Results for “exhaustion and burnout”

Songs

Decades

Joy Division

The closing track of Closer functions as a bleak epilogue, surveying damage already done rather than describing an unfolding…

exhaustion and burnout damaged youth ritual and repetition without release

Sea Diver

Mott the Hoople

A short, elliptical closer that reads like a benediction wrapped around exhaustion, with the singer casting himself as a diver…

exhaustion and burnout spiritual searching isolation

Could You Be the One?

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

Who Are You

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

I Know the End

Phoebe Bridgers

A road-trip through American landscapes and personal apocalypse, where the singer's private exhaustion with a relationship and a…

apocalypse (personal and national) homesickness and rootlessness burnout and exhaustion in relationships

The Gates

Aesop Rock

A dense, image-flooded piece from a concept album about visions and threshold spaces, in which the speaker positions himself at…

liminality and thresholds exhaustion/burnout distrust of moral binaries

Analyse

Thom Yorke

A meditation on modern overload, "Analyse" pairs images of endless data and abstraction with a numbing sense of exhaustion. It…

information overload alienation exhaustion

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Cat Power

Cat Power strips the Rolling Stones' garage-rock anthem of its swagger and turns it into something hushed, sad, and almost…

alienation commercial saturation exhaustion

Something More Than Free

Jason Isbell

A working-class narrator describes his days through the rhythm of manual labor, framing exhaustion and diminished expectation as…

labor and class faith as consolation resignation vs. dignity

Vienna

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

Easy on My Soul

Free

A late-period Free track that trades narrative for mantra, circling the questions of what love and life amount to before…

exhaustion self-forgiveness spiritual uncertainty

Breaker

Deerhunter

Breaker is a survivor's song, written by Bradford Cox after a near-fatal car accident, that treats staying alive as an act of…

mortality and survival fate versus agency spiritual ambivalence

Crawling Back to You

Tom Petty

A weary drifter narrates a string of disconnected, half-hallucinated road episodes while returning again and again to a single…

dependency and returning exhaustion transience/drifting

A Change Is Gonna Come

Sam Cooke

A first-person testimony of endurance under racial oppression, built around a single hope that refuses to die even as evidence…

racial injustice endurance faith and doubt

I'm So Tired

Fugazi

A stripped-down statement of exhaustion and withdrawal, delivered less as a song built on hooks than as a spoken confession set…

burnout and depletion isolation surrender/withdrawal

Wild Horses

The Rolling Stones

A ballad of exhausted devotion, where a narrator caught between wanting to leave and being unable to admits that love has…

ambivalent love emotional exhaustion freedom versus attachment

Rock & Roll Stew

Traffic

A road-worn account of touring life, set to a loose groove that mirrors its subject's fatigue and drift. The song moves from…

touring exhaustion rootlessness alienation from ordinary life

Elevate Myself

Grandaddy

A songwriter's confession of exhaustion with the mechanics of making music for effect, paired with a plainer, almost desperate…

creative burnout self-loathing and self-forgiveness authenticity vs. craft

Beast Of Burden

The Rolling Stones

A weary declaration of devotion dressed up as a refusal: the singer insists he won't be exploited or taken for granted, even as…

emotional labor in relationships self-worth and insecurity devotion disguised as protest

It Hurts Like Hell (from Waiting to Exhale - Original Soundtrack)

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin sings a ballad about love curdling into pain without dying outright, where the couple still cares but has lost…

love and suffering intertwined emotional exhaustion fear of vulnerability

All The Good Times

Angel Olsen

A breakup song that refuses the genre's usual apology, opting instead for flat, exhausted clarity about a relationship that has…

emotional exhaustion the end of a long relationship refusal of guilt

Cranes in the Sky

Solange

Solange catalogs every failed strategy for numbing an unnamed grief or unease, building a list of avoidance tactics before…

avoidance and denial emotional exhaustion consumerism as coping mechanism

Fake Plastic Trees

Radiohead

A quiet, devastating song about the exhaustion of living inauthentically, built on an extended metaphor of synthetic materials…

inauthenticity and artifice emotional exhaustion commodified relationships

A Letter to Elise

The Cure

A breakup song built on exhaustion rather than anger: the speaker addresses a partner named Elise and admits that whatever…

emotional exhaustion failed intimacy self-deception

Lover's Spit

Broken Social Scene

A hazy, minimal song built around one blunt image repeated until it loses its shock and becomes atmosphere. Broken Social Scene…

intimacy and exhaustion growing up reluctantly ambiguous consent

After the Flood

Talk Talk

An eight-minute drift of near-abstract imagery that reads more like liturgy than lyric, built from fragments about crowds,…

collective violence spiritual exhaustion biblical allusion (Cain)

Weary

Solange

A slow, hymn-like meditation on exhaustion and self-possession, "Weary" opens the emotional register of A Seat at the Table by…

exhaustion and endurance Black womanhood and dignity mortality of power

Ex-Factor

Lauryn Hill

A meditation on a love relationship built on unequal devotion, where the speaker documents her own exhaustion at loving someone…

unequal love codependency emotional exhaustion

In Your Eyes

Peter Gabriel

A love song that treats romantic devotion as a form of spiritual salvation, where another person's gaze becomes the only stable…

romantic devotion as salvation spiritual longing expressed through eros restlessness and escape

Is This It

The Strokes

The title track of The Strokes' debut is a woozy, deadpan meditation on romantic and existential exhaustion, delivered in a…

disaffection romantic dishonesty generational ennui

Love, Reign O'er Me

The Who

A single, almost liturgical plea builds around one pun -- love as both sovereign force and literal downpour -- to dramatize a…

spiritual thirst emotional exhaustion love as redemptive force

Feel

Big Star

An opening-track statement of collapse dressed as a rock song, "Feel" uses blunt repetition and a horn-driven arrangement to…

emotional exhaustion betrayal romantic ruin

Broken Clocks

SZA

SZA sketches the exhaustion of grinding through low-wage work while trying to hold onto self-possession and residual affection…

labor and survival independence vs. lingering attachment time and exhaustion

Come On Up to the House

Tom Waits

A gospel-inflected invitation song that catalogs the exhaustion and ruin of a life lived apart from grace, repeating a single…

spiritual surrender exhaustion and despair invitation and refuge

I Don't Want to Know

Fleetwood Mac

A folk-rock kiss-off built on willful avoidance: the narrator insists they won't ask why a relationship is ending, framing that…

denial as self-protection romantic exhaustion emotional withholding

Can I Sit Next to You

Spoon

A propulsive, repetition-driven track built around a simple invitation that doubles as a plea for closeness and renewal. Spoon…

longing for connection exhaustion and recovery persistence through hardship

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

Prester John

Animal Collective

A meditation on decline and letting go, framed through the legendary figure of Prester John, a mythical Christian king whose…

decay and endings myth versus reality acceptance and release

The Tipping Point

Tears for Fears

A hushed meditation on grief and the threshold between holding on and letting go, written by Roland Orzabal in the aftermath of…

grief and mourning the limits of love in the face of death liminality/thresholds

"5150"

Van Halen

"5150" is Sammy Hagar's debut lead vocal for Van Halen, a mid-tempo rock ballad about the exhausting compromises of a…

compromise and imbalance in relationships emotional exhaustion instability