Results for “denial and dissociation”

Songs

A Fond Farewell

Elliott Smith

A quiet, devastating self-elegy disguised as a song about someone else, in which the narrator uses the third person to describe…

addiction self-annihilation denial and dissociation

The Clock

Thom Yorke

A short, jittery meditation on denial in the face of looming crisis, built around the image of someone stopping or turning back…

denial time and mortality powerlessness disguised as control

Space Oddity

David Bowie

A dramatized radio transmission between mission control and an astronaut becomes an extended metaphor for detachment and…

isolation fame and alienation dissociation

Nothing Ever Happened

Deerhunter

A short, hypnotic piece about emotional numbness and passive existence, built on a repeated denial that anything of substance…

dissociation passivity time and memory

Needle In the Hay

Elliott Smith

A stark, minimally strummed song that follows a young addict on a bus and on foot toward a dealer, narrated with a flat,…

addiction dissociation self-erasure

Schizophrenia

Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia" builds a fractured character sketch around a woman whose mental illness is treated with unsettling…

mental illness and stigma unreliable perception family cruelty

No. 13 Baby

Pixies

A fragmented, image-driven portrait of a woman rendered through physical detail and refrain rather than narrative, built around…

obsessive desire fragmented portraiture exoticization/otherness

Fake Empire

The National

A quiet, waltz-time song that uses childlike, storybook imagery to describe willful escapism, both personal and political. Its…

escapism denial numbness

Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely

Hüsker Dü

A breakup song built on a contradiction: the narrator claims he wants distance from an ex-partner but keeps monitoring her…

ambivalence after a breakup emotional self-protection denial

Inside and Out

Feist

A cover of the Odyssey disco hit, reworked by Feist into a slower, torch-song lament about loving someone unfaithful and…

infidelity obsessive devotion self-erasure in love

Jack of Speed

Steely Dan

A portrait of a man consumed by amphetamine addiction, told at a cool remove through a narrator warning a woman close to him to…

addiction denial warning/escape

Pink Turns to Blue

Hüsker Dü

A quiet, devastating account of finding a partner or friend dead from an overdose, sung by Grant Hart in a flat, stunned voice…

addiction and overdose grief and helplessness loss of innocence

Levitz

Grandaddy

A quiet, defensive song about withdrawal from social life in favor of self-imposed isolation, disguised by early Grandaddy as a…

isolation avoidance technology as substitute for connection

We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin'

Simon Jäger

A minor, mid-60s pop-soul pastiche in which a narrator scrambles to talk a partner out of leaving, insisting the relationship is…

denial romantic panic possessiveness disguised as devotion

Automatic Stop

The Strokes

A brisk breakup song built around a love triangle, where the narrator's dismissiveness curdles into something closer to guilt…

romantic betrayal denial emotional detachment

Another Brick In the Wall, Pt. 3

Pink Floyd

This is the moment PinkInk's protagonist Pink completes his self-imposed isolation, rejecting comfort, chemical or human, as a…

emotional withdrawal self-destruction disguised as independence accumulated trauma

Needles and Pins

Ramones

A cover of the 1963 Jack Nitzsche/Sonny Bono pop-soul standard, reworked by the Ramones into buzzsaw punk while keeping its…

heartbreak wounded pride denial

All for Leyna

Billy Joel

A young narrator describes a destructive, one-sided infatuation using imagery of physical danger — electrified rails, hidden…

obsessive infatuation self-destruction adolescent isolation

Karma Police

Radiohead

A speaker invokes a childhood fantasy of cosmic justice to punish people who irritate him, then realizes partway through that…

petty vindictiveness corporate/institutional conformity self-recognition and guilt

Sola Sistim

Underworld

Sola Sistim is less a narrative song than a mantra built from fragments of self-description, cycling through images of fragility…

fragmentation of self fragility and beauty coexisting repetition as ritual

Can't Find My Heart

Broken Social Scene

A hushed, hypnotic plea built almost entirely from conditional clauses and a repeated invitation to go home, undercut by a…

emotional numbness conditional intimacy self-doubt

Six Different Ways

The Cure

A whimsical, slightly unsettled song about fractured self-presentation, built around the conceit of six versions of oneself or…

fragmented identity dishonesty and self-deception romantic multiplicity

Remember to Breathe

Sturgill Simpson

A menacing, minimalist track built around predator imagery and a chorus that reads as either seduction or something far darker.…

predation and violence dissociation internal darkness/duality

Street Halo

Burial

Street Halo strips vocal content down to a handful of phrases looped and smeared into near-abstraction, functioning less as…

isolation yearning urban nocturne

Sugar Kane

Sonic Youth

A hazy, repetition-driven love song built on a nickname (borrowed from Marilyn Monroe's character in 'Some Like It Hot') that…

idealized desire surface glamour vs. hidden unease repetition as devotion

#3

Aphex Twin

An untitled, numbered ambient piece from Aphex Twin's largely wordless second Selected Ambient Works volume, this track works…

dissociation interior space repetition and stasis

Too Much

Sufjan Stevens

An electronic overture to The Age of Adz that stages emotional inadequacy as a kind of system overload: the narrator confesses…

emotional inadequacy self-doubt overwhelm/excess

Girl

Beck

A deceptively sunny, surf-pop melody carries lyrics fixated on decay, poison, and predatory obsession. Beck stitches together…

toxic obsession decay and death imagery surface beauty versus rot underneath

Kanga Roo

Big Star

A woozy, half-collapsed love song built from disconnected snapshots rather than a story, drifting through washes of noise and…

fractured attention desire as disorientation voyeurism and observation

Opus 40

Mercury Rev

A hazy, half-narrated vignette about a woman in crisis, rendered with the dreamlike blur that defines Deserter's Songs. Mercury…

self-harm and survival emotional isolation dissociation

She's Lost Control

Joy Division

A stark, clinical account of watching someone lose command of their own body and mind, built around a mechanical repeated…

loss of control epilepsy/illness powerlessness of the observer

Biscuit

Portishead

A woozy, disorienting piece built from a sample-heavy trip-hop bed, this song circles a wound rather than narrating it directly.…

emotional self-protection addiction as metaphor for desire voicelessness

Funeral

Phoebe Bridgers

A young singer confronts grief secondhand—preparing to sing at a funeral for a peer—while narrating her own chronic depression…

depression grief and guilt dissociation

Elephant

Jason Isbell

A narrator sits with a dying friend in a bar, trading jokes and old songs to avoid naming what's killing her. The song is a…

death and denial friendship vs. desire gallows humor

Mysterons

Portishead

Mysterons opens Dummy with a woozy, disorienting address to someone caught between denial and defiance. Beth Gibbons' vocal…

denial and repression guilt and judgment futility of desire

The Eraser

Thom Yorke

A fractured, glitchy meditation on trying to erase someone from consciousness only to find them multiplying under the pressure…

denial and obsession the futility of erasure suspicion and manipulation

Shadow of a Doubt

Sonic Youth

A chance meeting on a train dissolves into a hazy, possibly murderous conspiracy between the narrator and a stranger, with the…

complicity and denial desire as danger dream logic

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

The Smiths

A breakneck, self-aware confession that treats romantic disappointment as a repeating accident nobody can prevent. The title's…

self-repeating heartbreak denial and accusation masochism and self-punishment

Ain't Got No Haters

Ice Cube

A boast track built entirely around denial and inversion: the narrator insists he has no enemies while spending every verse…

self-mythologizing wealth as armor longevity and legacy

Billie Jean

Michael Jackson

A first-person account of a man accused of fathering a child by a woman he insists was never his lover, told as a paranoid,…

paranoia and fame denial and guilt seduction and manipulation