Sleater‐Kinney
A comeback anthem that treats survival as a physical, almost surgical process — a body being stitched back together and forced…
reinvention and self-repair fame and visibility collective anxiety/dread
Death Cab for Cutie
A breakup song built around the image of a photograph's frame—one person edged out as the other steps into visibility and…
dissolution of a relationship fame/visibility eclipsing intimacy memory and forgetting
Arcade Fire
A synth-driven anthem that turns confessional details about body image, self-harm, and suicidal ideation into a critique of a…
self-loathing and body image fame as false salvation numbness and dissociation
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
David Bowie
A dramatized radio transmission between mission control and an astronaut becomes an extended metaphor for detachment and…
isolation fame and alienation dissociation
The Kinks
The Kinks revive Lola from their earlier hit only to trap her in a nervous, self-lacerating anthem about anxiety and…
paranoia and mental illness self-sabotage fame and surveillance anxiety
Guided By Voices
A cryptic, riddling GBV track that uses Fats Domino's real-life survival of Hurricane Katrina as an emblem of resilience, then…
survival and resilience flood/water imagery as threat and purification fame versus obscurity
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
Talib Kweli
Talib Kweli uses the physical sensation of depth—gravity, fire, ice, the ocean floor—as a metaphor for both emotional lows and…
authenticity vs. celebrity struggle and resilience artistic integrity
The Strokes
An opening-track statement of exhaustion and detachment, "What Ever Happened?" pairs a jittery, almost panicked vocal delivery…
desire for erasure/anonymity romantic withdrawal cultural anxiety and authenticity
Röyksopp
A hazy meditation on visibility and distance between two people who are moving through the same landscape without ever truly…
invisibility and unrecognition distance within closeness self-mythologizing
Elliott Smith
A quiet, corrosive warning song addressed to someone being courted by fame and the music industry, personified as a seductive…
temptation and corruption the music industry as predator loss of autonomy
Common
Common builds a triumphant victory-lap track around a sampled ELO hook, using the sky as a running metaphor for ascent,…
ambition realized spiritual gratitude celebrity and success
Danny Brown
A three-part posse-cut style flex track (featuring Ab-Soul and Kendrick Lamar on the full version, though only Danny Brown's…
success and its authenticity hedonism as armor class ascension from poverty