Gregory Porter
A gospel-inflected ballad that imagines a king or messiah figure rejecting the pomp prepared for his arrival in favor of the…
religious allegory compassion for the marginalized critique of materialism
A Tribe Called Quest
A Tribe Called Quest opens their comeback album with a song that fuses street-level survival talk with a chorus that mimics the…
racism and xenophobia economic precarity media distortion
Willie Nelson
A Christmas song that undercuts its own cheer: a street vendor selling gift-wrap and pencils becomes a fixture the holiday crowd…
isolation amid crowds commercialism vs. compassion invisibility of the poor
Kacey Musgraves
A catalog of no-win social judgments builds into a plainspoken anthem for living by one's own compass rather than trying to…
double standards sexual and social freedom religious hypocrisy
Moby
This is Moby's spare, half-sung meditation built around a repeating road-trip refrain that cycles through the four points of the…
urban danger friendship and loyalty hope versus fear