Results for “disillusionment with adulthood”

Songs

If I Could See The World (Through The Eyes Of A Child)

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

1234

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

Both Sides Now

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

That's When I Reach For My Revolver

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

Caroline, No

The Beach Boys

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

Bring On the Dancing Horses

Echo & the Bunnymen

A moody, image-driven piece built more from atmosphere than narrative, cataloguing a set of broken or hollow figures before…

emotional guardedness disillusionment longing for redemption

Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

Creedence Clearwater Revival

A deceptively sunny-sounding song built on an unresolved paradox: rain falling from a clear sky. Beneath the gentle melody sits…

impending doom cyclical hardship confusion between calm and crisis

Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan

A six-minute takedown song that watches a once-privileged woman lose every social prop that made her feel untouchable. Dylan…

fall from privilege social exposure and humiliation freedom through loss

Shot By Both Sides

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

I'm Amazed

My Morning Jacket

A falsetto-driven meditation built entirely from the phrase 'I'm amazed,' the song lists private tenderness alongside public…

media distrust personal devotion vs. public decay spiritual/moral drift

Foolish Heart

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

Ballad of Mott the Hoople

Mott the Hoople

This is Mott the Hoople's own epitaph and origin story rolled into one, a self-mythologizing autobiography written at the exact…

rock stardom as self-destruction nostalgia and regret band identity and mythology

Doin' Time

Lana Del Rey

This is Lana Del Rey's faithful, lightly reworked cover of Sublime's 1996 track, itself a reggae-inflected reimagining of the…

betrayal and possessiveness local pride and belonging romantic disillusionment

The Thrill Is Gone

B.B. King

B.B. King turns a breakup into a slow, dignified reckoning, using a repeated confession -- the thrill is gone -- as both wound…

disillusionment in love emotional resignation reclaiming dignity after betrayal

Angel From Montgomery

John Prine

A young man's ventriloquized portrait of an aging woman worn down by a marriage and a life that never became what she imagined.…

aging and disillusionment domestic entrapment lost youth

Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay

Otis Redding

A drifter sits by the water in San Francisco, watching boats and tides pass while he takes stock of a life that has stalled out.…

displacement stasis and drift loneliness

Save Yourself

Sharon Van Etten

A quietly seething breakup song in which the narrator sees through a partner's self-serving reassurances and names the pattern…

emotional self-protection disillusionment in love fading intimacy

Look At Miss Ohio

Gillian Welch

A short, circling song about a young woman stalling against the pressure to settle down—marriage, respectability, the expected…

deferred adulthood female autonomy vs. domestic expectation escape and mobility

Helplessness Blues

Fleet Foxes

A young narrator wrestles with the individualism he was raised on, wondering whether meaning comes from being special or from…

individualism vs. collectivism disillusionment with authority search for purpose

Dissolved Girl

Massive Attack

A stripped, weary meditation on romantic inertia, sung by Sara Jézéquel (credited as Sarah Jay) with Robert Del Naja's added…

emotional numbness romantic dependency self-dissolution

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

Hellacious Acres

Kris Kristofferson

A carnival-barker satire that reimagines hell as a theme park, complete with billboards, ticket lines, and celebrity attractions…

moral corruption as entertainment consumerism and commodified sin celebrity and infamy

London Calling

The Clash

A blitzkrieg of apocalyptic headlines delivered as a radio broadcast, "London Calling" imagines a city besieged by nuclear…

nuclear anxiety urban decay disillusionment with youth culture

New Slang

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

Kyoto

Phoebe Bridgers

A road-trip-slash-tour-diary song that uses the disorientation of foreign travel to circle around an unresolved relationship…

estrangement from a parent disillusionment with travel/escape ambivalence and self-contradiction

Under the Pressure

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

Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)

Sly & Robbie

This is a cover of the classic Doris Day standard, reframed by Sly and Robbie's rhythm-section sensibility rather than by any…

fate and acceptance generational transmission of wisdom the unknowability of the future

It Ain't Me Babe

Joan Baez

A Bob Dylan composition performed here by Joan Baez, the song is a firm, almost gentle refusal of an idealized love that demands…

refusal of idealized love autonomy versus self-erasure disillusionment with romantic fantasy

Wild

Spoon

A restless meditation on the pull between domesticated, image-managed adulthood and some untamed force outside it. The song…

restlessness under routine authenticity vs. performance longing for freedom