Results for “gratitude versus exhaustion”

Songs

Almost Thanksgiving Day

Graham Parker

A quiet, almost diary-like song about the exhaustion of ordinary domestic life set against the approach of a holiday built on…

domestic endurance aging and marriage rural isolation

Everybody's Weird Except Me

Stereolab

A short, almost mantra-like piece that treats a dream or ideal as something that must travel from intellect to feeling before it…

mind versus feeling ideal versus lived experience language's limits

All The Good Times

Angel Olsen

A breakup song that refuses the genre's usual apology, opting instead for flat, exhausted clarity about a relationship that has…

emotional exhaustion the end of a long relationship refusal of guilt

New Grass

Talk Talk

New Grass closes Laughing Stock as a hushed devotional, sung by a voice worn thin but grateful, addressing something like grace…

religious surrender exhaustion and renewal gratitude

In My Life

The Beatles

A quiet reckoning with memory, this song moves from cataloguing remembered places and people to settling on a present love that…

memory and nostalgia mortality the present versus the past

Breaker

Deerhunter

Breaker is a survivor's song, written by Bradford Cox after a near-fatal car accident, that treats staying alive as an act of…

mortality and survival fate versus agency spiritual ambivalence

Millionaire

Chris Stapleton

A plainspoken love song built on a single conceit: material poverty offset entirely by romantic abundance. Stapleton uses the…

love versus material wealth contentment in poverty devotion

Wild Horses

The Rolling Stones

A ballad of exhausted devotion, where a narrator caught between wanting to leave and being unable to admits that love has…

ambivalent love emotional exhaustion freedom versus attachment

No Feeling

American Football

A first-person meditation on dying, or wanting to, that treats death not as terror but as relief from exhaustion — a slow dance…

death and surrender exhaustion/burnout farewell and closure

Prester John

Animal Collective

A meditation on decline and letting go, framed through the legendary figure of Prester John, a mythical Christian king whose…

decay and endings myth versus reality acceptance and release

Family Affair

Sly & The Family Stone

A weary, groove-heavy meditation on the bonds and betrayals inside a family, sung with a flattened, almost exhausted affect that…

family loyalty and dysfunction contradiction and ambivalence emotional exhaustion

Slowness

Calexico

A quiet meditation on a nighttime car journey through the Southwest, where a small mishap and a slow, starlit drive become a…

memory and time gratitude toward a companion landscape as emotional space

Can It Be All So Simple / Intermission

Wu‐Tang Clan

This Raekwon and Ghostface Killah cut turns Nas's soul-sample nostalgia formula inside out, using a hazy "remember when" hook to…

street violence and its costs nostalgia versus reality material aspiration and escape

I’ve Been Tired

Pixies

A jagged, half-spoken dialogue between a narrator and a politically self-styled woman curdles into an anxious confession about…

sexual anxiety disease and contamination fear performative politics

Earthbound

Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell weighs the pull of escape—into fantasy, death, or transcendence—against the stubborn pleasures of ordinary life,…

mortality and mid-life reflection gratitude versus escapism love and social barriers

When the Blues Catch Up to You

Bettye LaVette

A weary lover delivers a warning dressed as prophecy: the reckless partner she addresses is going to burn out or get caught, and…

consequence and reckoning romantic exhaustion self-respect and threatened departure

Dear Madam Barnum

XTC

A wounded husband quits the role of comic fool in his own marriage, reframing infidelity as a circus act he refuses to keep…

betrayal and infidelity public humiliation loss of dignity

Holding On

Gregory Porter

A meditation on a love the narrator can't will himself out of, even when guilt, fatigue, and a bruised past argue for release.…

involuntary devotion emotional exhaustion guilt and self-reproach

Change Gonna Come

Otis Redding

Otis Redding's cover of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem strips the original's orchestral polish into raw, gospel-inflected…

racial oppression and hope endurance and exhaustion fear of mortality

Chance for Us

Todd Rundgren

A relationship-in-crisis song built almost entirely around one anxious question: is it too late to save this. Rundgren keeps the…

relationship ambivalence the possibility of repair time running out

If I Ain't Got You

Alicia Keys

A ballad built on a single argument: material success and status are worthless without love. Alicia Keys works through a catalog…

love versus materialism emotional authenticity gratitude and priorities

Middle Of The Road

The Pretenders

A restless, mid-career reckoning song in which Chrissie Hynde's narrator refuses both the comfort of settled domesticity and the…

compromise and aging class and global inequality celebrity exhaustion

Mad

Solange

"Mad" is a meditation on the exhaustion of having to justify one's own anger, built around a call-and-response between a…

the right to anger versus the demand for composure respectability and emotional policing of Black people survival and trauma disguised as success

Never Been So Loved (In All My Life)

Charley Pride

A seasoned romantic admits that despite a long history with love, he's never encountered devotion like this before. It's a…

romantic experience versus new love surprise and gratitude devotion

100%

Sonic Youth

A tribute song built from fragments of grief, aggression, and dark humor, written in memory of a scene figure lost to violence.…

violent death and its aftermath rock scene mythology and idolization gender and predation within a music subculture

Sexy Boy

Air

A woozy, vocoder-warped taunt built almost entirely out of one phrase, "Sexy Boy" pokes at masculine vanity and celebrity…

vanity and self-image celebrity and consumerism irony versus seduction

Jesus & Gravity

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton builds a simple physics-and-faith conceit into a testimony song: gravity is the force that keeps her humble and…

faith and humility gratitude versus entitlement balance between grounding and transcendence

Outdoor Miner

Wire

A deceptively sweet pop song from a band known for angular art-punk, built around the tiny natural phenomenon of a leaf-mining…

nature observation hiddenness and exposure innocence versus threat

Only This Moment

Röyksopp

A minimalist electro-pop meditation on love as a present-tense gamble, oscillating between dread that a relationship is doomed…

uncertainty in love presentism versus fear of the future doubt and surrender

Spike Island

Pulp

A comeback statement dressed as a meditation on vocation, in which the singer reflects on a past crisis of purpose and reaffirms…

vocation and calling self-doubt versus instinct reunion/comeback

All That You Have Is Your Soul

Emmylou Harris

A mother's warning becomes a hard-won personal confession, as the narrator traces her own failures to heed advice about…

inherited wisdom moral compromise self-possession versus loss of self

Analyse

Thom Yorke

A meditation on modern overload, "Analyse" pairs images of endless data and abstraction with a numbing sense of exhaustion. It…

information overload alienation exhaustion

Until You Came Into My Life

Ann Peebles

A gratitude-soaked soul ballad in which the narrator credits a lover with rescuing her from despair and teaching her what love…

redemption through love gratitude rebirth/renewal

Just Breathe

Pearl Jam

A quiet acoustic meditation on mortality and gratitude, in which the narrator confronts the certainty of death by turning toward…

mortality and impermanence gratitude romantic devotion

You're So Good to Me

The Beach Boys

A brief, buoyant mid-60s Beach Boys track that expresses uncomplicated gratitude toward a devoted partner. There's no plot or…

devotion gratitude young love

Thankful N' Thoughtful

Sly & Robbie

This is Sly Stone's post-crisis testimony, delivered as a loose funk sermon on survival and gratitude. It reads less as a song…

survival and mortality gratitude spiritual reckoning

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Cat Power

Cat Power strips the Rolling Stones' garage-rock anthem of its swagger and turns it into something hushed, sad, and almost…

alienation commercial saturation exhaustion

Natural High

Merle Haggard

A plainspoken thank-you song in which the narrator credits a steady partner with pulling him out of despair, framed entirely…

gratitude emotional rescue stability vs. chaos

God Blessed Our Love

Al Green

Al Green frames a romantic relationship as a sacred event, thanking a higher power for a love that feels chosen rather than…

sacred love gratitude devotion

Morning Has Broken

Cat Stevens

A hymn of thanksgiving that treats an ordinary sunrise as if it were the first morning of creation. Cat Stevens' recording turns…

gratitude renewal and rebirth nature as sacred