Elvis Costello
A deceptively sunny, Beach Boys-styled pop song that uses its bright surf-rock arrangement as a Trojan horse for a scathing…
media and celebrity culture environmental destruction disillusionment with 60s idealism
Yes
A high-gloss opener to Yes's commercial breakthrough album, this song trades the band's earlier cosmic mysticism for a leaner,…
chance and fate self-deception versus self-repair resilience amid chaos
T. Rex
A gentle, string-laced glam ballad that compresses an entire life into the single gesture of dancing, from birth to death and…
life cycle and mortality innocence versus self-consciousness dance as metaphor for being alive
Wu‐Tang Clan
Two verses from Raekwon and Inspectah Deck lay out parallel autobiographies of poverty, hustling, and incarceration in…
economic desperation and survival the school-to-prison pipeline urban poverty in New York
Carly Simon
Carly Simon splices the nursery rhyme about the persistent spider into the title track's refrain from her own 'Coming Around…
resilience cyclical hope romantic disappointment
Air
A woozy, vocoder-warped taunt built almost entirely out of one phrase, "Sexy Boy" pokes at masculine vanity and celebrity…
vanity and self-image celebrity and consumerism irony versus seduction
Mos Def
A narrative rap unfolding like a short film in three scenes, tracking a pursuit-and-fallout romance with a woman the narrator…
desire versus discernment the performance of masculinity and vulnerability cynicism eroded by intimacy
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
Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson's version strips a bubblegum pop hit down to voice and guitar, exposing lyrics about romantic manipulation that…
manipulation dressed as innocence performance versus sincerity gender and blame
Talking Heads
A household turns a newborn into a novelty toy, with siblings and cooing relatives conspiring to keep him awake past his bedtime…
family and domesticity possession and objectification innocence versus adult impulse
The Supremes
A pastoral love song built on borrowed classical melody (adapted from a Baroque minuet traditionally attributed to Bach,…
idealized romance nature as backdrop for love devotion and permanence
The Beach Boys
This is a straightforward cover of the 1950 novelty Christmas standard, delivered by The Beach Boys with their signature vocal…
childhood wonder impermanence seasonal magic
A slow, mournful address to a woman the singer once loved, mourning a change in her that he can't name directly. It closes Pet…
loss of innocence nostalgia disillusionment
Nick Drake
An opening-track confession that traces a single life arc—innocence, vitality, and eventual depletion—in four spare stanzas. The…
decline and aging loss of innocence spiritual exhaustion
Patsy Cline
A simple, wistful song built on a single wish: that the singer could trade her adult, disillusioned view of the world for a…
lost innocence nostalgia for childhood disillusionment with adulthood
Mission of Burma
A post-punk anthem about disillusionment and the impulse toward violent or drastic rupture as a response to betrayed idealism.…
disillusionment loss of innocence generational inheritance
Talk Talk
"Eden" opens Spirit of Eden with a fragmentary, hymn-like meditation on loss and belief, using biblical imagery of Eden and…
loss of innocence religious doubt and faith death and rebirth
New Order
A euphoric-sounding synth-pop anthem that turns out to be about addiction and the erosion of innocence, dressed in language so…
addiction and dependency loss of childhood innocence denial and self-deception
Neutral Milk Hotel
An opening track that fuses childhood memory with domestic violence and adolescent sexual awakening, all delivered in a run-on,…
childhood innocence and its loss domestic dysfunction sexual awakening
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
Alison Krauss
A young narrator rehearses her own exit from a doomed relationship, arguing herself into leaving before she can be hurt again.…
self-protection versus vulnerability romantic disillusionment pride as armor
Echo & the Bunnymen
This is a self-titled album's late, throwaway-sounding track built almost entirely from paired nouns and nonsense refrains…
nonsense/wordplay power and submission repetition as meaning
Joni Mitchell
A three-part meditation that uses clouds, love, and life as parallel case studies in disillusionment, each verse moving from…
disillusionment the limits of experience loss of innocence
Brandi Carlile
A meditation on a friendship or relationship curdling under the weight of time, told through the image of good wine spoiling…
loss of innocence decay of intimacy nostalgia
Arcade Fire
An anthem built from a children's chant that mourns the loss of childhood wonder while trying to reclaim it. The song moves from…
loss of innocence aging and emotional numbness mortality
The National
A song about the numbing conformity of adult professional life, addressed in second person to someone (and by extension…
conformity self-alienation loss of innocence
Neil Young
A spare, hymn-like address to fear and mortality, written for Jonathan Demme's film about a man dying of AIDS-related illness…
mortality stigma and shame need for belonging
The Kinks
A wide-eyed young narrator recounts a night at a Soho club where he meets a striking, ambiguous figure named Lola, and the song…
gender ambiguity sexual awakening urban nightlife
Feist
A deceptively bouncy pop song about the wreckage left by adolescent romance, where a childlike counting hook masks lyrics about…
lost innocence romantic disillusionment nostalgia
Lorde
A song about the terror of leaving adolescence, built from a single house party that becomes a stand-in for the whole passage…
fear of aging nostalgia for childhood female friendship
Chet Baker
This is an instrumental reading of the Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg standard, recorded by Chet Baker on his 1962 comeback album Chet…
longing exile and return faded innocence
Sandy Denny
This is a traditional British/Irish folk ballad given a spare, haunting reading by Sandy Denny, in which a woman recounts…
seduction and betrayal female shame and defiance broken promises
Van Morrison
A rapturous, almost weightless love song built from a single sustained feeling rather than a plot. Van Morrison strings together…
romantic rapture renewal and lost time nature as emotional mirror
The Shins
A hushed, melodically sweet song about romantic regret and a wish to shed adult disappointment carries lyrics that are far more…
regret and self-recrimination longing for innocence small-town disillusionment
The Cure
A jittery funk-pop novelty from The Cure's most eclectic album, built on a repeated image of lightning strikes that destroy…
destruction as pleasure compulsive repetition escape and displacement
Cat Stevens
A gentle folk-rock lament that questions the cost of technological and industrial 'progress' by asking a simple, unanswerable…
environmental destruction industrial progress vs. nature loss of childhood innocence
Florence + the Machine
An opening confession about adolescent anorexia expands into a wider meditation on addiction, performance, and the human need to…
eating disorders and body control addiction and substitution performance versus intimacy
Fleetwood Mac
A drifting, unhurried meditation on the pleasure of unexplained phenomena, built from a series of loosely connected anecdotes…
the appeal of the unexplained imagination versus proof folklore and hearsay
Angel Olsen
A driving, garage-pop declaration of romantic persistence, in which the narrator refuses to let a faltering relationship end…
romantic persistence refusal to quit desire versus communication
Spoon
A song about staying put — emotionally and literally — inside a routine that has worn thin, and choosing devotion anyway. The…
endurance of routine devotion as choice stasis versus escape