Public Enemy
A protest anthem built as a dance record: Chuck D argues that political consciousness and Black pride are things you build in…
Black pride and self-definition institutional racism who gets to be a national hero
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin's 1967 reworking of Otis Redding's song turns a man's plea for domestic deference into a woman's non-negotiable…
demanding respect sexual and economic bargaining power gender and domestic power
Sonic Youth
Kim Gordon plays a seductive, sardonic call-and-response with a fetishized male icon, using come-ons and spoken interruptions to…
fetishization of Black masculinity gender and power celebrity worship
The Replacements
A plainspoken piano ballad from a band better known for noise, this song sketches two gender-nonconforming characters and treats…
gender nonconformity tolerance vs. prejudice time and generational change
Nina Simone
A traditional African-American spiritual rebuilt by Simone into a ten-minute chase sequence: a sinner runs from judgment on the…
judgment day futile flight refused sanctuary
The Kinks
A naive young man recounts his disorienting, thrilling encounter with Lola, a nightclub companion whose gender identity…
gender fluidity and identity sexual awakening innocence versus experience
Betty Davis
Betty Davis takes a lover's insults—bitch, witch, alley cat, dirty dog—and turns them into a badge of honor, staging a…
sexual autonomy and shame reclaiming derogatory language power reversal in a relationship
The Clash
The Clash build a mock-Orientalist fable in which a ruler bans music and the population -- eventually even his own military --…
censorship and authority cultural resistance satire of power
Kate Bush
A song about two lovers who keep wounding each other without meaning to, and the narrator's fantasy of a supernatural fix: a…
empathy as an impossible exchange the violence hidden inside love gendered misunderstanding
The Temptations
A mid-80s Temptations single that pitches courtly-gentleman romance as a self-help pitch, with the narrator cataloguing small…
traditional courtship gender roles nostalgia for inherited values
Wire
A terse breakup-or-betrayal song built around a single ominous refrain, in which the speaker recalculates a relationship that…
disillusionment recrimination risk and consequence
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
XTC
A jaunty, whistle-inflected pop song that uses upbeat melody as a Trojan horse for a satire of military brass hungry for…
militarism and glorification of war irony between form and content boredom and status anxiety among the powerful
Mott the Hoople
A glam-rock anthem that assembles a cast of disaffected, gender-bending teenagers and hands them a vague, urgent 'news' to…
generational rupture glam identity and androgyny disaffection with 60s idealism
Queen
A piano ballad structured as a direct plea to a departing lover, built almost entirely on repetition rather than narrative…
romantic loss supplication and pleading possessiveness in love
David Bowie
A radio drama in miniature: a space agency counts an astronaut into orbit, celebrates him as a media sensation, then loses him.…
alienation celebrity and spectacle technological failure
Ann Peebles
A gratitude song built on a rescue narrative: the singer describes emerging from despair into a redemptive love, framing the…
romantic salvation gratitude rebirth/renewal
Black Sabbath
This is Black Sabbath's Dio-era title track, a slow-building anthem that treats existence as a rigged carousel between opposing…
moral duality illusion vs. reality exploitation of belief
Bob Dylan
Dylan's cover of a call-and-response children's Christmas polka builds a cumulative list of Santa's attributes through a…
holiday ritual and repetition Americana and civic satire nonsense/novelty performance
Sam Cooke
A first-person account of a life lived under constant pressure — poverty, fear of death, segregation, betrayal by one's own —…
racial injustice and segregation endurance and faith mortality and doubt