Results for “comic bravado”

Songs

God's Comic

Elvis Costello

A dead entertainer-priest narrates his own arrival in the afterlife, only to find God as an unimpressed, bored figure lounging…

religious satire performance and hypocrisy mortality

I've Got What It Takes, But It Breaks My Heart to Give It Away

Bessie Smith

A comic blues built on a pun: the singer boasts she has 'what it takes' — desirability, sex appeal, and money — but refuses to…

financial independence female self-sufficiency sexual innuendo

Girls

Beastie Boys

A cartoonishly juvenile chant dressed up as a party anthem, built on a nursery-rhyme hook and a rambling anecdote about a…

adolescent bravado misogyny as performance comic self-deprecation

Hate to Lose Your Lovin'

Little Feat

A wry breakup narrative that keeps undercutting its own heartbreak with comic self-interest. The narrator confronts a cheating…

infidelity and betrayal performed heartbreak vs. real indifference serial romance

Hoe Cakes

MF DOOM

Hoe Cakes is DOOM's mock-manual on relationship management, built entirely around a running pun that turns pancakes into a…

misogynist bravado as persona commodification of relationships comic wordplay and double entendre

No Particular Place to Go

Mos Def

A breezy account of a teenage joyride that stalls on an absurd, deflating detail: a jammed seatbelt that thwarts the narrator's…

adolescent desire freedom and mobility comic frustration

Drop Dead Legs

Van Halen

A strutting party-rock throwaway built entirely around physical fixation, delivered with the band's trademark bravado and…

physical attraction sexual bravado hedonism

Jack the Stripper / Fairies Wear Boots

Black Sabbath

This closing track from Paranoid pairs a lurching instrumental jam with a half-comic, half-paranoid account of drug-induced…

drug paranoia unreliable perception self-deception

Crosseyed Cat

Muddy Waters

A slow, grinding blues in which Muddy Waters uses a strange, oversized cat as a comic stand-in for suspicion and sexual…

jealousy and suspicion infidelity domestic surveillance

Clyde

Waylon Jennings

A loose, novelty-style country blues number about a laid-back dog named Clyde who supposedly plays bass and sings the blues on a…

rural leisure comic anthropomorphism stubbornness/inertia

Feel Your Love Tonight

Van Halen

A straightforward party-rock come-on built around a single repeated plea, this track trades narrative complexity for swagger and…

seduction and impatience male bravado nightlife and escape from work

Tear-Stained Letter

Richard Thompson

A jaunty, almost comic account of a wrecked relationship, where the narrator recounts being physically and emotionally battered…

toxic romance emotional exhaustion comic violence

She's Crafty

Beastie Boys

A boastful party-rap narrator recounts two encounters with a woman he casts as manipulative and dangerous, only for the joke to…

misplaced bravado gullibility and comeuppance urban hookup culture

Put It Right Here (Or Keep It Out There)

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith delivers an ultimatum blues to a freeloading lover, dressing up a blunt economic demand in barnyard comedy and…

economic independence sexual and domestic reciprocity female autonomy

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

The Smiths

A deadpan lament about the misery of ordinary employed adult life, delivered with such theatrical self-pity that it becomes…

alienation the tedium of work self-pity as performance

Represent

Weezer

A brash sports-anthem pep talk built for the 2010 World Cup, 'Represent' trades Weezer's usual self-deprecation for…

competition and pride integrity versus winning family and reputation

Tie Your Mother Down

Queen

A hard-rock stomper about sneaking past disapproving parents to get to a girl, played entirely for comic, cartoonish swagger.…

teenage rebellion forbidden romance comic machismo

Nadine

Mos Def

Mos Def's take on the Chuck Berry classic turns a simple chase-through-the-city into a breathless comic monologue about pursuit…

romantic pursuit urban mobility desire and elusiveness

56 Fury

Rodney Crowell

A rockabilly-style car song that celebrates a 1956 Plymouth Fury as an icon of speed, style, and small-town swagger from the…

Americana nostalgia masculinity and status regional pride (Texas)

Rhymin' & Stealin'

Beastie Boys

An opening track built entirely on cartoon-pirate bravado, splicing swashbuckler movie tropes with hip-hop boast rhetoric to…

outlaw bravado juvenile provocation pop-culture pastiche

Yer So Bad

Tom Petty

Tom Petty turns a chorus of romantic devotion into a punchline by surrounding it with a comic gallery of failed relationships.…

romantic complacency divorce and dysfunction irony as affection

Oh My Darling Don't Cry

Run the Jewels

A two-verse trade-off between El-P and Killer Mike that functions as pure sonic swagger and threat display, dressed up in…

defiance of authority hypermasculine bravado self-mythologizing

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Kacey Musgraves

This is a cover of the 1953 novelty Christmas standard, performed straight rather than reinvented, letting a child's absurd,…

childhood wish-fulfillment comic absurdity holiday tradition

Thunder and Lightning

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy in full riff-driven bravado mode, a Saturday-night anthem that fuses schoolyard aggression, romantic…

masculine bravado violence as ritual working-class nightlife

Ol' Red

George Jones

A comic prison narrative told in George Jones's late-career storyteller voice, in which a convicted murderer talks his way into…

cunning versus authority folk-hero outlawry trust and betrayal

Tyrone

My Morning Jacket

This is a cover of Erykah Badu's 1997 kiss-off anthem, in which a woman lays out the receipts on a freeloading,…

financial exploitation in relationships entourage/freeloading friends self-respect and boundary-setting

3 Tearz

Danny Brown

A three-verse posse cut where Danny Brown, Run the Jewels' El-P and Killer Mike (implied by the guest verses) trade dense,…

nihilism as armor drug-trade nostalgia gallows humor around death

Dry Spell

Kacey Musgraves

A comic, unapologetically horny country song about a woman counting off the days since her last sexual encounter, using rural…

sexual frustration female desire and agency rural/country signifiers as innuendo

I Won't Dance

Frank Sinatra

A comic protest song in which the singer refuses to dance not out of reluctance but because dancing with this particular woman…

comic denial as flirtation physical desire disguised as reluctance control versus surrender

Superheroes

Ethan Whitney

A straightforward pop declaration of romantic devotion dressed up in comic-book imagery. The narrator pledges protective,…

devoted love self-sufficiency vs. support escapism

Time's Up

Buzzcocks

A jittery catalogue of mundane waiting -- supermarket queues, phone calls, cigarettes -- becomes a comic study in erotic…

impatience and waiting sexual frustration consumer banality

The Seeker

The Who

A restless, half-comic confession of spiritual searching that name-drops the counterculture's gurus only to find them useless.…

spiritual seeking disillusionment with counterculture idols self-knowledge as impossible task

Shut Up Kiss Me

Angel Olsen

A driving, garage-pop declaration of romantic persistence, in which the narrator refuses to let a faltering relationship end…

romantic persistence refusal to quit desire versus communication

Two Left Feet

Richard Thompson

A jaunty novelty jump-blues number in which a narrator affectionately but insistently mocks his partner's terrible dancing,…

comic frustration in love physical imperfection as running gag performance and public embarrassment

Dear Abby

John Prine

John Prine builds a comic song out of the format of a newspaper advice column, staging a series of absurd reader complaints that…

absurdity of everyday complaint futility of advice-seeking identity and self-acceptance

Arrest the President

Ice Cube

Ice Cube stitches together a barrage of boasts, sci-fi imagery, and political fury into a chant demanding Donald Trump's removal…

political corruption distrust of institutions black survival and defiance

Across the Great Divide

The Band

A rambling, half-comic narrator addresses a woman named Molly amid some domestic crisis involving a gun, while spinning loose,…

restlessness and departure domestic tension masculine bravado and evasion

Mind Your Own Business (Show 9)

Hank Williams

This is a live radio performance of Hank Williams' comic novelty song, framed by an announcer's folksy introduction before…

privacy versus gossip marital independence rural community friction

Yellow Dog Blues

Bessie Smith

This is Bessie Smith's rendition of W.C. Handy's classic, a comic-tragic tale of a woman named Susie Johnson pining after a…

romantic abandonment itinerant lovers and railroad culture communication and waiting

Close Your Eyes (And Count to F**k)

Run the Jewels

A high-velocity posse cut where El-P and Killer Mike trade verses of violent bravado, prison-abolitionist rage, and sexual…

mass incarceration and prison abolition institutional hypocrisy (church, courts, police) hypermasculine bravado and sexual conquest