Results for “chosen versus inherited belief”

Songs

Inheritance

Talk Talk

A short, largely instrumental hymn from Talk Talk's most spacious record, "Inheritance" uses fragmentary pastoral imagery and a…

ecological loss denial and complacency spiritual longing

The Christians and the Pagans

Dar Williams

A folk narrative song about a pagan niece and her Christian family navigating a holiday dinner together, using domestic comedy…

religious pluralism family reconciliation tolerance through everyday contact

All That You Have Is Your Soul

Emmylou Harris

A mother's warning becomes a hard-won personal confession, as the narrator traces her own failures to heed advice about…

inherited wisdom moral compromise self-possession versus loss of self

Everybody's Weird Except Me

Stereolab

A short, almost mantra-like piece that treats a dream or ideal as something that must travel from intellect to feeling before it…

mind versus feeling ideal versus lived experience language's limits

Hindsight

Built to Spill

A meditation on retrospection as a kind of trap, where the ability to look back with clarity becomes a burden rather than a…

regret and self-knowledge skepticism toward inherited beliefs utopian longing

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

Sycamore

Bill Callahan

A meditative address built around inherited wisdom about growth and endurance, using the sycamore tree as its central emblem.…

inheritance and fatherhood growth versus impatience resilience

Corona

Minutemen

A terse, two-minute political sketch that moves from a stark statement about poverty and inherited injustice to a small, almost…

economic inequality inherited guilt survival

Ain't It Funny

Danny Brown

Danny Brown turns his own addiction into dark comedy, stacking dense, cartoonish wordplay over a queasy hook that keeps asking…

addiction and dependency irony and dark humor wealth versus self-destruction

Levon

Elton John

A cryptic character sketch of a wealthy, oddly rigid family man named Levon and his son Jesus, whose longing to escape the…

inherited expectation generational conflict escapism

The God That Failed

IDLES

A terse, hymn-like post-punk dirge that stages a confrontation between someone's inherited religious faith and the raw fact of…

religious disillusionment grief and loss inherited faith versus lived experience

Superstition

Stevie Wonder

A funk vamp built on a single clavinet riff turns a catalog of folk superstitions into an argument against irrational belief.…

superstition and irrational belief fear versus knowledge self-deception

Jesus Christ

Big Star

A Christmas carol built from borrowed and paraphrased hymn imagery, recorded by a band whose songwriter was in visible crisis at…

rebirth and renewal faith versus despair tradition and inheritance

When Doves Cry

Patti Smith

This is Patti Smith's cover of Prince's 1984 hit, stripped of its synth-funk architecture and rebuilt as a spoken-sung…

inherited conflict desire and abandonment vulnerability versus pride

Starburster

Fontaines D.C.

Starburster runs on the syntax of a panic attack: gasped, run-on desire that never resolves into a clean feeling. It stacks a…

anxiety and panic desire versus revulsion self-destruction

Born on the Bayou

Betty Davis

Betty Davis takes John Fogerty's swampy CCR title and reworks it into a funk vamp about inherited female wariness of men that…

maternal warning and inherited caution reclaiming a borrowed rock lyric through funk sexual assertion and demand

Your Best American Girl

Mitski

A love song that turns into a quiet refusal, tracking the moment a relationship's cultural and familial mismatch becomes…

cultural and racial difference self-worth versus assimilation unrequited or incompatible love

The Cape

Guy Clark

Guy Clark takes a childhood game of playing superhero and stretches it across a whole life, turning a boy jumping off a garage…

faith versus caution refusal to grow up conventionally risk and self-belief

100%

Sonic Youth

A tribute song built from fragments of grief, aggression, and dark humor, written in memory of a scene figure lost to violence.…

violent death and its aftermath rock scene mythology and idolization gender and predation within a music subculture

Sexy Boy

Air

A woozy, vocoder-warped taunt built almost entirely out of one phrase, "Sexy Boy" pokes at masculine vanity and celebrity…

vanity and self-image celebrity and consumerism irony versus seduction

Snakeskin

Deerhunter

A funk-inflected litany of self-definition, "Snakeskin" strings together a series of blunt "I was born" and "I was" declarations…

disability and bodily difference fatalism versus resilience identity as inherited condition

Outdoor Miner

Wire

A deceptively sweet pop song from a band known for angular art-punk, built around the tiny natural phenomenon of a leaf-mining…

nature observation hiddenness and exposure innocence versus threat

Where You'll Find Me Now

Neutral Milk Hotel

A dense, image-clogged confession of shame and diminishment inside a fraught intimacy, where the speaker imagines himself…

guilt and self-punishment voicelessness corrupted intimacy

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

I Ain't Superstitious

Howlin’ Wolf

A blues narrator insists he doesn't believe in superstition while reciting a litany of folk omens with dead seriousness, letting…

superstition and folk belief denial versus behavior impending violence or death

Such Great Heights

Iron & Wine

This is a cover of the Postal Service's electro-pop original, stripped down to acoustic guitar and hushed vocal, which changes…

long-distance love fate versus coincidence romantic devotion as belief system

Only This Moment

Röyksopp

A minimalist electro-pop meditation on love as a present-tense gamble, oscillating between dread that a relationship is doomed…

uncertainty in love presentism versus fear of the future doubt and surrender

Flash's Theme

Queen

This is Queen's title theme for the campy 1980 space-opera film, built almost entirely as a chant-like hero salute punctuated by…

heroism vs tyranny spectacle and camp chosen-one mythology

DNA.

Kendrick Lamar

DNA. is Kendrick Lamar's opening salvo on DAMN., a hyper-aggressive inventory of inherited traits that refuses to separate the…

inherited identity Black masculinity and violence fame and paranoia

The Kids Don't Stand a Chance

Vampire Weekend

This closing track from Vampire Weekend's debut is a compressed, elliptical portrait of inherited privilege and the institutions…

class and inheritance institutional power loss of innocence

Blogging

Wire

Wire recast the nativity story as a satire of digital-age commerce and self-promotion, splicing biblical imagery with the…

technology and faith commodification of belief surveillance and self-branding

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

Part of Me

En Vogue

This is a socially conscious ballad built around a rain-and-cloud metaphor for spiritual and social interconnectedness. En Vogue…

interconnectedness social responsibility spiritual unity

Oh Very Young

Cat Stevens

A meditation on mortality and inheritance addressed to a child, using the wearing-out of a pair of jeans as an emblem for how…

mortality impermanence legacy and inheritance

That's When I Reach For My Revolver

Mission of Burma

A post-punk anthem about disillusionment and the impulse toward violent or drastic rupture as a response to betrayed idealism.…

disillusionment loss of innocence generational inheritance

Eden

Talk Talk

"Eden" opens Spirit of Eden with a fragmentary, hymn-like meditation on loss and belief, using biblical imagery of Eden and…

loss of innocence religious doubt and faith death and rebirth

Merry Go 'Round

Kacey Musgraves

A small-town portrait built on nursery-rhyme wordplay, this song surveys the quiet addictions, forced marriages, and inherited…

small-town stagnation inherited expectation quiet addiction

By the River

Aesop Rock

A meandering, list-like meditation on rivers that uses the image as a container for memory, mortality, and imagination. Aesop…

mortality and grief memory and nostalgia escapism/fantasy

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

Killer / Papa Was a Rollin' Stone

George Michael

This medley pairs George Michael's own song of addiction and yearning for release with a cover of the Temptations' classic about…

addiction and self-destruction longing for freedom absent fatherhood