Stevie Wonder
A funk vamp built on a single clavinet riff turns a catalog of folk superstitions into an argument against irrational belief.…
superstition and irrational belief fear versus knowledge self-deception
Vashti Bunyan
A brief, hushed instrumental-scale miniature that treats a single autumn day as a small ceremony, pairing seasonal images with a…
seasonal change rural pastoral life folklore and superstition
Howlin’ Wolf
A blues narrator insists he doesn't believe in superstition while reciting a litany of folk omens with dead seriousness, letting…
superstition and folk belief denial versus behavior impending violence or death
Seal
Seal's version of the Eddie Floyd/Steve Cropper soul standard is a straightforward cover that leans into the song's original…
superstition and fear of loss romantic intensity gratitude in love
Run the Jewels
A boastful, mythmaking duo track in which El-P and Killer Mike cast themselves as outlaw legends -- part supervillain, part folk…
self-mythologizing violence as performance drug use and excess
Chaka Khan
A dance-floor invocation rather than a story song: a woman prepares to go out and declares, through sheer repetition, that this…
self-affirmation ritual and preparation claiming pleasure
The xx
A breakup song built on the gap between assumed permanence and sudden loss, where the narrator realizes too late that…
complacency in love loss of control desire versus resentment
Creedence Clearwater Revival
A blues-rock talisman song in which the narrator feels dogged by an ominous, unshakeable premonition of death even as good…
superstition and fate paranoia fear of death
Fleetwood Mac
A drifting, unhurried meditation on the pleasure of unexplained phenomena, built from a series of loosely connected anecdotes…
the appeal of the unexplained imagination versus proof folklore and hearsay
Robert Johnson
A restless, hunted man narrates his own flight from unnamed pursuit, mixing weather imagery, hoodoo folk magic, and longing for…
persecution and pursuit restlessness/displacement folk magic and superstition
A restless, fragmented blues built around the image of pursuit — weather, hoodoo, and dread all fused into a single sense of…
pursuit and dread restlessness/displacement folk magic and superstition
Soundgarden
A tribute to a real Seattle street performer becomes a compressed meditation on rhythm as communal salvation, with the song's…
music as ritual/salvation street performance and urban folklore community through rhythm
Rush
A meditation on chance and fate dressed up as a gambling metaphor, Rush's title track argues that existence has no grand design…
randomness vs. determinism mortality and suffering free will within constraint
Little Feat
This is a good-humored tall tale that dresses up dancing and music as medical treatment, casting a mysterious small-town figure…
music as healing Southern folklore/tall tale communal ritual
PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey builds a self-mythologizing torch song out of biblical and folkloric imagery, casting devotion as a form of damnation.…
obsessive devotion blasphemy and sacrifice mythic self-invention
Genesis
Genesis take the folkloric Squonk—a creature of Pennsylvania legend so ashamed of its own ugliness that it weeps constantly and…
shame and self-loathing the cruelty of pursuit despair and self-destruction
Todd Rundgren
Rundgren takes an old proverb about a chain of small failures leading to catastrophe and grafts it onto a personal confession…
loneliness cause and effect personal responsibility
Traffic
A short, incantatory piece built almost entirely from pastoral and folkloric imagery, this bonus track functions less as a…
freedom and journey unity with nature unanswered questions