelity and complicity self-worth vs. self-sabotage possessiveness and jealousy

Space Oddity

David Bowie

A radio drama in miniature: a space agency counts an astronaut into orbit, celebrates him as a media sensation, then loses him.…

alienation celebrity and spectacle technological failure

Disorder

Joy Division

Disorder opens Unknown Pleasures with a portrait of dissociation, a speaker who registers the world's speed and violence but…

emotional numbness dissociation longing for normalcy

Little Johnny Jewel, Pts. 1 & 2

Television

This is Television's earliest single, a hypnotic character sketch built more on texture and repetition than narrative logic. The…

outsider mythology alienation the cost of vision

In Every Dream Home a Heartache

Roxy Music

A deadpan monologue delivered by a wealthy consumer who has replaced human intimacy with a mail-order inflatable doll, framed as…

consumerism alienation artificiality vs authenticity

21st Century Schizoid Man (Including "Mirrors")

King Crimson

This opening track sets a nightmarish, distorted portrait of modern civilization against a savage instrumental attack, using the…

dehumanization war and atrocity technological/medical horror

Fight the Power

Public Enemy

A protest anthem built as a dance record: Chuck D argues that political consciousness and Black pride are things you build in…

Black pride and self-definition institutional racism who gets to be a national hero

Tomorrow Is a Long Time

Sandy Denny

A cover of Dylan's early ballad, rendered here as a hushed meditation on longing and self-erasure in absence. Sandy Denny's…

longing and absence loss of self idealized love

Changes

David Bowie

A song about self-reinvention that treats identity as something perpetually in motion rather than a fixed achievement. Bowie…

self-reinvention generational conflict identity instability

Bizarre Love Triangle

New Order

A euphoric synth-pop track built on lyrics of paralysis and unspoken feeling: the narrator is caught between infatuation and…

romantic paralysis emotional confusion fear of vulnerability

Rock the Casbah

The Clash

The Clash build a mock-Orientalist fable in which a ruler bans music and the population -- eventually even his own military --…

censorship and authority cultural resistance satire of power

Once in a Lifetime

Talking Heads

A preacher-like voice addresses an unnamed "you," cataloguing the accidental furniture of a middle-class life and then asking…

mid-life disorientation the unearned life time as drift

Jim Cain

Bill Callahan

Bill Callahan opens his own name into someone else's -- the title alludes to the noir novelist James M. Cain -- and uses that…

self-transformation the writing process as detective work impermanence and mortality

Treat Her Like a Lady

The Temptations

A mid-80s Temptations single that pitches courtly-gentleman romance as a self-help pitch, with the narrator cataloguing small…

traditional courtship gender roles nostalgia for inherited values

Cousin Dupree

Steely Dan

A slick, self-satisfied loser moves onto his aunt's couch and develops a leering fixation on his younger cousin, pitching his…

arrested development delusional self-regard taboo desire treated as comedy

Hymn 43

Jethro Tull

This is a sardonic protest against the commercial and violent hijacking of Christian imagery in American culture, pairing…

religious hypocrisy American mythology and violence commercialization of faith

Place to Be

Nick Drake

A brief autobiographical arc compressed into a handful of couplets, tracing a movement from innocence through disillusionment to…

loss of innocence depression and fatigue dependency on another

409

The Beach Boys

"409" is an early Beach Boys car song that treats a Chevrolet muscle car like a lover and a racehorse at once, celebrating…

car culture youthful aspiration/consumerism masculinity and status

Yesterday

Donny Hathaway

This is a live soul reinterpretation of the Beatles standard, in which Donny Hathaway strips the song of its chamber-pop…

loss and regret nostalgia as refuge romantic bewilderment

Damaged Goods

Gang of Four

Gang of Four fuse a breakup song with the language of consumer transaction, treating a relationship as a defective purchase to…

commodification of relationships desire versus love alienation under capitalism

Lola

The Kinks

A naive young man recounts his disorienting, thrilling encounter with Lola, a nightclub companion whose gender identity…

gender fluidity and identity sexual awakening innocence versus experience

Rock & Roll

The Velvet Underground

A simple origin myth for a solitary listener, Jenny, whose bored suburban childhood is transformed the moment she finds a radio…

salvation through music suburban alienation adolescence

Blindness

The Fall

This is a plainspoken country-flavored heartbreak lament built around a single proverb-like refrain about foolishness and…

self-deception romantic betrayal folk wisdom/proverb

Feeling Good (From "the Roar of the Greasepaint")

Nina Simone

A catalogue of natural images -- birds, rivers, blossoms, stars -- builds into a declaration of personal liberation and renewal.…

renewal freedom self-possession

Thunder Road

Bruce Springsteen

A young man stands in a driveway trying to talk a woman named Mary into getting in his car and leaving town with him. Over five…

escape and flight the limits of romantic promise small-town decay

Cranes in the Sky

Solange

Solange catalogs a long list of failed coping mechanisms for an unnamed sorrow, building an inventory of avoidance that…

avoidance and denial depression/emotional exhaustion consumerism as false comfort

It's Good to Be King

Tom Petty

Tom Petty builds a wistful daydream around the fantasy of kingship, using royal imagery as a stand-in for escape from ordinary…

escapism fantasy vs. reality longing for control

Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan

A six-minute address to a woman who has fallen out of privilege into destitution, delivered by a narrator who alternates between…

loss of status the fraudulence of privilege freedom through destitution

Long Way Home

Tom Waits

A wandering man confesses to a lover that he's constitutionally unable to take the straight path home, in love or in life. Waits…

restlessness and wanderlust romantic unreliability the tension between domesticity and freedom

Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy's suite-like tribute to Irish identity, stitching together folk balladry, mythic invocation, and a rapid-fire…

Irish cultural inheritance myth and storytelling exile and longing for home

I Don't Want to Know

Fleetwood Mac

A breakup song built on willful avoidance: the narrator repeatedly insists they don't want an explanation for why the…

denial as self-protection romantic dissolution emotional exhaustion

Beast Of Burden

The Rolling Stones

A weary plea for tenderness dressed up as a refusal to keep serving as someone's workhorse. The narrator insists he's given…

exhaustion in relationships emotional labor vs desire masculinity and self-worth

Blues Run the Game

Laura Marling

This is a cover of a mid-1960s folk standard, sung here in Laura Marling's plainspoken, weary register, about the impossibility…

itinerancy and escape addiction as self-medication romantic longing and loss

Karma Police

Radiohead

A petulant office-worker fantasy in which the speaker summons an imaginary cosmic police force to arrest people who irritate him…

petty vindictiveness bureaucratic and corporate servitude dehumanisation