Results for “community and belonging”

Songs

You Belong To Me

Patsy Cline

A wistful farewell that sends a traveling lover off around the globe while quietly staking a claim on his heart. Cline's reading…

longing and separation possession within love travel as distance

You Belong to Me

Carly Simon

A woman confronts a partner who has just confessed some flirtation or infidelity, and instead of collapsing into jealousy she…

possessiveness disguised as devotion jealousy and self-assurance confession and its fallout

You Belong To Me

Chaka Khan

A meditation on jealousy and reassurance, sung by a partner who has just been told about some flirtation or attention from an…

jealousy possessiveness self-assurance

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

Caravan

Van Morrison

A rhapsodic, almost plotless celebration of communal joy, music, and firelight, built around a rolling gypsy caravan as an image…

communal belonging music as transcendence romantic longing

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

Philadelphia

Neil Young

A spare, hymn-like address to fear and mortality, written for Jonathan Demme's film about a man dying of AIDS-related illness…

mortality stigma and shame need for belonging

Weary

Solange

A slow, hymn-like meditation on exhaustion and self-possession, "Weary" opens the emotional register of A Seat at the Table by…

exhaustion and endurance Black womanhood and dignity mortality of power

Candy Man

Mississippi John Hurt

A rollicking Piedmont blues built entirely on a single, transparent sexual double entendre. Mississippi John Hurt uses the…

sexual innuendo folk humor itinerant male desirability

Someone To Watch Over Me

Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Vaughan's 1986 reading of the Gershwin standard treats the lyric as a meditation on wanting a specific kind of protection…

romantic longing vulnerability self-deprecating humor

Got to Be There

Chaka Khan

A devotional, almost ceremonial love song built on a single vow of presence: to be there at the first light of a relationship,…

devotion presence and belonging new beginnings

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

Spoonman

Soundgarden

A tribute to a real Seattle street performer becomes a compressed meditation on rhythm as communal salvation, with the song's…

music as ritual/salvation street performance and urban folklore community through rhythm

Secret

Seal

Seal builds this track almost entirely from a single confession — that the speaker is a hidden part of someone else's life —…

secrecy and concealment possessive love mutual belonging

A Roller Skating Jam Named "Saturdays"

De La Soul

A radio-skit framed jam that turns Saturday roller-rink culture into a loose celebration of release after the work week,…

leisure and release community ritual casual romance and its double standards

Archangel

Burial

Built almost entirely from pitch-shifted vocal samples looping a handful of phrases, this track uses repetition and vocal…

isolation longing for belonging fragile intimacy

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

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

Slippery People

Talking Heads

Talking Heads build a call-and-response gospel workout out of fragmented, almost nonsensical verses and a reassuring chorus that…

religious ecstasy vs. skepticism surrender of rational control community and reassurance

Frosty The Snowman

Ella Fitzgerald

This is Ella Fitzgerald's swinging take on the beloved children's Christmas novelty song, complete with an extra descriptive…

childhood wonder impermanence and mortality (softened) magic versus rationality

Don't Give Up

Peter Gabriel

A duet built as an argument between despair and consolation: one voice details the humiliation of joblessness and displacement,…

unemployment and economic shame loss of identity and belonging depression and suicidal ideation

California Roll

Snoop Dogg

A breezy, sun-drenched ode to Los Angeles life that runs its title's double meaning -- rolling a joint and 'going with the flow'…

California/L.A. mythology cannabis culture seduction and courtship

F.U.N.K.

Betty Davis

This is less a song than a spoken-and-sung roll call, a lineage claimed rather than argued for. Betty Davis treats funk as a…

musical lineage and inheritance Black artistic community funk as identity/blood

Party and Bulls**t

The Notorious B.I.G.

Biggie's debut single is a snapshot of Brooklyn nightlife rendered with documentary precision: the party is inseparable from the…

street life as routine violence normalized within leisure masculinity and reputation

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

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

Swingin Party

The Replacements

A wallflower's confession dressed up as a party invitation, this song uses the image of a never-ending bash to talk about…

social anxiety self-deprecation isolation within community

Doin' Time

Lana Del Rey

This is Lana Del Rey's faithful, lightly reworked cover of Sublime's 1996 track, itself a reggae-inflected reimagining of the…

betrayal and possessiveness local pride and belonging romantic disillusionment

Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

The Velvet Underground

A closing-track litany that names a small cast of the dispossessed—people with literally nothing left to their name—and turns…

poverty and dispossession resignation found community among outcasts

Glad Girls

Guided by Voices

A driving power-pop anthem that wraps a fairly bleak philosophical shrug in an ecstatic melody. The narrator addresses an…

fleeting pleasure vs. lasting meaning anti-climax and refused ceremony transience

Rock & Roll Stew

Traffic

A road-worn account of touring life, set to a loose groove that mirrors its subject's fatigue and drift. The song moves from…

touring exhaustion rootlessness alienation from ordinary life

Shot By Both Sides

Magazine

A song about ideological homelessness, built around a narrator who has infiltrated a crowd or movement only to find himself…

ideological disillusionment alienation from crowds and movements cynicism about political certainty

MIDDLE CHILD

J. Cole

J. Cole positions himself as hip-hop's bridge generation, flexing competitive bravado while pivoting into mentorship and social…

generational responsibility authenticity vs. materialism hip-hop legacy

The Story

Brandi Carlile

Brandi Carlile's title track builds a life's worth of scars and travels into a single argument: experience is meaningless…

intimacy as validation hidden suffering behind a public self devotion and destiny

Bloodbuzz Ohio

The National

A disoriented homecoming song built from fragments rather than a clear story: a man returns to Ohio broke, unmoored, and…

debt and economic anxiety displacement and homecoming emotional numbness

Give Back the Key to My Heart

Uncle Tupelo

A breakup song built around a simple exchange-of-belongings conceit, where the speaker asks for his possessions back while…

heartbreak addiction blame and self-justification

We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue

Curtis Mayfield

A sermon set to music, this track has Curtis Mayfield addressing Black America directly about internal divisions that threaten…

racial solidarity colorism self-determination

Repeater

Fugazi

Repeater sketches a first-person portrait of someone reduced by drug dependency and social judgment to a statistic, then widens…

addiction and criminalization dehumanization media detachment

History Lesson, Pt. 2

Minutemen

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

The Frozen Man

James Taylor

James Taylor spins a science-fiction folk tale about a 19th-century sailor revived after a century frozen in ice, using the…

mortality and the fear of dying twice technology versus nature alienation and displacement in time