Results for “guilt and shame”

Songs

It's a Sin

Pet Shop Boys

A confessional pop song built on the grinding logic of Catholic guilt, where every desire and action the narrator has ever had…

religious guilt internalized shame repression

You Know I'm No Good

Amy Winehouse

A confessional soul number in which the narrator catalogues her own infidelities and self-sabotage inside a volatile…

infidelity self-sabotage guilt and shame

Shadowplay

Joy Division

A tense, dreamlike monologue in which the speaker searches an urban and psychic landscape for someone he seems to have already…

guilt and complicity urban alienation performance of identity

Evil

Interpol

A murky, incantatory song built around two women's names -- Rosemary and Sandy -- that Interpol never fully reconciles into a…

complicity and denial seduction as manipulation guilt and judgment

Ascension Day

Talk Talk

Ascension Day is a fractured, almost liturgical piece of wordplay built from gambling terms and religious imagery, where the…

fate and predestination gambling as spiritual metaphor guilt and judgement

The Rainbow

Talk Talk

An oblique meditation on justice, guilt, and the gap between legal verdicts and moral truth, built from fragments of courtroom…

justice and its failures guilt and repentance institutional power

He War

Cat Power

A driving, chant-like track built from fragments rather than a linear story, pairing an apology for causing harm with a…

complicity and guilt violence done in the name of loyalty or love self-assertion against being underestimated

Long Way Home

Tom Waits

A wandering, guilt-soaked ballad in which a restless narrator confesses his inability to settle down even as he pleads for…

restlessness and wanderlust guilt and self-forgiveness domestic responsibility vs freedom

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

Chase the Tear

Portishead

A brief, incantatory piece built from fragmentary phrases rather than a clear narrative, tracking a speaker moving between…

shame and self-reckoning emotional withdrawal cyclical time / seasons as feeling

Hold Ya Head

The Notorious B.I.G.

This is Biggie's bleakest first-person confession, a suicidal monologue framed by a mournful sample of a mother grieving her…

suicidal ideation self-loathing street violence and its aftermath

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

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

Billie Jean

Michael Jackson

A first-person account of a man accused of fathering a child by a woman he insists was never his lover, told as a paranoid,…

paranoia and fame denial and guilt seduction and manipulation

Corona

Minutemen

A terse, two-minute political sketch that moves from a stark statement about poverty and inherited injustice to a small, almost…

economic inequality inherited guilt survival

Folk Jam

Pavement

A loose, half-improvised sketch from Pavement's most polished album, built around family lineage, corrupt authority, and a wry…

inherited guilt paranoia and surveillance authority and corruption

Philadelphia

Neil Young

A spare, hymn-like address to fear and mortality, written for Jonathan Demme's film about a man dying of AIDS-related illness…

mortality stigma and shame need for belonging

MIDDLE CHILD

J. Cole

J. Cole positions himself as hip-hop's bridge generation, flexing competitive bravado while pivoting into mentorship and social…

generational responsibility authenticity vs. materialism hip-hop legacy

Down by the Water

PJ Harvey

A murder ballad told in fragments, where a narrator confesses to drowning a girl referred to alternately as lover and daughter,…

guilt and confession incest/taboo desire folk horror and Southern gothic

Dad's Gonna Kill Me

Richard Thompson

A soldier's-eye monologue from the Iraq War, delivered in the blunt, blackly funny voice of an American GI who narrates the…

war and mortality dehumanization of soldiers media spin and propaganda

Anti-Hero

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift turns a self-lacerating confessional into a singalong chorus, cataloguing her worst self-perceptions—insomnia,…

self-loathing and self-awareness fame and disproportion fear of abandonment

Pretty Paper

Willie Nelson

A Christmas song that undercuts its own cheer: a street vendor selling gift-wrap and pencils becomes a fixture the holiday crowd…

isolation amid crowds commercialism vs. compassion invisibility of the poor

Freddie's Dead

Curtis Mayfield

A eulogy and a warning delivered in the same breath, this song uses the death of a minor drug-trade casualty from the Superfly…

addiction and exploitation systemic racism/economic entrapment urban despair

Karma Police

Radiohead

A speaker invokes a childhood fantasy of cosmic justice to punish people who irritate him, then realizes partway through that…

petty vindictiveness corporate/institutional conformity self-recognition and guilt

Porcelain

Moby

A hushed breakup meditation built from fragments rather than a full narrative, "Porcelain" uses the blur between sleep and…

dissolution of a relationship guilt and self-doubt the porousness of dreams and waking life

Love Will Tear Us Apart

Broken Social Scene

This is Broken Social Scene's rendition of Joy Division's 1980 classic, recorded for the soundtrack of The Time Traveler's Wife,…

romantic disintegration emotional stasis guilt and self-recrimination

All of the Lights

Kanye West Tribute Band

A maximalist anthem that fuses celebration with confession, using the image of light in all its forms—stage lights, police…

fame and surveillance guilt and self-justification fatherhood and estrangement

Pale Blue Eyes

The Velvet Underground

A hushed, plainly strummed confession about loving someone who is unavailable, oscillating between tenderness and quiet…

forbidden love longing and loss guilt and self-justification

Don't Follow

Alice in Chains

A stripped-down acoustic confession from a narrator who insists on leaving while quietly begging to be brought back. The song…

addiction and self-destruction isolation vs. longing for home guilt and self-recrimination

Squonk

Genesis

Genesis take the folkloric Squonk—a creature of Pennsylvania legend so ashamed of its own ugliness that it weeps constantly and…

shame and self-loathing the cruelty of pursuit despair and self-destruction

Folsom Prison Blues

Johnny Cash

A first-person prison lament in which the narrator, confined and hopeless, is tormented by the sound of a train he cannot board.…

confinement and freedom guilt and moral consequence class resentment

Hunger

Florence + the Machine

An opening confession about adolescent anorexia expands into a wider meditation on addiction, performance, and the human need to…

eating disorders and body control addiction and substitution performance versus intimacy

Blackwaterside

Sandy Denny

This is a traditional British/Irish folk ballad given a spare, haunting reading by Sandy Denny, in which a woman recounts…

seduction and betrayal female shame and defiance broken promises

Sinnerman

Nina Simone

A traditional African-American spiritual reworked into a nearly ten-minute incantation, tracking a sinner's frantic search for…

judgment and reckoning futility of escape divine justice vs. mercy

In the Pines

Lead Belly

An old Appalachian murder ballad, filtered through Lead Belly's version, that interrogates a woman about a night spent away and…

accusation and evasion death and dismemberment isolation/exile

Hold On

Tom Waits

A road-worn ballad about a woman who flees a judgmental small town for California and ends up broke and cold in a motel, with a…

small-town judgment and shame escape and disillusionment poverty and survival

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

The Weekend

SZA

SZA casts herself as the mistress in a triangle and refuses the shame the role usually carries, framing her position as a…

infidelity and complicity self-worth versus desire possession and comparison

High Days

Bert Jansch

A quiet song of apology and remembrance, addressed to someone the narrator once let down and now recalls through fragments of…

regret and apology memory and nostalgia aging and loss of connection

Automatic Stop

The Strokes

A brisk breakup song built around a love triangle, where the narrator's dismissiveness curdles into something closer to guilt…

romantic betrayal denial emotional detachment