Results for “anger as motion”

Songs

Motion Sickness

Phoebe Bridgers

A breakup song built on the whiplash of contradictory feelings toward an ex who wronged her, mixing bitterness, residual…

emotional ambivalence power imbalance in relationships toxic nostalgia

Season of the Witch (From the Motion Picture "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark")

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

Pacifics (From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack “N.Y. Is Red Hot")

Digable Planets

Digable Planets turn a Sunday in New York into an extended meditation on rest, community, and creative replenishment, moving…

urban leisure and rest Black cultural inheritance (jazz, literature, hip-hop lineage) community and belonging

Joy

Lucinda Williams

A blues-rock breakup song that treats emotional loss as a stolen, physical object that can theoretically be tracked down and…

loss and reclamation anger as motion the breakup as theft

Pony Blues

Son House

A loose, half-spoken reworking of a traditional blues frame in which a horse becomes a vehicle for restlessness, desire, and…

restlessness and wandering the search for a lover freedom through motion

Jettin'

Digable Planets

A loose, groove-driven travelogue through Brooklyn, built more on atmosphere and rhythm than narrative, where the trio's verses…

place and belonging Brooklyn/borough pride Black cultural memory

Going Mobile

The Who

A buoyant, almost novelty-song ode to caravan life, in which freedom is defined entirely by motion and lack of fixed address.…

freedom through motion rejection of domesticity escapism

Ray of Light

Madonna

A cosmic dance track that fuses spiritual searching with astronomical imagery, using the image of light and celestial motion to…

spiritual awakening cosmic scale vs. personal feeling impermanence

Biking

Frank Ocean

A loose, associative meditation on wealth, motion, and self-reliance disguised as a track about riding bikes through Los…

self-sufficiency wealth and its emptiness motion as escape

Bees

Caribou

"Bees" is an instrumental piece from Dan Snaith's early Caribou period, built from layered percussion, warped samples, and…

natural imagery repetition and accumulation psychedelia

Freeway of Love

Aretha Franklin

A joyous, motorized courtship song built around a single sustained conceit: romance as a drive on an open highway. Aretha…

romance as motion/escape freedom and self-determination playful flirtation

The Big Ship

Brian Eno

"The Big Ship" is a short instrumental piece built almost entirely on a single sustained chord progression and a rising…

arrival and scale stillness within motion the sublime treated as ambient event

Red Eyes

The War on Drugs

Red Eyes is a rush of ecstatic, half-legible sentiment stitched to a driving, anthemic rock arrangement, where the lyric's…

devotion under strain spiritual/emotional darkness self-doubt

Mad

Solange

"Mad" is a meditation on the exhaustion of having to justify one's own anger, built around a call-and-response between a…

the right to anger versus the demand for composure respectability and emotional policing of Black people survival and trauma disguised as success

Thin Line Between Love and Hate

Annie Lennox

A domestic warning delivered as slow-burning soul: a woman absorbs quiet humiliation night after night until patience curdles…

repressed anger domestic betrayal the limits of patience

Autobahn

Kraftwerk

A minimal, almost documentary description of driving on the German highway becomes the pretext for a 22-minute electronic tone…

motion and travel modernity and technology landscape observed from a car

Gettin' By, High and Strange

Kris Kristofferson

A restless travelogue of a song in which the narrator treats geography as therapy, moving from city to city to outrun whatever…

restlessness and evasion self-medication rootlessness as identity

I Would Hurt a Fly

Built to Spill

A song built around an irritation so small it borders on absurd — an inaudible, nagging sound only the speaker can perceive —…

suppressed anger perception and isolation paranoia or hypersensitivity

Motor Away

Guided by Voices

This is a compact escape anthem built almost entirely around one image: driving away from a life that no longer fits. Guided by…

escape and departure conformity versus self-definition regret and reckoning

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

The Smiths

A restless plea to be driven anywhere but home turns into a swooning fantasy about dying alongside the person behind the wheel.…

homelessness and unbelonging romantic devotion as self-annihilation loneliness disguised as humor

Cirrus

Bonobo

Cirrus is an instrumental centerpiece from The North Borders built around a looping plucked-string riff, filtered arpeggios, and…

altitude and distance organic/electronic hybridity cyclical motion

White Freight Liner Blues

Townes Van Zandt

A restless travel song built on blues repetition, where the highway and its trucks become both an escape route and a kind of…

restlessness and flight addiction/escape as motion transience and homelessness

Terra Nova

James Taylor

A restless meditation on procrastinated homecoming, built around the image of a ship (the Terra Nova) as both literal and…

longing for home inertia versus motion family obligation

Caravan

Rush

This is Rush's return single after a long studio absence, framing a young protagonist's journey toward the city as both a…

ambition versus smallness escape from the past movement and forward motion

Luv N' Haight

Sly & Robbie

This is a hypnotic, largely wordless groove piece built around a single tension: the desire to stay still versus the pull to…

stillness vs motion bodily pleasure self-containment

Save Yourself

Sharon Van Etten

A quietly seething breakup song in which the narrator sees through a partner's self-serving reassurances and names the pattern…

emotional self-protection disillusionment in love fading intimacy

That Lonesome Road

James Taylor

A spare, almost proverbial song about walking away from a failed relationship or a bad chapter of life, addressed as much to the…

self-recrimination forward motion as survival regret

Run

Air

A whispered plea to a lover not to leave the bed, built almost entirely from a handful of murmured phrases that circle and…

clinging to intimacy fear of separation stillness versus motion

No Room In Frame

Death Cab for Cutie

A breakup song built around the image of a photograph's frame—one person edged out as the other steps into visibility and…

dissolution of a relationship fame/visibility eclipsing intimacy memory and forgetting

Insanity

Gregory Porter

A plea for reconciliation built around a simple, repeated question: how did two people who loved each other let things unravel…

reconciliation the thin line between love and anger friendship as the durable core of romance

Higher Ground

Stevie Wonder

A funk sermon built on a clavinet riff, the song frames spiritual urgency as physical momentum: the narrator treats a second…

reincarnation and second chances social corruption vs. individual awakening urgency of moral time

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

Back Up Train

Al Green

A young man begs a train conductor to reverse course so he can return to a lover he left too hastily. Al Green, still developing…

regret and reversal longing isolation

Ramble On

Led Zeppelin

A wandering-troubadour song that fuses restless road-life imagery with an unexpected detour into Tolkien fantasy, using the…

restlessness and wanderlust romantic quest fantasy/myth as metaphor

Lost Cause

Beck

A quiet, weary breakup song in which the narrator addresses a partner who is emotionally unreachable, cataloguing small signs of…

romantic exhaustion emotional withdrawal resignation

On Melancholy Hill

Gorillaz

A hushed, drifting love song built from a handful of dreamlike images rather than a plot. The narrator offers companionship as a…

longing and consolation escapism isolation within intimacy

Can't Stop Running

Todd Rundgren

A meditation on ambition and mortality framed as a lifelong sprint, tracing a single motion from infancy to old age. Rundgren…

ambition and drive fear of failure mortality and aging

There He Goes

Patsy Cline

A brief, plainspoken country ballad in which a woman watches the man she wronged walk off with someone else. There's no anger…

regret and self-blame lost love infidelity's consequences

You Belong To Me

Chaka Khan

A meditation on jealousy and reassurance, sung by a partner who has just been told about some flirtation or attention from an…

jealousy possessiveness self-assurance

justified

Kacey Musgraves

A mid-tempo track from star-crossed that treats emotional recovery as nonlinear and messy rather than triumphant. The narrator…

nonlinear healing emotional contradiction self-permission