Results for “artistic embattlement”

Songs

Here I Come

The Roots

A siege scenario becomes an extended metaphor for defiant self-presentation: the speaker is cornered by an unnamed authority…

defiance under pressure vanity and self-fashioning as armor street mythology and survival

Changes

David Bowie

A restless self-portrait of an artist who treats identity as provisional, staged against a generational standoff between an…

self-reinvention generational conflict impermanence

So Low

Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli uses the physical sensation of depth—gravity, fire, ice, the ocean floor—as a metaphor for both emotional lows and…

authenticity vs. celebrity struggle and resilience artistic integrity

What They Do

The Roots

A mid-90s Roots track built around a single defiant refrain, positioning the group's artistic integrity against a hip-hop…

authenticity vs. commercialism artistic integrity hip-hop lineage and craft

Eple

Röyksopp

The lyrics supplied here do not match the actual song: Röyksopp's "Eple" is a well-known instrumental track from Melody A.M.…

mortality artistic camaraderie nostalgia

Rings

Aesop Rock

Aesop Rock revisits his abandoned career as a visual artist, tracing how technical devotion to drawing and painting curdled into…

creative identity and its loss depression and self-sabotage artistic craft and obsession

Painted on Canvas

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter builds an extended metaphor comparing human identity to a painted canvas, where upbringing, community, and chance…

identity formation agency vs. determinism artistic lineage

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

Waylon Jennings

A meditation on the gap between the mythic cowboy and the man who tried to live inside that myth. The song traces how a…

disillusionment with myth loneliness and rootlessness masculinity and emotional detachment

A Case of You

Prince

Prince's rendition strips Joni Mitchell's original down to its bare emotional core, treating a well-known confessional folk song…

romantic longing artistic devotion intoxication as metaphor for love

Who Tells Your Story

The Roots

A meditation on legacy and mortality built around the Hamilton-borrowed refrain about who survives to tell one's story. Three…

legacy and memory mortality Black identity and violence

All My Friends

Broken Social Scene

A brief, hazy track that sketches a kind of collective burnout among musicians and lovers who have turned intimacy into product.…

artistic disillusionment the commodification of love songs exhaustion and urgency

N.Y. State of Mind

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

A New Wave

Sleater-Kinney

A defiant statement of self-invention that refuses easy categorization, either as a musical movement or as a stable identity.…

self-definition against labels resistance to commodification anonymity as autonomy

Resurrection

Common

An early showcase of Common's dense, freestyle-adjacent wordplay, this track is less about narrative than about verbal…

wordplay as identity self-improvement and discipline legal/moral peril

Gold Star for Robot Boy

Guided by Voices

A short, riff-driven track from Bee Thousand that turns self-reliance into a kind of mechanical badge of honor. The narrator…

self-determination irony toward achievement/reward systems artistic autonomy

Raid

Madvillain

"Raid" is a two-verse showcase built around boastful self-mythologizing, with MF Doom opening and MED closing over a woozy,…

outlaw persona and contradiction poverty and hustling reputation and legend-building

On My Way to Harlem

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter narrates a pilgrimage to Harlem that turns into a meditation on cultural inheritance and gentrification—the icons…

cultural memory gentrification and displacement artistic lineage

Crippled Crow

Kris Kristofferson

A slow, bitter ballad that turns the busking beggar into an emblem of the working musician, someone who trades private pain for…

artistic suffering fame's cost begging as metaphor for performance

In the Mood

Talib Kweli

A loose-limbed party track built around braggadocio and seduction, where Talib Kweli shifts between flirtatious come-ons, boasts…

seduction and courtship artistic superiority authenticity vs. performance

New Big Prinz

The Fall

A hypnotic, near-mantric chant that revolves around a mysterious figure called 'Big Priest' or 'Big Prinz,' whose worth is…

unrecognized authority ritual and repetition self-mythologizing

Sharp Cutting Wings (Song to a Poet)

Lucinda Williams

An early Lucinda Williams ballad addressed to an idealized poet-lover, mixing plainspoken country-blues devotion with a fantasy…

idealized love escapism artistic admiration

April Fool

Patti Smith

A buoyant invitation-song built almost entirely from the word 'come,' Patti Smith casts romance as a shared adventure into…

romantic invitation artistic freedom embracing folly

Max Ernst

Mission of Burma

Mission of Burma turns the Surrealist painter Max Ernst into both subject and method, building a song out of collaged,…

art and irrationality collage and fragmentation the outsider artist

Blueprint

Fugazi

"Blueprint" is Fugazi's manifesto against the music industry's game-playing, delivered as a repeated refusal that gradually…

artistic integrity refusal of commercial games consumer complicity

Accordion

Madvillain

A compact showcase of MF Doom's rapid internal rhyme and layered wordplay, built over a spare, looping Madlib beat that barely…

braggadocio mortality and time artistic superiority

We Want the Airwaves

Ramones

A blunt manifesto-as-anthem in which the Ramones demand radio play for rock 'n' roll, framing corporate gatekeeping as an enemy…

media gatekeeping artistic frustration working-class impatience

You Know My Steez

Gang Starr

This is a straight-up hip-hop statement of purpose: Guru surveys a rap landscape he considers watered down and reasserts Gang…

artistic integrity authenticity vs. commercialism spiritual/moral authority

Ft. Worth Blues

Steve Earle

Steve Earle's tribute to a departed friend (widely understood as Townes Van Zandt) turns a travelogue into an elegy, mapping…

grief and mourning itinerancy and homelessness artistic legacy

To Live Is to Fly

Townes Van Zandt

A traveling songwriter's meditation on impermanence, love without possession, and the necessity of moving on, framed as both a…

impermanence itinerant life love without attachment

Black Is Back

Public Enemy

Public Enemy revives its own rhetorical formula—declarative chorus, dense internal rhyme, media critique—to announce a comeback…

cultural authenticity vs. commercialism media manipulation generational memory

F.U.N.K.

Betty Davis

This is less a song than a spoken-and-sung roll call, a lineage claimed rather than argued for. Betty Davis treats funk as a…

musical lineage and inheritance Black artistic community funk as identity/blood

Every Time the Sun Comes Up

Sharon Van Etten

This is Sharon Van Etten at her loosest and most winking, a track built on a single sardonic refrain about self-sabotage rather…

self-sabotage domestic disorder irony and deflection

It Ain't Hard to Tell

Nas

A pure showcase track built around dense, image-stacked boasting rather than a narrative arc. Nas uses the closing track of…

artistic self-assertion mastery through language street mythology

The Next Movement

The Roots

A pure showcase track built on DJ-style hype-man calls and dense, boastful verses from Black Thought, "The Next Movement" is…

self-mythologizing lyrical craft as spectacle community/call-and-response

Move the Crowd

Eric B.

A foundational Golden Age hip-hop track in which Rakim narrates his own creative process in real time, describing how a beat…

craftsmanship and artistic discipline self-mythologizing music as spiritual/intellectual pursuit

Gutter Rainbows

Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli uses the title's central paradox—beauty found in filth—as a lens for describing street life shaped by drugs,…

urban poverty moral complexity of survival authenticity vs. commercial rap

Older Gods

Wu‐Tang Clan

This is a dense, multi-voiced Wu-Tang posse cut built almost entirely from boast and threat, stitched together by rapid-fire…

street mythology and reputation material excess as armor violence as currency

Water Curses

Animal Collective

A dreamlike wish-song built around water as an image of fluidity, ease, and self-erasure, drifting through loosely connected…

desire for formlessness/transformation mortality and impermanence creativity and artistic longing

Wild Fire

Laura Marling

Laura Marling narrates from the outside of a relationship, watching a woman she's fascinated by perform for others while…

watching versus being seen inherited family damage artistic self-consciousness

Steve Biko (Stir It Up)

A Tribe Called Quest

A three-MC posse cut built almost entirely from boasts, wordplay, and Queens pride, borrowing the name and instrumental cue of…

hip-hop bravado and lyrical skill group identity and borough pride fleeting social consciousness