Sonic Youth
Kim Gordon plays a seductive, sardonic call-and-response with a fetishized male icon, using come-ons and spoken interruptions to…
fetishization of Black masculinity gender and power celebrity worship
David Bowie
A radio drama in miniature: a space agency counts an astronaut into orbit, celebrates him as a media sensation, then loses him.…
alienation celebrity and spectacle technological failure
T. Rex
A glam-rock come-on that fuses car-fetish imagery with vampiric hunger, treating seduction as a kind of automotive worship.…
desire and pursuit commodification of the body glamour and artifice
Traffic
This is a road-worn touring song, a loose, groove-driven complaint and celebration about the grind of life on the move. It…
touring exhaustion displacement vs. home alienation from ordinary life
Aretha Franklin
This is a driving-metaphor party song: sex and romance recast as a joyride down an open highway in a pink Cadillac. It's…
romantic/sexual liberation escape and momentum playfulness and flirtation
The Beach Boys
"409" is an early Beach Boys car song that treats a Chevrolet muscle car like a lover and a racehorse at once, celebrating…
car culture youthful aspiration/consumerism masculinity and status