Results for “humor as coping mechanism”

Songs

Illegal Smile

John Prine

A deadpan comic monologue about waking up defeated by ordinary life and reaching for a cheap, illicit pleasure to get through…

escapism paranoia and surveillance poverty and disillusionment

Underneath the Radar

Underworld

This early, pre-techno Underworld track is a nervy pop-funk song about living small and invisible under the threat of…

Cold War anxiety surveillance and invisibility smallness/powerlessness

Kirby

Aesop Rock

A song built entirely around addressing a cat named Kirby, whose small, absurd domestic behaviors become a lens for talking…

companionship as coping mechanism mental illness and medication domesticity

When It Rain

Danny Brown

A relentless portrait of Detroit street violence set to a hyper-fast, footwork-inspired beat, where the manic tempo and…

urban poverty and survival violence and fatalism addiction as coping mechanism

KOD

J. Cole

The title track of KOD uses a hypnotic, hook-driven trap structure to embody the very drugs of ego, materialism, and violence it…

addiction and self-medication fame and defensiveness cyclical violence

Lithium

Nirvana

A song built entirely out of a mantra of self-reassurance, in which a narrator on the edge of suicide talks himself into staying…

suicidal ideation and survival religious substitution for mental illness isolation and imagined companionship

Mr. Grieves

Pixies

A hallucinatory apocalyptic chant built from disconnected images and a mysterious title figure, 'Mr. Grieves' plays like a…

apocalypse/deluge faith and belief without content death and mortality

Blues Run the Game

Laura Marling

This is Laura Marling's rendition of a 1965 folk standard originally written by Jackson C. Frank, a song about restless flight…

itinerancy and escape addiction as coping mechanism inescapability of sorrow

Crazy Love, Vol. II

Paul Simon

A woozy, deliberately flat account of a marriage falling apart, narrated through a comic-surreal alter ego who claims total…

emotional numbness as defense marital breakdown denial and detachment

Electric Blue

Arcade Fire

A breakup song filtered through disco-pop sheen, where the singer (Régine Chassagne on lead vocal) tries to process a lost love…

romantic disillusionment anonymity in crowds self-deception

About the Weather

Magazine

A song about emotional unpredictability disguised as a meteorological report, where the weather becomes a running metaphor for a…

emotional volatility detachment as coping mechanism control and helplessness

Life Worth Livin'

Uncle Tupelo

A dedication-turned-elegy for the defeated, this early Uncle Tupelo track surveys small-town despair and quietly asks whether…

small-town despair alcohol as coping mechanism spiritual exhaustion

Me & Mr Jones

Amy Winehouse

A blistering, funny complaint about a lover who keeps letting the narrator down, built around a chant of ownership that keeps…

possessive love betrayal and self-deception ambivalence

Cranes in the Sky

Solange

Solange catalogs every failed strategy for numbing an unnamed grief or unease, building a list of avoidance tactics before…

avoidance and denial emotional exhaustion consumerism as coping mechanism

Things I Miss the Most

Steely Dan

A recently divorced narrator insists he's fine with solitude, then keeps undercutting himself by cataloguing everything lost —…

divorce and its aftermath denial versus admission materialism as emotional substitute

Nights

Frank Ocean

A two-part song that splits itself at its own midpoint, moving from a hazy, drug-fogged meditation on isolation and hustling…

isolation within closeness hustle and survival memory and nostalgia

My Ride's Here

Warren Zevon

A dying man's fever-dream inventory of Hollywood Westerns, biblical epics, and Romantic poets, all jumbled together as he waits…

mortality and impending death faith and skepticism entangled art and myth as coping mechanisms

Ain't It Funny

Danny Brown

Danny Brown turns his own addiction into dark comedy, stacking dense, cartoonish wordplay over a queasy hook that keeps asking…

addiction and dependency irony and dark humor wealth versus self-destruction

The Devil Is in the Beats

The Chemical Brothers

This is less a song than a spoken definition looped over a menacing electronic pulse, taken from the Chemical Brothers' score…

self-reference artifice vs feeling mechanization

Elephant

Jason Isbell

A narrator sits with a dying friend in a bar, trading jokes and old songs to avoid naming what's killing her. The song is a…

death and denial friendship vs. desire gallows humor

St. Judy's Comet

Paul Simon

A gentle lullaby in which a father tries, with dwindling patience and self-deprecating humor, to coax his son to sleep. Beneath…

parental love domesticity sleep and childhood

Everything Must Go

Steely Dan

A liquidation sale becomes a metaphor for a business, a relationship, or an era ending, with the narrator determined to face…

failure and decline corporate dissolution as metaphor denial through humor

I Believe I'll Dust My Broom

Robert Johnson

A blues traveler resolves to leave a faithless lover behind, moving through resignation, jealousy, and a restless fantasy of…

infidelity and betrayal departure and self-reliance restless wandering

Clockwork Angels

Rush

The title track of Rush's final studio album stages a public spectacle of mechanical seraphim presiding over a city square, and…

manufactured faith spectacle and control surrender of reason

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

Dirty Laundry

Danny Brown

Danny Brown turns a mundane household chore into a running double entendre for sexual and criminal grime, stacking…

sexual degradation as comedy poverty and hustling shame versus exposure

Disorder in the House

Warren Zevon

Zevon turns his own house into a stand-in for a body and a country falling apart at once, cataloguing collapse with black comedy…

mortality physical decline national decay

Roly Poly

Hank Williams

A novelty-tune portrait of a chubby, food-loving little boy, sung with affectionate exaggeration rather than any deeper agenda.…

childhood innocence rural domestic life affectionate exaggeration

Kush Ups

Snoop Dogg

A lighthearted stoner anthem built on a single extended pun: rolling so much weed becomes a kind of workout, a "kush up." Snoop…

marijuana culture excess and abundance leisure as status

You Are My Sunshine

Johnny Cash

This is Johnny Cash's stripped-down take on the standard "You Are My Sunshine," but the version on Unearthed leaves the tape…

heartbreak and loss irony of the title versus the lyric the mechanics of recording

Electric Funeral

Black Sabbath

A doom-laden vision of nuclear apocalypse rendered as a kind of blackened hymn, cataloguing the literal physical destruction of…

nuclear annihilation dehumanization/mechanization environmental collapse

Glory

Television

Television's "Glory" plays a lopsided, almost cartoonish romantic squabble against a chant that sounds like religious…

romantic confusion transcendence vs. absurdity surrender of anxiety

Four Long Years

Wire

A short, elliptical piece built from fragmented statements about breakdown -- of attention, feeling, and communication. It reads…

mental exhaustion alienation failure of language

Candy Man

Mississippi John Hurt

A rollicking Piedmont blues built entirely on a single, transparent sexual double entendre. Mississippi John Hurt uses the…

sexual innuendo folk humor itinerant male desirability

Honey Bee

Tom Petty

This is Tom Petty in full blues-rock costume, cranking up a swaggering come-on riff with lyrics so absurd they tip into parody.…

parody of blues machismo sexual bravado as performance absurdist humor

Must Be Santa

Bob Dylan

Dylan's version of the polka novelty song plays it almost entirely straight as a call-and-response Christmas romp, building…

holiday tradition Americana kitsch absurdist humor

Da Funk

Daft Punk

"Da Funk" is an instrumental house track built around a single squelching synth-bass riff that Daft Punk let mutate and rub…

mechanized funk repetition and variation urban grit

Red House

Jimi Hendrix

A twelve-bar blues in the most traditional sense: a man walks to his lover's house only to find himself locked out, suspects…

romantic abandonment resilience through humor the blues tradition itself

Super Cool

Beck

This is Beck's contribution to a kids'-movie soundtrack, and it plays as a gleeful parody of hype-song conventions: an avalanche…

parody of hype culture empty superlatives absurdist humor

Computer Love

Kraftwerk

A minimal, deliberately flat lyric sets domestic isolation against the promise of a technological fix for loneliness. The song…

isolation technology mediating intimacy modern alienation