Results for “art as transcendence”

Songs

Art School

The Jam

A blast of punk-era sloganeering that treats the art school as a metaphor for total creative and social permission. The Jam…

youthful self-assertion anti-authoritarianism media distrust

My Little Town (with Art Garfunkel)

Paul Simon

A bitter recollection of a suffocating hometown, stripped of color and possibility, sung as a reunion piece by Simon and…

small-town claustrophobia loss of faith inherited identity

The Song Is Over

The Who

A meditation on the end of a love affair that doubles as a meditation on the end of a piece of music itself, where the singer's…

loss and acceptance art as transcendence dissolution of self

There's a Rugged Road

Judee Sill

Judee Sill turns the American frontier myth—the lone pioneer on the prairie—into an allegory for spiritual pilgrimage. The…

spiritual seeking solitude and isolation temptation and asceticism

Seven Angels

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

Bird Alone

Abbey Lincoln

A meditation on solitude framed as a bird's flight across a troubled sky, the song uses the image of an unaccompanied bird to…

solitude freedom mourning and resilience

Starship Trooper

Yes

Starship Trooper is a three-part suite that moves from an invocation of natural, cosmic imagery into a meditation on inherited…

transcendence the limits of language/knowledge nature as cosmic messenger

An Ending (Ascent)

Brian Eno

An instrumental ambient piece built from slowly rising synthesizer chords and a wordless choral pad, composed for a documentary…

space and vastness transcendence mourning and elevation

I'll Fly Away

Etta James

Etta James takes on the Albert E. Brumley gospel standard, a song built entirely around the promise of release from earthly…

death as liberation religious faith weariness and endurance

Feel Flows

The Beach Boys

A near-abstract meditation by Carl Wilson that trades narrative for texture, using dense alliteration and impressionistic…

dissolution of self memory and time transcendence

Everloving

Moby

"Everloving" is a wordless mood piece built from Moby's signature late-90s palette: soft analog pads, a simple repeating melodic…

devotion comfort stillness

The Kiss

Judee Sill

Judee Sill turns a love song into a devotional hymn, blurring the line between romantic union and religious ecstasy until the…

sacred and profane love transcendence mortality

Space Oddity

David Bowie

A dramatized radio transmission between mission control and an astronaut becomes an extended metaphor for detachment and…

isolation fame and alienation dissociation

Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!

The Staple Singers

This is a traditional African American spiritual, reworked here as a Staple Singers vocal showcase, built almost entirely on a…

death as release suffering and endurance faith under strain

Break On Through (To The Other Side)

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

September When It Comes

Rosanne Cash

A meditation on mortality and inherited fate, written in the voice of someone reckoning with the end of life while looking back…

mortality inheritance/family legacy acceptance

Days To Come

Bonobo

This is a soft-focus, incantatory piece built more from sound and image than argument -- a hazy invitation to abandon…

renewal and hope spiritual seeking rejection of materialism/violence

Planet Caravan

Black Sabbath

A quiet, drifting interlude on an album otherwise built from doom riffs and war paranoia, this song imagines a couple sailing…

cosmic escapism transcendence distance from Earth

Surfing On a Rocket

Air

A minimalist space-flight fantasy that doubles as a meditation on departure and dissolution, sung with the breezy detachment Air…

escape and departure transcendence romantic reassurance vs. abandonment

Natural High

Merle Haggard

A plainspoken thank-you song in which the narrator credits a steady partner with pulling him out of despair, framed entirely…

gratitude emotional rescue stability vs. chaos

Impossible

Röyksopp

This is a lyric built almost entirely from fragments and repetition, functioning more as an incantation than a narrative song.…

idealization and unattainability transcendence bodily/sensory ecstasy

Return To Paradise

Shirley Horn

Shirley Horn builds a hushed, largely wordless ballad around a mission-control conceit, tracking a 'space bird' through launch,…

longing and reunion journey as metaphor transcendence

Ghost

Neutral Milk Hotel

A dazed elegy in which a spectral presence is addressed directly, then reimagined through two surreal, violent images of falling…

death and transcendence haunting and possession loss of a loved one

Adventures In Paradise

Minnie Riperton

A gentle affirmation of self-created reality, this title track treats optimism and imagination as tools for daily transcendence…

manifestation and belief inner freedom everyday transcendence

Purple Rain

Prince

A ballad of apology and release, built around an image—purple rain—that resists literal decoding but functions as a symbol of…

regret and apology romantic ambiguity spiritual transcendence

Glory

Television

Television's "Glory" plays a lopsided, almost cartoonish romantic squabble against a chant that sounds like religious…

romantic confusion transcendence vs. absurdity surrender of anxiety

The Sea Captain

Sandy Denny

A short, dreamlike ballad in which a wandering narrator and a sea captain mirror each other's escapes from burning or confining…

escape and departure transcendence versus disaster fate and mirroring

I Am a Scientist

Guided by Voices

A short, deceptively simple lo-fi anthem in which the narrator cycles through professional identities—scientist, journalist,…

self-examination addiction and escape art as self-medication

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

Bring Da Ruckus

Wu‐Tang Clan

The opening track of Enter the Wu-Tang stages hip-hop as martial arts combat, with each MC treating the microphone like a weapon…

martial arts mythology as metaphor for lyrical combat collective identity vs individual bravado urban violence and street survival

Blacktop

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A slow-motion drive down a night highway becomes a meditation on surrender — to another body, to time, to mortality. Yeah Yeah…

intimacy and surrender mortality and time transcendence through repetition

Soul Meets Body

Death Cab for Cutie

A gentle, folk-inflected love song built around a fantasy of full integration - body and spirit, self and other - as the…

union of body and soul romantic devotion mortality and shared fate

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

The Rising

Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen writes from inside the body of a firefighter climbing a burning tower on September 11, fusing physical labor,…

9/11 and collective trauma duty and physical sacrifice faith and doubt

In Bloom

Nirvana

A song built on a sneer disguised as a singalong: Cobain sketches a fan who loves the band's melodies but misses everything…

misreading of art mainstream co-optation loss of innocence

Belfast

Orbital

An instrumental electronic piece built around a slowly unfurling synth melody and a wordless, choir-like vocal pad, 'Belfast'…

reconciliation memory place and naming

Higher

D'Angelo

A slow-burning testimony that fuses erotic devotion with religious language, treating a lover as both a physical presence and a…

sacred and profane love transcendence through intimacy devotion and permanence

Angel From Montgomery

John Prine

A young man's ventriloquized portrait of an aging woman worn down by a marriage and a life that never became what she imagined.…

aging and disillusionment domestic entrapment lost youth

Welcome to the Machine

Pink Floyd

A synthetic, industrial voice greets a young rock aspirant with false warmth, revealing that his entire trajectory—rebellion,…

commodification of art loss of individuality the music industry as machine

I Feel You

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