The Replacements
A cranky airline passenger gripes about being served by a flight attendant, sneering at her job title and demanding the…
class resentment entitlement euphemism and job-title inflation
The Jam
A savage class-conflict narrative disguised as a sports report: a ragtag group of protesters or strikers clashes with the Eton…
class conflict failed solidarity British class system
Randy Newman
A plainspoken ballad about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, sung from inside the disaster rather than about it from a…
natural disaster regional neglect class and condescension
Rodney Crowell
A plainspoken proposal song built almost entirely around one repeated pledge: that devotion, not money, will be the measure of a…
romantic devotion class and money courtship and destiny
Townes Van Zandt
This is a Rolling Stones cover (Jagger/Richards) performed live by Townes Van Zandt on Roadsongs, and in his hands the song's…
class resentment addiction and self-destruction romantic betrayal
Steve Earle
Steve Earle threads together three young men from three different fronts of the post-9/11 war on terror — a working-class…
class and war economic desperation propaganda vs. lived reality
Weezer
A self-described nobody fantasizes about the glamour of Beverly Hills while admitting, almost in the same breath, that the class…
class envy celebrity worship self-deprecation
The Smiths
A stranded young man with a broken bicycle is picked up by an older, wealthier stranger, and the encounter becomes a charged,…
class anxiety closeted desire vanity and self-consciousness
Uncle Tupelo
A grim, working-class dirge about exhaustion and dead ends, delivered in the voice of someone addressing a person on the verge…
industrial despair class fatigue futility versus endurance
XTC
A working-class narrator pleads, almost prayerfully, for the financial stability to hold onto his relationship and growing…
economic precarity class and dignity love under financial strain
The Kinks
A satirical character sketch of an English middle-class conformist, delivered with mock admiration that curdles into contempt.…
class satire hypocrisy conformity
Jason Isbell
A working-class narrator describes his days through the rhythm of manual labor, framing exhaustion and diminished expectation as…
labor and class faith as consolation resignation vs. dignity
Pet Shop Boys
A cold, hypnotic portrait of London's class and consumer divide, delivered in a near-rap monotone over a synth-pop groove. The…
class division urban alienation consumption and desire
Simon Jäger
Simon adapts Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem into a song about class envy and its blind spot: a factory worker idolizes a…
class envy the emptiness of wealth irony of appearances
Minutemen
A working-class narrator recounts losing both a lover and a job, then retreats into a stubborn, self-medicating creed built on…
alienation working-class disillusionment self-destructive coping
This is a nostalgic, sensory-dense portrait of a working-class Houston neighborhood seen through childhood memory. Crowell…
working-class childhood nostalgia place and memory
A working-class complaint dressed as a rock song, cataloguing the small daily indignities—hangovers, media noise, surveillance,…
disillusionment working-class fatigue media saturation
Pavement
A wry, deadpan tour through the small humiliations of dating, class anxiety, and suburban aspiration, filtered through Malkmus's…
class and status anxiety suburban aspiration irony and detachment
A punk band's origin story told without irony or distance, this song insists that ordinary friendship and local geography are as…
friendship and collaboration punk rock lineage and influence self-mythologizing vs. humility
A short, blunt punk song about wage labor as a form of daily indignity. The narrator describes clocking in and out for a boss he…
wage labor and exploitation class resentment dignity versus survival
Vampire Weekend
A jaunty, harpsichord-inflected pop song that uses a grammar joke as a launching pad for a satire of upper-crust pretension and…
class and privilege cultural tourism and appropriation linguistic pedantry vs authenticity
The Fall
A fragmented, incantatory sketch of a pampered childhood curdling into adult decay, told through storybook imagery that keeps…
nostalgia as decay class and privilege arrested development
The Who
A disoriented young man rides a commuter train while his mind fractures into fragments of memory, sexual anxiety, and social…
dissociation and identity collapse adolescent sexuality and shame class and Englishness
Johnny Cash
A first-person prison lament in which the narrator, confined and hopeless, is tormented by the sound of a train he cannot board.…
confinement and freedom guilt and moral consequence class resentment
A booming, boosterish anthem that turns out to be a satire of boosterism itself: the narrator's civic pride is so shallow and…
civic pride as delusion class blindness American boosterism
Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris narrates the entire life of a childhood friend from rural Alabama, from adolescence to an early, unremarked…
rural poverty thwarted ambition female friendship
A Tribe Called Quest
A cosmic metaphor becomes a blunt indictment of racial exclusion: the space program stands in for every promise of American…
racial exclusion collective uplift disillusionment with progress
Aesop Rock
A dense, image-saturated indictment of predatory social hierarchy, war profiteering, and phony authority, delivered in Aesop…
corruption and hypocrisy violence disguised as order class and survival
Billy Joel
An instrumental piano prelude gives way to a character sketch of a self-styled radical, someone who wears grievance and…
performative rebellion aging and disillusionment martyrdom as self-image
Deep Purple
A snarling caricature of moral censorship, this track invents a composite figure of public prudishness and spends three verses…
hypocrisy censorship sexual repression
Bessie Smith
A direct address from the working poor to the wealthy, this 1928 blues sides a plea for economic justice with an implicit…
class inequality economic desperation war and sacrifice
Jamie xx
This Jamie xx track builds a euphoric, sample-driven dance anthem around a simple mantra of anticipated joy, then hands the mic…
anticipation and collective release hedonism and excess class and hustle
Lorde
A teenager from an unglamorous town catalogs the luxury clichés of contemporary pop and mass media, then refuses them, proposing…
class and aspiration media saturation and celebrity excess authenticity versus performance
A brisk, brand-strewn snapshot of prep-school desire, where a narrator sketches a young woman's privileged upbringing before the…
class and privilege cultural appropriation and borrowing adolescent desire
This is Uncle Tupelo's take on the Flying Burrito Brothers standard, a doom-laden vision of Los Angeles as a modern Babylon…
moral corruption of wealth apocalyptic judgment urban decay
Fairport Convention
This is the Fairport Convention electric-folk arrangement of the ancient English/Scottish ballad about adultery, betrayal, and…
class inequality adultery and its consequences honor and vengeance
Bob Dylan
A six-minute takedown song that watches a once-privileged woman lose every social prop that made her feel untouchable. Dylan…
fall from privilege social exposure and humiliation freedom through loss
Kanye West Tribute Band
A Ray Charles sample and a party-ready hook frame a much darker set of verses about money, sex, race, and resentment between men…
gender and money distrust and betrayal black masculinity and provider anxiety
This is The Fall's 1988 cover of the Kinks' 1969 song, a mock-anthem that impersonates Victorian-era patriotic sentiment so…
empire and nationalism class and inequality irony and pastiche
Gang of Four
A tightly wound post-punk anthem that turns economic hardship into a rallying cry, pairing a jagged, funk-inflected groove with…
economic hardship class solidarity escapism as resistance