Results for “frustration and exasperation”

Songs

Frustration

The Mamas & the Papas

"Frustration" is a brief instrumental interlude on The Mamas & the Papas' 1967 album Deliver, standing apart from the group's…

tension release interlude as structure

Frustration

Soft Cell

Soft Cell strip away the glamour of their usual electro-pop persona to inhabit a suburban everyman cataloguing the dull…

suburban alienation masculine ennui consumerist conformity

Hot n Cold

Katy Perry

A breakup anthem built entirely on a single conceit: the partner as a creature of contradiction, swinging between extremes with…

emotional inconsistency toxic relationship cycles frustration and exasperation

Run, Run, Run

Ann Peebles

Ann Peebles delivers a frustrated ultimatum to a partner stuck in aimless repetition, warning that her patience is running out.…

frustration with stagnation failing communication ultimatum and impending departure

Traffic Jam

James Taylor

A commuter's rant against gridlock turns, almost by accident, into a joke about mortality and then a flicker of environmental…

urban frustration mortality played for laughs environmental unease

Quizás, Quizás, Quizás

Nat King Cole

A classic Cuban bolero of romantic frustration, in which a lover demands a straight answer about the future of the relationship…

romantic indecision frustration and waiting time slipping away

Time's Up

Buzzcocks

A jittery catalogue of mundane waiting -- supermarket queues, phone calls, cigarettes -- becomes a comic study in erotic…

impatience and waiting sexual frustration consumer banality

Honey

Erykah Badu

A breezy, sample-driven cut about chasing an elusive love interest, built almost entirely around a single extended sweetness…

romantic pursuit elusiveness/unavailability desire and craving

Slow Train

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

A sparse, chant-driven track that uses nonsense syllables and clipped slogans to sketch a mood of economic frustration and…

economic frustration futility of effort collective anxiety

Makes No Sense At All

Hüsker Dü

A pop-punk blast of exasperation aimed at someone whose contradictions and self-inflation have stopped registering as anything…

frustration with a partner's inconsistency emotional exhaustion refusal to engage further

Electric Church Red House

Jimi Hendrix

This is a live-improvised twelve-bar blues built on the familiar 'Red House' framework, prefaced by a loose spoken invocation…

longing and separation blues tradition and lineage music as spiritual/communal experience

Morning, Noon and Night

Big Joe Turner

A bawdy, up-tempo blues-shouter number in which the singer catalogs domestic scenes and comic complaints about a woman he…

desire and frustration domestic life as comic material fidelity and suspicion

We Want the Airwaves

Ramones

A blunt manifesto-as-anthem in which the Ramones demand radio play for rock 'n' roll, framing corporate gatekeeping as an enemy…

media gatekeeping artistic frustration working-class impatience

Happy When it Rains

The Jesus and Mary Chain

The lyric sheet supplied here is a brisk, countdown-driven come-on song built around a narrator trying to talk a woman into…

desire and rejection performative masculinity transience

I Want to Be Loved #2

Muddy Waters

A blues plea built on a familiar Chicago blues formula: the narrator lavishes praise on a woman who barely acknowledges him, and…

unrequited desire romantic frustration adoration versus neglect

Another Saturday Night

Sam Cooke

A breezy, self-mocking complaint from a young man stuck in a new town with cash in his pocket and no date on a Saturday night.…

loneliness displacement romantic frustration

Meat Grinder

Madvillain

Meat Grinder is a woozy, off-kilter showcase for MF DOOM's dense internal rhyme, wrapped around a strange recurring image of…

surreal domesticity/confinement hustler bravado alter-ego mythmaking

Monkey

George Michael

A pop-funk plea from a partner watching a lover slide back into a destructive habit, with the habit personified as a rival for…

addiction as rival codependency frustrated love

I'm Goin' Down

Bruce Springsteen

A breezy, almost bubblegum-pop arrangement carries a pretty deflating story about a relationship that's cooled into…

romantic frustration mismatched desire emotional deflation

Why Is It So Hard

Talk Talk

A short, plaintive B-side from Talk Talk's early-to-mid period, this song is built almost entirely from apology and…

emotional avoidance self-reproach communication breakdown

Tyrone

My Morning Jacket

This is a cover of Erykah Badu's 1997 kiss-off anthem, in which a woman lays out the receipts on a freeloading,…

financial exploitation in relationships entourage/freeloading friends self-respect and boundary-setting

No Particular Place to Go

Mos Def

A breezy account of a teenage joyride that stalls on an absurd, deflating detail: a jammed seatbelt that thwarts the narrator's…

adolescent desire freedom and mobility comic frustration

Shake, Rattle and Roll

Canned Heat

This is Canned Heat's take on the 1954 Jesse Stone/Big Joe Turner standard, a twelve-bar blues built around domestic complaint…

domestic frustration sexual innuendo distrust between lovers

Hands Tied

Toni Braxton

Toni Braxton answers a partner's doubt about her capacity for real love with a defiant boast: even constrained, even doubted,…

defensive devotion proving love under doubt emotional resilience

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

Dry Spell

Kacey Musgraves

A comic, unapologetically horny country song about a woman counting off the days since her last sexual encounter, using rural…

sexual frustration female desire and agency rural/country signifiers as innuendo

Extraordinary

Liz Phair

A woman insists on her own singularity to a partner who seems bored by her, oscillating between fantastical self-mythologizing…

self-worth vs. validation performance of identity domesticity vs. fantasy

I Hate U

SZA

SZA lays out a relationship curdled by resentment and dependency, where love and hatred are barely distinguishable and both…

toxic codependency ambivalence between love and hate sleeplessness and rumination

Two Left Feet

Richard Thompson

A jaunty novelty jump-blues number in which a narrator affectionately but insistently mocks his partner's terrible dancing,…

comic frustration in love physical imperfection as running gag performance and public embarrassment

To Be True

Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes

A pleading soul ballad in which a man confesses that his devotion is being tested by a partner's absence and the temptations…

temptation and self-doubt loneliness within a relationship emotional dependency

Righteously

Lucinda Williams

A woman lays out terms for a lover who confuses aggression with masculinity, insisting that tenderness and respect are the real…

masculinity and its performance sexual respect and reciprocity desire coexisting with frustration

It's the Singer Not the Song

Survivor

A mid-80s arena-rock pep talk about authenticity and perseverance, framed as advice to someone stuck in a dead-end routine and…

authenticity vs. artifice perseverance ambition and self-doubt

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

Things I'll Never Say

Avril Lavigne

A teenage crush song built entirely around the gap between what the narrator feels and what she can actually get herself to say.…

unrequited feeling masked by shyness self-consciousness and performance of 'perfect' fantasy versus reality

Sheela-Na-Gig

PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey turns the offer of a woman's body into a confrontation, borrowing the name of a medieval carved figure to skewer male…

female sexuality and shame rejection and humiliation the body as spectacle

If

Janet Jackson

A frank fantasy of unconsummated desire, built entirely around a conditional that never resolves. Janet Jackson narrates…

unspoken desire fantasy vs. reality sexual agency

In Quintessence

Squeeze

A character study of a self-mythologizing teenage stoner who mistakes intoxicated musing for insight, told by a narrator who…

arrested development self-delusion adolescent isolation

A Certain Girl

Warren Zevon

This is a straight-ahead cover of the Ernie K-Doe R&B classic, built almost entirely on a call-and-response tease between a…

unrequited longing secrecy as flirtation stuck-in-the-friend-zone frustration

There's Hope

India.Arie

India.Arie builds a gentle manifesto against materialism and cynicism, arguing that contentment is a matter of perception rather…

gratitude over materialism perception shapes reality resilience amid social/political frustration

Mystery

Wipers

A terse breakup song built on stalled communication: two people trading accusations and denials while neither actually resolves…

miscommunication emotional withdrawal identity/authenticity