Results for “chosen family/community”

Songs

Hot Summer

Prince

A breezy, mantra-like single built almost entirely around one phrase, using the promise of a good summer as a stand-in for hope…

collective optimism chosen family/community uncertainty and fear

Most of My Heroes Still...

Public Enemy

This track is Public Enemy's roll call of unofficial Black history, built around a single stubborn refrain: the people Chuck D…

erasure of Black radical history official vs. lived memory self-mythology and hip-hop lineage

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

Bruce Springsteen

A cinematic street narrative that doubles as an origin myth for Springsteen's own band, tracking a lone, wary figure ('Bad…

urban isolation chosen family/band mythology outsider status

Sunshine

Mos Def

Sunshine is a boast track that keeps interrupting itself with warmth, using the gospel-tinged sample of the title phrase to turn…

hip-hop bravado and lineage authenticity vs. commercial pretense spiritual/gospel imagery repurposed as swagger

Dedicated

MF DOOM

This is a street elegy built around loss and survival, alternating between grim inventories of urban violence and a repeated vow…

urban violence and mortality chosen family and crew loyalty grief and emotional suppression

Rubble Kings Theme (Dynamite)

Run the Jewels

A theme song for a documentary about 1970s New York gang culture, this track has Killer Mike and El-P narrate street survival as…

urban survival and neglect self-made authority religious skepticism

Third of May / Ōdaigahara

Fleet Foxes

A sprawling, suite-like meditation on friendship, fracture, and reconciliation within Fleet Foxes, built around the real-life…

reconciliation after estrangement time and memory collective identity vs. individual selfhood

The Revolution Starts...

Steve Earle

Steve Earle turns a protest chant into a personal call to action, insisting that political change begins in ordinary daily…

political awakening personal responsibility hope versus complacency

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

Bushes and Briars

Sandy Denny

A meditation on empty churches and forgotten faith, framed as a solitary walker's observation of a Sunday service she stands…

religious doubt rural isolation decay of tradition

Surgeon

St. Vincent

A woman narrates a summer of collapse—medication, isolation, avoidance of family and mail—while a chorus repeats a request to be…

depression and isolation medicalization of the self desire for external repair

Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Loretta Lynn

This is Loretta Lynn's rendition of the A.P. Carter gospel standard, a meditation on death, memory, and the hope of reunion in…

mortality and grief family separation religious hope

Out In the Street

Bruce Springsteen

A dockworker counts down the hours of a punishing week toward the one place that restores his sense of self: the sidewalk and…

working-class pride community solidarity surveillance and police presence

Got to Give It Up

Thin Lizzy

A confessional first-person account of addiction, framed as a series of messages sent to family members from someone who knows…

addiction and substance abuse shame and family self-destruction

The Morning Fog

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

This Train

The Staple Singers

The Staple Singers rework a traditional gospel train song into a stark meditation on death, judgment, and family loss.…

salvation and judgment death and mourning exclusivity of grace

King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1

Neutral Milk Hotel

An opening track that fuses childhood memory with domestic violence and adolescent sexual awakening, all delivered in a run-on,…

childhood innocence and its loss domestic dysfunction sexual awakening

Give Love On Christmas Day

The Temptations

A holiday standard built on a simple, almost sermon-like premise: material gifts are fine, but love is the only present that…

generosity versus materialism universal love seasonal community

I Don't Want to Know

Gladys Knight

Gladys Knight delivers a hard-edged breakup address to a partner who is leaving for someone else, refusing to grant him the…

betrayal and infidelity emotional exhaustion self-respect after sacrifice

Waltz, No. 2 (XO)

Elliott Smith

A karaoke bar becomes the stage for a fractured family memory, as the narrator watches a woman he can't quite reach sing a cover…

estrangement from family performed composure vs. real feeling memory and repression

Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Mississippi John Hurt

This is Mississippi John Hurt's spare, guitar-picked reading of the Carter Family standard, stripping the hymn down to a single…

grief and mourning death and the afterlife family loss

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

Hands of Time

Margo Price

Margo Price lays out an autobiographical ballad of leaving home, losing a farm, and surviving hard years in the city, all in…

economic loss and displacement family loyalty grief and mortality

500 Miles

Rosanne Cash

Rosanne Cash's version of this traditional folk song turns a simple hitchhiker's lament into a meditation on permanent distance…

distance and displacement homesickness regret

The Nature

Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli surveys global poverty and violence as symptoms of a single underlying logic he calls 'the nature of the world,'…

poverty and survival spiritual searching media distraction

What's Going On

Marvin Gaye

A plea rather than a protest anthem, the song addresses family members directly to voice grief over war and civil unrest at…

Vietnam-era war weariness generational conflict police brutality

Billy Jack

Curtis Mayfield

A street-corner elegy for a man killed in a shooting, told through the flat, almost gossipy report of a friend passing along…

urban violence respectability and street reputation community versus individualism

I Walk the Line

Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell builds a memory song around a childhood car ride and the moment he first heard Johnny Cash's classic, using the…

nostalgia musical inheritance family and rural childhood

Snowin' On Raton

Townes Van Zandt

A traveling song built around the image of snow closing in on a mountain pass, using the road as a figure for time, mortality,…

transience and travel the impossibility of stopping time love versus wandering

One Day

Sharon Van Etten

A quiet, circling meditation on an unresolved relationship, where family support is contrasted against a partner's ambivalence.…

emotional avoidance family vs romantic love self-doubt

Junkhead

Alice in Chains

Junkhead is a first-person monologue delivered from inside addiction, voiced with unsettling contentment rather than confession…

addiction as identity self-justification and denial alienation from mainstream values

Orphan Girl

Gillian Welch

A solitary traveler addresses an unnamed companion and, implicitly, God, laying out a life stripped of family ties. The song…

orphanhood and isolation religious faith as substitute family longing for belonging

Gallis Pole

Lead Belly

Lead Belly's take on this ancient ballad (widely known as "The Maid Freed from the Gallows" in the folk tradition) turns a…

mortality and reprieve family loyalty versus self-interest folk justice and bribery

The Ghetto

Donny Hathaway

This is less a lyric than a groove built around a single word, repeated until it becomes a chant, a claim, and an invitation.…

community and belonging reclamation of a stigmatized word celebration amid hardship

Cousins

Vampire Weekend

A frenetic, sub-two-minute blast that skewers cultural capital and inherited privilege through fragmented, almost cryptic…

class and inherited privilege cultural capital vs. authenticity family lineage

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

Waitin' Round to Die

Townes Van Zandt

An early, stripped-down Townes Van Zandt song told as a first-person litany of ruin — abandonment, drink, a bad romance, a…

fatalism cyclical poverty and violence addiction as companionship

Should Have Known Better

Sufjan Stevens

A song about the aftermath of a mother's abandonment and death, staged as a private argument between numbness and the…

maternal abandonment and grief emotional repression childhood memory

(Roamin' Thro' the Gloamin' With) 40.000 Headman

Traffic

The song is a loose, almost collage-like apology addressed to a fictional 'Uncle Albert,' stitched together from half-finished…

guilt and excuse-making family obligation absurdism

Cobwebs

Animal Collective

A collage of surreal pastoral images and chanted refrains that circles around resistance to withdrawal—refusing to 'go…

entrapment vs. freedom embracing imperfection nature as omen