Results for “collective versus individual success”

Songs

The Dreamer

Common

Common uses the framework of the American Dream and Martin Luther King's rhetoric to narrate his own rise from Chicago's South…

ambition and self-mythology the American Dream legacy and lineage

Street Flash

Animal Collective

A song about the paralysis of anxious self-consciousness and the small, almost accidental relief of stepping outside. It moves…

anxiety and self-criticism domestic clutter as psychological weight inertia versus movement

Prester John

Animal Collective

A meditation on decline and letting go, framed through the legendary figure of Prester John, a mythical Christian king whose…

decay and endings myth versus reality acceptance and release

Water Curses

Animal Collective

A dreamlike wish-song built around water as an image of fluidity, ease, and self-erasure, drifting through loosely connected…

desire for formlessness/transformation mortality and impermanence creativity and artistic longing

Lying in the Grass

Animal Collective

A tangled, riddling song about the effort of self-diagnosis — trying to name a discomfort that resists naming. Animal Collective…

self-examination communication breakdown instinct vs. denial

Golden Gal

Animal Collective

A song built around a half-real, half-mediated female icon glimpsed through screens and reviews, with the narrator working out…

celebrity and mediated desire gender and sexuality fandom as devotion

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

FloriDada

Animal Collective

A barrage of interrogative fragments and postcard-sized images collages the world into a single imaginary destination, half…

placelessness and utopian longing collage as method identity without borders

Nattura

Björk

A short, chant-like hymn in Icelandic built almost entirely from repeated fragments rather than sentences, centering on the word…

nature and stewardship surrender/acceptance language as ritual

Surface Envy

Sleater‐Kinney

A song about clawing back from personal collapse through collective effort, built on an extended drowning-and-resurfacing…

collective resilience self-doubt and recovery reinvention

Under Pressure

Queen

A collaboration between Queen and David Bowie built around a rolling bass riff, the song treats societal pressure as a physical…

collective anxiety urban alienation the erosion of love as a value

It's Getting Late In the Evening

Talk Talk

A brief, hymn-like piece built around a single nautical metaphor: setting sail into an uncertain sky while insisting that a…

exile and displacement faith versus self-deception collective salvation

Keep Yourself Alive

Queen

Queen's debut single is a wry survival manifesto disguised as a rock anthem, tracking a narrator who has chased every…

disillusionment with self-improvement excess and hollow experience survival versus success

Gimme Shelter

Patti Smith

This is a cover of the Rolling Stones' 1969 apocalyptic ballad, and Patti Smith treats it less as a rock anthem than as an…

apocalypse and dread the fragility of shelter violence versus tenderness

Hold On

Yes

A live-recorded opener from 90125 that pairs anxious, fragmented images of political and social collapse with a chorus of…

endurance amid chaos political disillusionment faith versus doubt

Earth Intruders

Björk

A relentless, drum-heavy chant that casts a collective 'we' as an invading army of natural forces, half-tribal ritual and…

collective identity vs. individual doubt militarism and ritual violence nature reclaiming or overwhelming order

Bring Da Ruckus

Wu‐Tang Clan

The opening track of Enter the Wu-Tang stages hip-hop as martial arts combat, with each MC treating the microphone like a weapon…

martial arts mythology as metaphor for lyrical combat collective identity vs individual bravado urban violence and street survival

Peace Train

Cat Stevens

A buoyant early-70s anthem that turns hope for global reconciliation into a literal vehicle, imagined as a train that anyone can…

utopian hope collective longing for peace spiritual/religious undertones

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

No Cars Go

Arcade Fire

A children's chant grows into a full-band anthem imagining an escape route that exists outside the reach of adult machinery. The…

childhood imagination escape and refuge innocence versus adult systems

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

Work Out

J. Cole

A club-and-bedroom track built on interpolated Vanessa Carlton hooks, where a rapper on the come-up frames casual sex and…

casual sex versus emotional attachment material success as leverage fame and status anxiety

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

Ghetto Dreams

Common

Common builds a composite fantasy of a woman who fuses hood authenticity with high-end glamour, verse by verse assembling and…

idealized femininity as class fantasy hood authenticity versus upward mobility female strength shadowed by objectification

Oh No

Mos Def

A posse-cut showcase built around G-funk swagger, "Oh No" pairs Mos Def and Pharoahe Monch trading verses over a Nate Dogg hook,…

hustle and self-made success competitive supremacy coastal unity

Where I'm From

Digable Planets

This posse-cut catalog builds a portrait of a hip-hop upbringing not through a single narrator but through overlapping voices…

cultural identity and community Afrocentric consciousness hip-hop as inheritance

Bring It on Home to Me

B.B. King

This is less a song than a spoken monologue set to guitar, in which B.B. King explains his relationship to his guitar, Lucille,…

companionship and loneliness music as confession survival and near-death experience

Fight the Power (From "Do The Right Thing" Soundtrack)

Public Enemy

A rallying anthem built on funk breaks and blunt sloganeering, the track argues that Black cultural pride and outright refusal…

Black pride and self-determination media and cultural gatekeeping collective action versus passivity

Jimmi Diggin' Cats

Digable Planets

This is Digable Planets riffing on the idea of retro nostalgia as a kind of alternate history, imagining sixties and seventies…

retro-futurism and nostalgia Black cultural lineage funk/jazz as inheritance

Revolution

Grandaddy

This is a cover of the Beatles' 1968 track, not a Grandaddy original, recorded for the I Am Sam soundtrack, which reimagined…

political skepticism individual vs collective change distrust of ideology

Cause = Time

Broken Social Scene

A dense, image-driven rock track that piles up fragmented, almost surreal accusations and slogans about belief, sex, and…

ideological fervor religious ambivalence collective identity vs individuality

Mad

Solange

"Mad" is a meditation on the exhaustion of having to justify one's own anger, built around a call-and-response between a…

the right to anger versus the demand for composure respectability and emotional policing of Black people survival and trauma disguised as success

Teen Age Riot

Sonic Youth

A near-instrumental, chant-based intro gives way to one of Sonic Youth's most anthemic songs, a shambling ode to youth…

youth rebellion underground music culture hero worship and its limits

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

So Low

Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli uses the physical sensation of depth—gravity, fire, ice, the ocean floor—as a metaphor for both emotional lows and…

authenticity vs. celebrity struggle and resilience artistic integrity

Make Some Noise

Beastie Boys

This is the Beastie Boys doing what they do best: rapid-fire boasting, absurdist non sequiturs, and a chant-along hook, all…

comeback/reassertion braggadocio as comedy collective unity vs individual ego

ME!

Taylor Swift

A bubblegum-pop declaration of self-acceptance disguised as a love song, where the narrator sells her quirks and flaws as the…

self-acceptance individuality romantic confidence

The Rising

Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen writes from inside the body of a firefighter climbing a burning tower on September 11, fusing physical labor,…

9/11 and collective trauma duty and physical sacrifice faith and doubt

The W.A.N.D.

The Flaming Lips

A funky, riff-driven anthem that dresses up a political fantasy of taking down authoritarian power in the language of magic…

power vs. greed collective resistance fantasy as political metaphor

DARE

Gorillaz

A dance-pop track built almost entirely on repetition and command, DARE trades narrative content for pure physical suggestion.…

collective euphoria surrender to impulse repetition as hypnosis