Results for “folk wisdom/proverb”

Songs

The Fall

This is a plainspoken country-flavored heartbreak lament built around a single proverb-like refrain about foolishness and…

self-deception romantic betrayal folk wisdom/proverb

Creedence Clearwater Revival

CCR's version of this traditional folk-blues song reworks a prison-labor lament into swampy rock, keeping the old imagery of…

incarceration and forced labor longing for deliverance folk mythology / superstition

Laura Marling

This is a cover of a mid-1960s folk standard, sung here in Laura Marling's plainspoken, weary register, about the impossibility…

itinerancy and escape addiction as self-medication romantic longing and loss

Fairport Convention

This is the Fairport Convention arrangement of the old English/Scottish murder ballad about an adulterous tryst between a…

class transgression sexual desire and consequence honor and violence

Stevie Wonder

A funk sermon against magical thinking. Over one of the most recognizable clavinet riffs in popular music, Wonder catalogues…

superstition and magical thinking the cost of ignorance fear as self-fulfilling prophecy

Joni Mitchell

A three-part meditation in which the speaker sets a naive, image-drunk way of seeing against a disenchanted one, then refuses to…

disillusionment the limits of knowledge aging and changed perception

Bert Jansch

This is a traditional Appalachian song (with roots in older British/American folk balladry) about a woman driven out of a…

exile and social rejection itinerancy gendered outsider status

Led Zeppelin

A slow-building folk-rock epic that follows a mysterious woman convinced she can purchase spiritual transcendence, using her as…

spiritual materialism vs. authentic enlightenment ambiguity of language and meaning pastoral/mythic imagery as escape

Joan Baez

Baez's rendition of this traditional folk ballad tells the story of a woman ruined by a New Orleans house of ill repute, framing…

ruin and moral downfall warning and cautionary storytelling regret

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy's suite-like tribute to Irish identity, stitching together folk balladry, mythic invocation, and a rapid-fire…

Irish cultural inheritance myth and storytelling exile and longing for home