Laura Marling
This is a cover of Bob Dylan's 1963 apocalyptic ballad, structured as a call-and-response between a questioning parent and a…
apocalypse and prophecy witness and testimony social collapse
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash, in his final recording years, builds an apocalyptic vision almost entirely out of scripture, particularly…
judgment and reckoning mortality apocalypse
Bill Callahan
A closing statement for an album called Apocalypse, this song imagines departure as both a literal ride into open country and a…
mortality departure and retirement personal apocalypse
Patti Smith
An anthem built from a dream-vision, in which the speaker imagines armies disbanding and deserts turning to gardens, then hands…
collective political power utopian vision vs. reality dream as prophecy
The Rolling Stones
A song built from apocalyptic weather and violence, treating storm, fire, flood, war, and rape as a single continuous threat…
apocalypse and dread violence and its proximity the search for shelter/refuge
King Crimson
A doom-laden meditation on Cold War anxiety and the collapse of moral authority, delivered as a kind of secular apocalyptic…
nuclear anxiety loss of faith/prophecy fear of the future
Adele
A breakup anthem that transforms grief into a threat, built on gospel-inflected repetition and a rising, percussive arrangement.…
betrayal and revenge transformation of pain into power lost potential
R.E.M.
A torrent of disconnected images—natural disasters, media noise, Cold War figures, cultural detritus—gets fired off at…
information overload apocalyptic anxiety played as comedy media saturation