Röyksopp
A hazy, dreamlike track that stages a search for revelation inside what feels like an altered or trance-like state, where…
altered states / intoxication longing for transcendence isolation and communion
Public Enemy
This is a blunt protest track released ahead of the 2020 U.S. election, aimed squarely at Donald Trump and framed as an urgent…
authoritarianism electoral urgency racial oppression
Nas
A dense, almost stream-of-consciousness portrait of Queensbridge street life, delivered with a density of imagery more…
urban survival mortality and insomnia criminal economy
The Doors
A short, propulsive rock song built almost entirely around a single command repeated until it becomes a mantra. It uses images…
transcendence limits of perception desire and entrapment
The Cure
This is The Cure's cover of Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic classic, recorded as a B-side. Robert Smith takes a song built on…
disorientation altered perception romantic infatuation as intoxication
Mercury Rev
A hazy, druggy fable about pursuit and containment, where sunlit imagery of seduction and pleasure keeps curdling into images of…
intoxication and altered perception freedom versus entrapment instability of the self
Goldfrapp
A hypnotic, minimal-lyric track built almost entirely on desire and impatience, where sexual and mystical/transcendent longing…
desire and impatience transformation through another the sacred and the carnal merged
Morcheeba
Trigger Hippie is a downtempo trip-hop track built around a deliberately fuzzy paradox — pacifist idealism ('hippie') fused with…
counterculture and its contradictions pacifism versus violence altered states/dissociation
Mott the Hoople
A woozy, half-hallucinated love song addressed to a woman who dissolves into imagery as the singer describes her, until it…
obsessive love dissolution of identity intoxication/altered perception
Orbital
Halcyon and On and On is an instrumental electronic piece built almost entirely from a small set of looping synth phrases and a…
repetition and cyclicality altered states / drug culture euphoria and calm
The Flaming Lips
A hazy, ritualistic song about a woman navigating fear and secrecy through altered states and mystical imagery. The Flaming Lips…
altered consciousness fear and avoidance ritual and mysticism
Superchunk
A hazy, fragmented recollection of a drunken night that may or may not have involved romance, tallied up through physical…
memory and forgetting intoxication erased identity
Tyler Childers
A hazy, sensory account of a night of intoxicated intimacy that keeps circling back to a plea for reassurance and permanence.…
desire and intoxication vulnerability beneath bravado longing for stability
Genesis
A slight, hazy pop song from Genesis's most commercial period, built on a chorus of impossible images and a coy premise about a…
romantic idealization altered perception the impossible/surreal
Jamie xx
This is a dance track built almost entirely from two chants, one about intoxicating love and one about repetition, that function…
ecstasy and repetition collective euphoria love as intoxication
Digable Planets
Digable Planets narrate a friend's unplanned pregnancy and impending abortion as a small, intimate scene that opens onto a much…
reproductive rights bodily autonomy class and access to healthcare
Cassandra Wilson
This is Cassandra Wilson's 2015 reading of the 1938 Coots/Gillespie standard, delivered as part of a tribute to Billie Holiday.…
intoxication as metaphor for desire self-awareness versus helplessness obsession
Wire
A clipped, paranoid vignette that fuses interrogation-room menace with pulp sci-fi imagery, built from disjointed phrases rather…
interrogation and coercion surveillance/security state paranoia
Brian Eno
An instrumental piano-and-synthesizer piece from Eno and Harold Budd's ambient collaboration, built around slow, spaced piano…
dawn/threshold states stillness gradual emergence
Massive Attack
A slow, dread-laden meditation built around the language of extraordinary rendition and secret flight logistics, fused with…
state violence and rendition complicity and coercion bodily sacrifice
Arca
Thievery is an instrumental piece from Arca's Xen expanded edition, part of a body of work built around a shape-shifting…
identity and alter-ego bodily transformation violation and extraction
Caroline Polachek
A hypnotic mantra built around an untraceable character called Bunny, who functions as an alter ego for elusiveness itself. The…
elusiveness and self-protection commodification of intimacy alter-ego/persona play
Television
A restless, riddling song built from fragmentary images of heat, motion and spinning objects, addressed to a companion who never…
evasion and unanswered questions restlessness and burnout attraction to chaos
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
Tyler, The Creator
A dense, deliberately abrasive verbal assault built on non sequitur, shock imagery, and sudden lurches into confession. Beneath…
alter-ego and fractured identity provocation as defense mechanism absent father
Anderson .Paak
A brash, funk-driven strut through fame's early rush, where getting high (on success, on a woman, on substances) becomes a…
intoxication and ambition fame's disorientation desire and possessiveness
Nirvana
Nirvana's debut single is actually a cover of a Dutch band Shocking Blue's psychedelic pop song, retooled into a droning,…
intoxication of desire miscommunication in love repetition as feeling
This is a cover of the Beatles psychedelic classic, and the Flaming Lips' version leans into the song's dreamlike dissolve…
altered perception longing for an unreachable figure dream logic
Animal Collective
A woozy meditation on connection and the strangeness of being alive, delivered with the giddy, slightly overwhelmed voice of…
interconnectedness altered perception wonder and overwhelm
Japanese Breakfast
A stark, minimalist opener to Jubilee, this song strips away the album's usual maximalism to sit with a single image: a speaker…
longing and neglect self-objectification as control isolation within intimacy
Lana Del Rey
This is Lana Del Rey's cover of Donovan's 1966 psychedelic classic, recorded for the horror anthology film it lends its title…
paranoia surveillance and being watched cultural anxiety
Underworld
A stream-of-consciousness plunge through a night of drinking and drug-taking on the London Underground, told in fragmented,…
intoxication and dissociation urban nightlife loss of self
A downtown-New York nocturne about a night walk that tips into a heightened, almost hallucinatory perception of the city,…
urban nightlife altered perception desire and detachment
A woozy, repetitive lament built on a single glacial image, this early Mercury Rev track circles a corrosive relationship…
erosion of self codependency escapism through intoxication
Queen
A groove-driven, riff-heavy jam built more on sensation than sense, "Dragon Attack" trades narrative for pure sonic and sexual…
sexual conquest altered perception surrender to instinct
The Chemical Brothers
An instrumental-led score piece built around a largely spoken/sung verse that imagines consciousness dissolving into water,…
loss of control altered consciousness transformation/adaptation
A loose, blues-inflected fragment that circles a single question—what happened to you before I met you—without ever answering…
damage and its origins seduction as consolation escape through intoxication
Bill Callahan
A quiet domestic love song disguised as an account of piloting a small plane together. The flight becomes a working metaphor for…
domestic trust shared control in partnership contentment
Wilco
A jaunty, hooky pop song built on Wilco's Summerteeth-era trick of pairing sunny arrangements with anxious, fractured lyrics.…
compulsive romantic attachment anxiety masked by upbeat presentation disorientation and exhaustion
Madvillain
A pure showcase of technical rap virtuosity built almost entirely on internal rhyme chains and boastful non-sequiturs, "All…
braggadocio persona/mythmaking criminal alter-ego