Results for “cracked heroism”

Songs

Echos Myron

Guided by Voices

A scrappy anthem of self-mythologizing rock stardom that keeps deflating its own grandeur mid-sentence. Robert Pollard builds…

ambition and self-doubt the falseness of grand narratives small-scale triumph

Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy's most explicitly Irish statement, a medley that stitches together fragments of traditional ballads with a…

Irish identity and heritage oral tradition and storytelling myth and heroism

Long Legged Larry

Aesop Rock

A children's-book superhero story about a heroic frog who rescues people (and a poodle) from peril, delivered with a straight…

heroism as ritual childlike wonder absurdism

Adelita

Nat King Cole

This is Nat King Cole's rendition of "La Adelita," one of the best-known corridos of the Mexican Revolution, sung from the…

devotion and possessiveness war and mortality folk heroism

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1

The Flaming Lips

A bubblegum-sounding sci-fi fable about a karate-fighting hero named Yoshimi doubles as an oblique meditation on fear, faith,…

fear of death/destruction faith in another person childlike wonder vs. adult dread

About the Weather

Magazine

A song about emotional unpredictability disguised as a meteorological report, where the weather becomes a running metaphor for a…

emotional volatility detachment as coping mechanism control and helplessness

Heroes

Peter Gabriel

This is Peter Gabriel's orchestral cover of the Bowie/Eno classic, stripped of its original rock momentum and rebuilt as a slow,…

fleeting love defiance against circumstance division and barriers

Best Life

Danny Brown

A survival narrative dressed as a celebration anthem, where the hook's carefree repetition masks a hard-won philosophy forged in…

survivor's guilt and gratitude carpe diem under duress poverty and the drug trade

Snooze

SZA

SZA turns devotion into a kind of hyper-vigilance, pledging extreme loyalty and even violence for a lover while the…

obsessive devotion insecurity masked as confidence loyalty and self-sacrifice

I'm the Man Who Murdered Love

XTC

XTC's Andy Partridge stages a mock-confession, casting himself as an assassin who has killed off the very idea of romantic love…

disillusionment with romance performance of confession cynicism as self-defense

One More Try

George Michael

A wary, self-protective ballad about a narrator who has been burned by intimacy and now treats love as a dangerous lesson he'd…

fear of vulnerability emotional self-protection power imbalance in relationships

Say No Go

De La Soul

De La Soul takes on the crack epidemic of the late 1980s not through gritty street reportage but through wordplay, sampling, and…

addiction and its generational cost complicity versus resistance community warning and moral instruction