Results for “burden and obligation”

Songs

Burden In My Hand

Soundgarden

A first-person narrator leads a listener into a desert wasteland and confesses to killing the person he loves, then keeps…

guilt and denial toxic devotion desert as spiritual void

Beast Of Burden

The Rolling Stones

A weary declaration of devotion dressed up as a refusal: the singer insists he won't be exploited or taken for granted, even as…

emotional labor in relationships self-worth and insecurity devotion disguised as protest

The Weight

The Band

A traveler arrives in a town called Nazareth looking for simple lodging and instead gets tangled in a chain of odd requests and…

burden and obligation hospitality and its refusal community entanglement

Alive

Pearl Jam

A mother's confession about a son's true parentage collides with an unsettling second revelation, and the phrase that should…

inherited trauma identity and paternity survivor's guilt

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

That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate

Mission of Burma

A terse post-punk breakup song built around the logic of self-preservation dressed up as generosity. The narrator frames pushing…

self-justification guilt and denial independence vs. abandonment

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

Donny Hathaway

Donny Hathaway's reading of this well-worn hymn-like standard turns a simple parable of brotherly duty into a gospel testimony,…

brotherhood and communal responsibility burden and endurance spiritual faith as sustaining force

Tomorrow Is a Long Time

Sandy Denny

A Bob Dylan song given to Sandy Denny's voice becomes a study in absence: the singer measures every image of beauty and time…

longing and absence time as burden identity dissolved by loss

Strangers

The Kinks

A meditative song written by Dave Davies for the Kinks' 1970 album, built around the image of two travelers on the same road who…

companionship amid alienation spiritual searching impermanence and mortality

UMI Says

Mos Def

An intimate, unguarded address that opens as a direct confession about mortality and imperfection before widening into a…

mortality and urgency authenticity over performance Black solidarity and liberation

One Day At a Time

Merle Haggard

This is a plainspoken gospel prayer sung from a position of exhaustion and humility, asking for the strength to survive the…

religious surrender humility and human limitation present-moment endurance

Could You Be the One?

Hüsker Dü

A weary interrogation of a relationship on the edge of collapse, built almost entirely from a single repeated question and a…

emotional exhaustion concealment and self-deception ambivalence in love

Godspeed

James Blake

A minimalist ballad structured as a farewell blessing, where the speaker releases someone from obligation while affirming an…

letting go unconditional love spiritual blessing

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

Wind-Up

Jethro Tull

Wind-Up closes Aqualung's second-side critique of institutional religion with a direct autobiographical account of a schoolboy…

institutional religion vs personal faith education as indoctrination inherited belief