Results for “complicity versus resistance”

Songs

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

Corona

Minutemen

A terse, two-minute sketch that moves from a blunt political indictment of poverty and inherited injustice to a single, almost…

economic inequality inherited injustice the US-Mexico border region

Pancho and Lefty

Townes Van Zandt

A ballad about a Mexican bandit's death and the shadowy figure who may have betrayed him, told with the flat affect of folklore…

betrayal and complicity myth-making versus truth exile and diminishment

Waiting Room

Fugazi

A song built almost entirely on tension between stasis and forward motion, using the image of a waiting room to talk about…

patience vs. paralysis self-discipline resistance to passivity

Freddie's Dead

Curtis Mayfield

A eulogy that refuses to sentimentalize its subject, using the death of a small-time hustler named Freddie as a blunt instrument…

addiction and exploitation urban poverty complicity and blame

Rock the Casbah

The Clash

The Clash build a mock-Orientalist fable in which a ruler bans music and the population -- eventually even his own military --…

censorship and authority cultural resistance satire of power

Kool Thing

Sonic Youth

Kim Gordon plays a seductive, sardonic call-and-response with a fetishized male icon, using come-ons and spoken interruptions to…

fetishization of Black masculinity gender and power celebrity worship

You're the One for Me (feat. Joss Stone)

Smokey Robinson

A straightforward duet declaration of romantic certainty and fidelity, built around a duet pairing Smokey Robinson's classic…

romantic devotion fidelity certainty in love

The Weekend

SZA

SZA narrates an affair with candor rather than shame, positioning herself as the intermittent, exciting alternative to a primary…

infidelity and complicity self-worth vs. self-sabotage possessiveness and jealousy

That's When I Reach For My Revolver

Mission of Burma

A litany of disillusionment — with inherited heroes, parental teaching, and a friend's hollow ambition — builds toward a chorus…

disillusionment loss of faith/idealism generational inheritance

Superwoman

Gladys Knight

A domestic monologue in which a woman catalogs the daily labor she performs for a partner who has grown cold and inattentive,…

emotional labor and domestic care the myth of female self-sufficiency withdrawal and neglect in a relationship

Change Gonna Come

Otis Redding

Otis Redding's rendition of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem transforms a carefully wrought protest song into a raw,…

racial injustice and endurance faith versus doubt family and disappointment

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen

A three-part meditation in waltz time that moves from a woman by a river, to Christ walking on water, and back to the woman…

erotic love as spiritual apprehension faith and doubt surrender to a guide

Break On Through (To The Other Side)

The Doors

A driving, insistent rock song built almost entirely around one imperative: push past the limits of ordinary perception and…

transcendence and liminality desire and intoxication confinement versus freedom

Fight the Power

Public Enemy

A protest anthem built as a dance record: Chuck D argues that political consciousness and Black pride are things you build in…

Black pride and self-definition institutional racism who gets to be a national hero

Lola

The Kinks

A naive young man recounts his disorienting, thrilling encounter with Lola, a nightclub companion whose gender identity…

gender fluidity and identity sexual awakening innocence versus experience

Bring On the Dancing Horses

Echo & the Bunnymen

A moody, image-driven post-punk lyric that trades narrative clarity for atmosphere, cycling through fragmented character…

emotional self-protection turning to cruelty isolation and alienation artifice versus authenticity

Didn't Cha Know

Erykah Badu

A meditation on getting lost, both literally and existentially, that refuses to resolve into a tidy moral. Badu treats…

self-doubt and self-trust fate versus choice spiritual wandering

My Little Town (with Art Garfunkel)

Paul Simon

A reunion single from Simon and Garfunkel that reads as a bitter anti-nostalgia song, dismantling the idea of small-town…

small-town disillusionment loss of faith suppressed violence

Once in a Lifetime

Talking Heads

A preacher-like voice addresses an unnamed "you," cataloguing the accidental furniture of a middle-class life and then asking…

mid-life disorientation the unearned life time as drift

Wade In the Water

The Staple Singers

This is the Staple Singers' rendition of the traditional African American spiritual, built almost entirely on call-and-response…

deliverance and salvation collective faith and community crossing over / transition between states

Damaged Goods

Gang of Four

Gang of Four fuse a breakup song with the language of consumer transaction, treating a relationship as a defective purchase to…

commodification of relationships desire versus love alienation under capitalism

Superstition

Stevie Wonder

A funk sermon against magical thinking. Over one of the most recognizable clavinet riffs in popular music, Wonder catalogues…

superstition and magical thinking the cost of ignorance fear as self-fulfilling prophecy

You've Got a Friend In Me

Randy Newman

Written for the animated film 'Toy Story,' this is a plain-spoken pledge of loyalty from one companion to another, stripped of…

loyalty reassurance humility versus devotion

Pictures of You

The Cure

A meditation on grief and memory in which a narrator clings to photographs of a lost lover, unsure whether the images preserve…

grief and loss memory versus reality idealization of the dead or departed

Starship Trooper

Yes

A three-part suite that moves from pastoral invocation through cosmic address to a mantra-like affirmation of shared awakening.…

cosmic consciousness nature as spiritual messenger transmission of hidden knowledge

Flagship

Jason Isbell

Isbell uses a fading hotel as an extended metaphor for a long marriage at risk of going stale, watching an older couple's silent…

marital complacency the labor of sustaining love aging and decline

Veronica

Elvis Costello

A deceptively bouncy pop song about an elderly woman lost inside dementia, watched by relatives and caregivers who can no longer…

aging and memory loss identity erasure institutional care/neglect

YYZ

Rush

YYZ is an instrumental showcase built around the Morse-code rhythm for Toronto's Pearson International Airport identifier, which…

homecoming and travel technical virtuosity Canadian identity

Long Way Home

Tom Waits

A wandering man confesses to a lover that he's constitutionally unable to take the straight path home, in love or in life. Waits…

restlessness and wanderlust romantic unreliability the tension between domesticity and freedom

Can't Get Enough

Bad Company

This is a lean, riff-driven blues-rock strut built almost entirely around a single confession of desire repeated until it…

desire and appetite masculine bravado transactional love

Until You Came Into My Life

Ann Peebles

A gratitude song built on a rescue narrative: the singer describes emerging from despair into a redemptive love, framing the…

romantic salvation gratitude rebirth/renewal