Soundgarden
A slow, doom-laden dirge built from apocalyptic imagery of fire, drowning, and burial, using the 4th of July as a double image…
apocalypse and rebirth drug overdose/near-death imagery isolation
Kate Bush
This short closing piece functions as an emergence from crisis into ordinary gratitude. After the storm and drowning imagery of…
rebirth gratitude family bonds
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
Big Star
A Christmas carol built from borrowed and paraphrased hymn imagery, recorded by a band whose songwriter was in visible crisis at…
rebirth and renewal faith versus despair tradition and inheritance
Van Morrison
Van Morrison's title track drifts through a hazy, half-remembered landscape in search of rebirth and connection, using dreamlike…
rebirth and renewal spiritual longing displacement
Judee Sill
A short, dense allegory in which cosmic and mythological imagery (a phoenix, dragons, an implied battle with the Devil) stands…
spiritual struggle self-doubt and sincerity transformation and rebirth
The Shins
A survivalist's bunker monologue set to an oddly buoyant melody, this song imagines nuclear or environmental apocalypse as a…
apocalypse and isolation denial and coping through routine loss of a loved one
Black Sabbath
A doom-laden vision of nuclear apocalypse rendered as a kind of blackened hymn, cataloguing the literal physical destruction of…
nuclear annihilation dehumanization/mechanization environmental collapse
Phoebe Bridgers
A road-trip through American landscapes and personal apocalypse, where the singer's private exhaustion with a relationship and a…
apocalypse (personal and national) homesickness and rootlessness burnout and exhaustion in relationships
Steely Dan
A supermarket-style PA announcement becomes the herald of an apocalypse, as Steely Dan stages consumer culture's final…
consumerism as religion apocalypse/end times American decline
Ann Peebles
A gratitude-soaked soul ballad in which the narrator credits a lover with rescuing her from despair and teaching her what love…
redemption through love gratitude rebirth/renewal
Depeche Mode
A song that opens Songs of Faith and Devotion with a burst of religious ecstasy repurposed as erotic and romantic devotion. It…
sacred/profane fusion erotic transcendence conversion and rebirth
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
Pixies
A hallucinatory apocalyptic chant built from disconnected images and a mysterious title figure, 'Mr. Grieves' plays like a…
apocalypse/deluge faith and belief without content death and mortality
Nina Simone
This is a short, incantatory hymn of hope written by Nina Simone (music by her, lyrics credited to Simone and Gene Taylor) that…
utopian hope collective liberation religious apocalypse
Cat Stevens
A hymn of thanksgiving that treats an ordinary sunrise as if it were the first morning of creation. Cat Stevens' recording turns…
gratitude renewal and rebirth nature as sacred
James Blake
A stripped-down love song that uses apocalyptic imagery as a backdrop for devotion, insisting that romantic commitment outlasts…
devotion under catastrophe mortality and time faith in another person
Patti Smith
This is a cover of the Rolling Stones' 1969 apocalyptic ballad, and Patti Smith treats it less as a rock anthem than as an…
apocalypse and dread the fragility of shelter violence versus tenderness
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
This is Black Sabbath's opening statement with a new singer, and it plays like a mission statement disguised as…
heroic fantasy renewal/rebirth good versus evil
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A folk-tinged incantation built around a mythic animal-guide figure, the song trades narrative clarity for mood and repetition,…
loss of control seeking guidance/protection transformation and rebirth
Grandaddy
A short, incantatory song about self-renewal that treats change as a kind of switch that, once flipped, can't be reversed.…
renewal and rebirth escape from stagnation transformation as irreversible
Bob Dylan
Dylan turns a real Mississippi highway into a corridor where biblical myth, seedy commerce, and apocalyptic farce all converge.…
American mythology and violence commodification and exploitation absurdist apocalypse
Free
A short, incantatory song built around images of ascension and release, using afterlife and angelic imagery to describe a…
transcendence death and rebirth freedom from bondage
Sade
A stark, slow-burning meditation on grief and survival, written in the voice of someone descending into loss while insisting on…
grief survival descent and rebirth
Japanese Breakfast
A song written in the voice of a wealthy, self-justifying man who frames his hoarding and moral compromises as acts of devotion.…
late capitalism and wealth hoarding toxic masculinity and possessiveness climate apocalypse
A catalog of natural images—birds, rivers, blossoms, stars—builds toward a declaration of liberation and renewal. Simone's…
liberation and freedom renewal rebirth through nature
Neutral Milk Hotel
This two-part suite opens with a plainspoken, almost liturgical declaration of love to Jesus Christ before erupting into a…
religious devotion and doubt birth and rebirth language and inarticulacy
Talk Talk
"Eden" opens Spirit of Eden with a fragmentary, hymn-like meditation on loss and belief, using biblical imagery of Eden and…
loss of innocence religious doubt and faith death and rebirth
Beck
A hypnotic, blues-inflected chant built around a single image—a lightning strike—that expands from a personal vision into a…
apocalypse/environmental collapse revelation and being struck down spiritual surrender
Joan Baez
A surreal farewell built from disconnected, dreamlike images that escalate toward apocalypse, with a refrain that keeps…
departure and urgency apocalyptic imagery refusal of blame
Deerhunter
A brief, jangly pop song that fuses the language of romantic infatuation with imagery of illness, possession, and death, so that…
obsessive love possession and illness death and reincarnation
A frantic, horn-driven elegy that fuses the story of Anne Frank with a surreal, almost hallucinatory imagery of reincarnation…
death and afterlife war and atrocity obsessive love/grief
Echo & the Bunnymen
This is a song about spiritual searching that keeps tripping over its own irony, using the language of religious conversion and…
religious doubt disorientation hypocrisy and false authority
Led Zeppelin
A reworking of a 1929 Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy blues about the Mississippi flood of 1927, turned by Led Zeppelin into…
natural disaster and displacement migration and homelessness resignation and fatalism
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