Results for “creative burnout”

Songs

Japanese Breakfast

A song about the strange hollowness of creative success, framed as an argument between two voices: one asking triumphant…

creative burnout impostor syndrome the cost of public adoration

Billy Joel

A weary older voice counsels a driven young person to ease off the throttle, arguing that ambition pursued without patience…

ambition versus patience fear of mortality burnout

Billy Joel

A comeback single that reads as both a reconciliation ballad and a piece of career autobiography, built around the plea of…

reconciliation neglect and regret time and lateness

The War on Drugs

An eight-minute opener that treats emotional exhaustion as a kind of weather system, with Adam Granduciel repeating fragments of…

burnout and psychological strain instability in relationships disillusionment with promised futures

Animal Collective

A dreamlike wish-song built around water as an image of fluidity, ease, and self-erasure, drifting through loosely connected…

desire for formlessness/transformation mortality and impermanence creativity and artistic longing

Hüsker Dü

A weary interrogation of a relationship on the edge of collapse, built almost entirely from a single repeated question and a…

emotional exhaustion concealment and self-deception ambivalence in love

The Who

A drink-and-punch-soaked night in London becomes the occasion for a much larger identity crisis, as the narrator wakes…

identity crisis self-destruction and burnout urban alienation

Stevie Wonder

A new father's unguarded celebration of his infant daughter's birth, structured as a series of rhetorical questions that answer…

fatherhood and new life gratitude love as creative force

Joni Mitchell

A meditation on romantic infatuation that refuses to resolve into either full escape or full surrender, built around the central…

romantic obsession self-sufficiency amid heartbreak creative identity as refuge

The Roots

The Roots' reworking of Cody ChesnuTT's song blends literal talk of casual sex and impregnation with a metaphor for musical…

legacy and lineage sex as creative metaphor authenticity vs. commercialism

Elton John

A shy, broke narrator confesses he has nothing to offer a loved one but a plainly written love song, and the song's own modesty…

romantic devotion inadequacy and humility the inability to articulate feeling