Beastie Boys
A cartoonish spaghetti-Western pastiche in which the three Beastie Boys members appear as characters in their own tall tale,…
mythmaking and self-invention outlaw fantasy adolescent bravado
Buzzcocks
A blunt, sneering anthem of anti-affect, "Boredom" turns the emptiness of punk's stock subject into a self-parodying joke,…
boredom and apathy self-parody punk minimalism
Pixies
A deliberately dumb, bubblegum-pop pastiche sung by drummer David Lovering, this is Pixies parodying the sincerity of teenage…
parody of pop convention adolescent sexuality irony vs sincerity
Michael Jackson
A horror-movie pastiche built as a seduction, where the terror on screen and the terror of intimacy blur together. The song…
horror as seduction voyeurism and spectacle predator/prey dynamics
Prince
A collage rather than a song, this track stitches film dialogue samples, chant-like hooks, and rapid genre-shifting funk into a…
identity and masquerade seduction and menace media spectacle
Run-DMC
The title track of Run-DMC's landmark album is a boast-battle anthem built almost entirely from self-crowning imagery and…
braggadocio hip-hop supremacy battle rhetoric
Eric B.
This is the title track and origin document of hip-hop's most sampled record, a first-person account of a hustler talking…
hustling and survival redemption through legitimate work the music industry as a means of escape