Results for “cosmic/natural imagery as emotional scale”

Songs

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Roberta Flack

A slow, hymn-like ballad that traces one relationship's progress through three ascending intimacies: first sight, first kiss,…

awakening love cosmic/natural imagery as emotional scale vulnerability and surrender

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

Feeling Good (From "the Roar of the Greasepaint")

Nina Simone

A catalogue of natural images -- birds, rivers, blossoms, stars -- builds into a declaration of personal liberation and renewal.…

renewal freedom self-possession

You Keep Me Hanging On

The Supremes

A woman demands her own release from a dead relationship, addressing an ex who refuses to fully let go even though he no longer…

emotional limbo asymmetry of feeling demand for autonomy

Distant Lover

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning soul lament in which the narrator addresses an absent lover across an unspecified distance, moving from tender…

romantic longing separation and absence memory and nostalgia

Karma Police

Radiohead

A petulant office-worker fantasy in which the speaker summons an imaginary cosmic police force to arrest people who irritate him…

petty vindictiveness bureaucratic and corporate servitude dehumanisation

Can We Pretend

Bill Withers

A wounded plea for a fresh start with a partner whose affection is unreliable, built almost entirely around one conditional…

conditional love emotional ambivalence denial as coping

Family Affair

Sly & Robbie

This is a cover/reinterpretation of Sly Stone's meditation on family bonds, performed here by the Jamaican rhythm duo Sly and…

family loyalty versus individual difference the contradictions of intimacy emotional paralysis

Sinnerman

Nina Simone

A traditional African-American spiritual rebuilt by Simone into a ten-minute chase sequence: a sinner runs from judgment on the…

judgment day futile flight refused sanctuary

Tomorrow Is a Long Time

Sandy Denny

A cover of Dylan's early ballad, rendered here as a hushed meditation on longing and self-erasure in absence. Sandy Denny's…

longing and absence loss of self idealized love

April Come She Will

Simon Jäger

A miniature allegory that maps the arc of a love affair onto the months of a calendar year, from spring arrival to autumn…

impermanence the natural cycle as metaphor for love loss and memory

Strange Fruit

Billie Holiday

A three-stanza protest song about the lynching of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South, built on a single sustained metaphor:…

racial terror and lynching the corruption of Southern pastoral imagery the body as evidence

Paradise

John Prine

Prine elegizes a real Kentucky town erased by strip mining, using a child's plea to his father as the frame for a broader story…

environmental destruction loss of home/place industrial 'progress' vs. nature

Jim Cain

Bill Callahan

Bill Callahan opens his own name into someone else's -- the title alludes to the noir novelist James M. Cain -- and uses that…

self-transformation the writing process as detective work impermanence and mortality

The Kiss

Judee Sill

Judee Sill's 'The Kiss' fuses erotic and devotional language until they become indistinguishable, imagining spiritual union as a…

sacred and profane love transcendence death as release

Tear-Stained Letter

Richard Thompson

A wry, uptempo account of a breakup told from the battered-but-wisecracking side, where physical comedy stands in for emotional…

romantic aftermath toxic love masculine bravado as deflection

Look At Miss Ohio

Gillian Welch

A short, circling ballad about a young woman fleeing domestic expectation for a taste of freedom before she settles into the…

deferred responsibility female autonomy vs. convention escape and fantasy

Blues Run the Game

Laura Marling

This is a cover of a mid-1960s folk standard, sung here in Laura Marling's plainspoken, weary register, about the impossibility…

itinerancy and escape addiction as self-medication romantic longing and loss

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

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