Results for “humility versus vanity”

Songs

Humility

Gorillaz

A breezy, sun-drenched groove carries a lyric about wanting connection while stuck in isolation. The gap between the song's…

isolation longing for connection self-repair

Don't Let It Go to Your Head

Brand Nubian

Brand Nubian use a soul-hook chorus and three verses from different members to warn against the vanity that comes with hip-hop…

humility versus vanity the labor behind artistic success transactional relationships and fame

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

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

Valentine's Day

Steve Earle

A plain-spoken confession of forgetfulness dressed up as a love song, in which the narrator arrives on the holiday with nothing…

romantic devotion failure and forgiveness commercialized ritual vs. genuine feeling

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

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

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

Learn How to Fall

Paul Simon

A short, gospel-tinged homily built on a single paradox: mastery of failure precedes any real ascent. Simon frames the idea in…

failure as preparation humility versus ambition folk wisdom

You've Got a Friend In Me

Randy Newman

A jaunty, unguarded pledge of loyalty written for the Toy Story soundtrack, sung in the voice of a companion (originally Woody,…

loyalty friendship as identity reassurance in the face of fear

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

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

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

Holocene

Bon Iver

A song built from disconnected fragments of memory — a Halloween mishap, a burnt-down bar, a Christmas night with a brother —…

memory and its unreliability humility versus self-importance nostalgia for place

Who's Gonna Miss Me?

Loretta Lynn

A late-life meditation on legacy, sung as a plain, repeated question rather than a boast. Loretta Lynn strips away career…

mortality legacy humility

I'll Fly Away

Mississippi John Hurt

This is less a full performance than a fragment captured on tape: Mississippi John Hurt sings the familiar gospel chorus of the…

incompleteness oral tradition humility

Monday

The Jam

A simple, almost devotional love song in which the usually dreaded start of the working week becomes an object of longing…

romantic anticipation humility and vulnerability weather as emotional metaphor

Glory! Glory!

Underworld

This early Underworld track, before their techno reinvention, is a pop-rock song about power imbalance dressed as romantic…

power and submission romantic self-abasement vanity disguised as generosity

One Day At a Time

Merle Haggard

This is a plainspoken gospel prayer sung from a position of exhaustion and humility, asking for the strength to survive the…

religious surrender humility and human limitation present-moment endurance

Things Behind the Sun

Nick Drake

A quiet, oracular warning-song in which Nick Drake counsels a listener (or himself) to resist the seductions of vanity and…

spiritual disillusionment authenticity versus performance isolation and inner vision

Foolish Heart

Alison Krauss

A young narrator rehearses her own exit from a doomed relationship, arguing herself into leaving before she can be hurt again.…

self-protection versus vulnerability romantic disillusionment pride as armor

Conventional Wisdom

Built to Spill

A short, circling meditation on how received wisdom persists even when it no longer fits reality. Built to Spill uses plain,…

conformity vs. change epistemic humility the persistence of habit

Montezuma

Fleet Foxes

An opening-track meditation on aging and mortality, framed as a young man surprised to find himself already past the age at…

mortality aging and belated adulthood self-doubt

Your Song

Elton John

A shy, broke narrator confesses he has nothing to offer a loved one but a plainly written love song, and the song's own modesty…

romantic devotion inadequacy and humility the inability to articulate feeling

Love Man

Otis Redding

A boastful, self-mythologizing party anthem in which the singer repeatedly declares his own nickname and physical credentials as…

braggadocio masculine self-mythology seduction as performance

Take Me to the Alley

Gregory Porter

A gospel-inflected ballad that imagines a king or messiah figure rejecting the pomp prepared for his arrival in favor of the…

religious allegory compassion for the marginalized critique of materialism

The First Noel

Emmylou Harris

This is a straightforward reading of the traditional English carol, with Emmylou Harris's plainspoken vocal treating the…

nativity narrative revelation and light humility of shepherds

On That Day

Leonard Cohen

A spare, almost prose-like meditation on the September 11 attacks, in which the speaker refuses to endorse any explanatory…

9/11 and national trauma refusal of ideology complicity of the observer

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

Sometimes a Fantasy

Billy Joel

A driving new-wave rocker about phone sex and the loneliness that drives someone to it, dressed up in a jittery, almost…

loneliness desire and substitution shame versus need

Snakeskin

Deerhunter

A funk-inflected litany of self-definition, "Snakeskin" strings together a series of blunt "I was born" and "I was" declarations…

disability and bodily difference fatalism versus resilience identity as inherited condition

Such Great Heights

Iron & Wine

This is a cover of the Postal Service's electro-pop original, stripped down to acoustic guitar and hushed vocal, which changes…

long-distance love fate versus coincidence romantic devotion as belief system

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

What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?

Nick Lowe

A plainspoken protest song built around a single rhetorical question that turns weariness into gentle defiance. Nick Lowe's own…

disillusionment with the world longing for peace and unity cynicism versus idealism

Samson

Regina Spektor

Spektor rewrites the Samson and Delilah story as an intimate, domestic love song, stripping away the biblical violence and…

reworked myth erasure from history intimacy versus legend

Dashboard

Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse builds a shaky optimism out of wreckage imagery, insisting that even a broken-down vehicle still gets you…

near-disaster and survival willed optimism emotional evasiveness

Isn't It Romantic?

Chet Baker

Chet Baker's reading of this Rodgers and Hart standard turns a bright, playful showtune into something hushed and interior.…

anticipation of love imagination versus reality romantic idealism

Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)

Sly & Robbie

This is a cover of the classic Doris Day standard, reframed by Sly and Robbie's rhythm-section sensibility rather than by any…

fate and acceptance generational transmission of wisdom the unknowability of the future

namesake

Noname

Noname moves from loose, funny personal riffing into a sharp indictment of celebrity complicity and American militarism, before…

self-implication and complicity celebrity as propaganda community versus individualism

Machine Gun

Portishead

A stark meditation on self-recrimination dressed as spiritual crisis, delivered over one of the coldest, most mechanical beats…

guilt and self-blame failed salvation isolation