Results for “futility of people-pleasing”

Songs

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

The Smiths

A short, almost prayer-like song built from just two brief verses and a repeated plea, this track compresses a lifetime of…

longing and deprivation fatalism the erosion of goodness by circumstance

We the People....

A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest opens their comeback album with a song that fuses street-level survival talk with a chorus that mimics the…

racism and xenophobia economic precarity media distortion

We The People

The Staple Singers

This is a communal exhortation song built almost entirely around a repeated collective refrain, using the language of civic…

racial unity collective responsibility social observation

Short People

Randy Newman

Randy Newman puts on the voice of a bigot ranting about short people, using the absurdity of the target to expose how prejudice…

prejudice and bigotry satire of hatred's logic unreliable narration

Slippery People

Talking Heads

Talking Heads build a call-and-response gospel workout out of fragmented, almost nonsensical verses and a reassuring chorus that…

religious ecstasy vs. skepticism surrender of rational control community and reassurance

Futile Devices

Sufjan Stevens

A brief, understated love song about the impossibility of naming a feeling that doesn't fit any available category. The narrator…

unspoken love platonic vs romantic intimacy inadequacy of language

Please Don't Bury Me

John Prine

A comic-macabre novelty song in which the narrator dies a mundane kitchen death, ascends to heaven, and delivers a posthumous…

death and mortality absurdism/black comedy generosity and connection after death

People Have the Power

Patti Smith

An anthem built from a dream-vision, in which the speaker imagines armies disbanding and deserts turning to gardens, then hands…

collective political power utopian vision vs. reality dream as prophecy

Please Stay

Warren Zevon

A dying man asks, in the plainest possible language, for company through to the end. The song strips away Zevon's usual irony…

mortality dependence fear of abandonment

People Say

Wu‐Tang Clan

This is a posse-cut style Wu-Tang track where multiple MCs trade dense, boastful verses about street history, criminal résumé,…

street survival and generational crime materialism and excess lyrical supremacy/battle rap bravado

Please Take

Wire

A blunt, almost domestic-scale confrontation song built around one sustained image of betrayal-as-stabbing, delivered with a…

betrayal complicity disgust with manipulation

Black Swan

Thom Yorke

A weary, profane sermon on futility dressed as a breakup or self-help pep talk gone sour. Thom Yorke catalogs failure, dead…

futility and resignation disposability of people failure to please others

People Get Ready

Seal

Seal's version of the Curtis Mayfield gospel-soul standard is a faithful, reverent cover that leans into the song's spiritual…

salvation and grace spiritual readiness judgment and mercy

Shiny Happy People

R.E.M.

A bubblegum-bright chorus of togetherness repeated to the point of hollowness, this is R.E.M. at its most deliberately…

manufactured happiness conformity propaganda and slogans

Please Don't Take Your Love

Smokey Robinson

A late-career Smokey Robinson love song that turns a simple plea into a multilingual serenade, cycling through French, Spanish,…

romantic devotion universality of love gratitude

We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue

Curtis Mayfield

A sermon set to music, this track has Curtis Mayfield addressing Black America directly about internal divisions that threaten…

racial solidarity colorism self-determination

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Mariah Carey

This is Mariah Carey's 1994 cover of the Phil Spector/Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry classic, reworked as a Wall-of-Sound production…

loneliness during celebration longing and absence nostalgia for past happiness

Hate On Me

Jill Scott

Jill Scott builds a defiant anthem around a simple observation: no gift, gesture, or virtue will satisfy someone determined to…

self-determination resistance to criticism futility of people-pleasing

"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

The Day I Tried to Live

Soundgarden

A song about the futility of trying to change or improve oneself, told through a narrator whose every attempt at effort or…

self-doubt futility of effort inversion of moral action

Gravity Rides Everything

Modest Mouse

A hazy meditation on inevitability, disguised as a lullaby about waking up too early. The song treats gravity as a stand-in for…

mortality and decay determinism vs. free will domestic weariness

Complicated Game

XTC

XTC turn a simple left-or-right gesture into a running metaphor for political and existential futility. Over a tense, angular…

political disillusionment futility of choice powerlessness

Dirt

Mission of Burma

A song of consolation and anger addressed to someone being torn apart by gossip. The narrator alternates between soothing the…

gossip and rumor protective loyalty the cruelty of onlookers

Dear Abby

John Prine

John Prine builds a comic song out of the format of a newspaper advice column, staging a series of absurd reader complaints that…

absurdity of everyday complaint futility of advice-seeking identity and self-acceptance

Child of Vision

Supertramp

A pointed critique of consumerist, media-saturated culture delivered as a one-sided argument between a narrator and an unnamed…

consumerism media manipulation generational conflict

Runnin' Away

Sly & Robbie

A short, singsong warning wrapped in giggly, almost mocking laughter: the song watches someone flee their problems and points…

self-deception avoidance and escapism debt and consequence

Crazy Circles

Bad Company

A late-70s Bad Company track that treats life as a fairground ride: cyclical, arbitrary, and indifferent to effort or virtue.…

fate and chance cyclical existence hollowness of success

Mysterons

Portishead

Mysterons opens Dummy with a woozy, disorienting address to someone caught between denial and defiance. Beth Gibbons' vocal…

denial and repression guilt and judgment futility of desire

Mystery Train

The Band

This is The Band's cover of the old blues/Sun Records standard, reworked here as a mournful, swampy shuffle rather than a…

loss and abandonment travel as metaphor for separation folk/blues tradition

War

The Temptations

A blunt, unambiguous protest song built on a call-and-response question that answers itself every time: war produces nothing but…

anti-war protest grief and loss generational conflict

Army Dreamers

Kate Bush

A mother buries her son, a young soldier killed in service, and the song moves between her grief at the funeral and a bitter…

class and limited opportunity maternal grief futility of war

The Eraser

Thom Yorke

A fractured, glitchy meditation on trying to erase someone from consciousness only to find them multiplying under the pressure…

denial and obsession the futility of erasure suspicion and manipulation

Ain't That Nothin'

Television

A restless, riddling song built from fragmentary images of heat, motion and spinning objects, addressed to a companion who never…

evasion and unanswered questions restlessness and burnout attraction to chaos

Beat It

Michael Jackson

A pulsing anti-violence anthem disguised as a street-fight taunt: the title's double meaning lets the song urge retreat from…

peer pressure toxic masculinity violence and its futility

Place In Line

Deep Purple

A weary blues-rock complaint about grinding, purposeless waiting, delivered through the image of standing in an endless queue.…

monotony and stasis working-class resignation false hope

Pictures of Home

Deep Purple

A lone figure stranded on a mountainside cries out into silence, caught between physical isolation and a self-created…

isolation self-deception alienation from home

Jump Into the Fire

Harry Nilsson

A short, incantatory set of lines about the impossibility of escape gets stretched into a nearly six-minute groove, with the…

inescapability codependency self-destruction

Leaves That Are Green

Simon Jäger

A young songwriter watches a single year of his life pass and turns that small span of time into a meditation on mortality and…

impermanence aging and time lost love

Fifteen Keys

Uncle Tupelo

This is a fragmented, road-song meditation on drift and exhaustion, built from disconnected images—driving, watching someone's…

exhaustion and burnout emotional guardedness aimlessness/transience

Hurtin' (On the Bottle)

Margo Price

A honky-tonk drinking song that plays the genre's oldest trick—turning heartbreak into a barroom joke—while quietly admitting…

heartbreak self-destruction futility of escape