Results for “idealism versus futility”

Songs

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

Futile Devices

Sufjan Stevens

A brief, understated love song about the impossibility of naming a feeling that doesn't fit any available category. The narrator…

unspoken love platonic vs romantic intimacy inadequacy of language

This Is Why We Fight

The Decemberists

A martial invocation built almost entirely of imperative fragments, this song stages war as ritual and myth rather than event,…

war and its costs ritual and incantation idealism versus futility

Such Great Heights

The Postal Service

A love song built on cosmic-scale metaphor that keeps colliding with mundane domestic detail: the singer stretches to find…

long-distance love faith versus skepticism idealization

Silver Rainbow

Genesis

A slight, hazy pop song from Genesis's most commercial period, built on a chorus of impossible images and a coy premise about a…

romantic idealization altered perception the impossible/surreal

Heart's Content

Brandi Carlile

A meditation on a romance that idealizes itself even as it self-sabotages, built around the tension between two people who…

self-sabotage in love idealization versus reality fear of vulnerability

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

The Other Side of Summer

Elvis Costello

A deceptively sunny, Beach Boys-styled pop song that uses its bright surf-rock arrangement as a Trojan horse for a scathing…

media and celebrity culture environmental destruction disillusionment with 60s idealism

It Ain't Me Babe

Joan Baez

A Bob Dylan composition performed here by Joan Baez, the song is a firm, almost gentle refusal of an idealized love that demands…

refusal of idealized love autonomy versus self-erasure disillusionment with romantic fantasy

Sisyphus

Andrew Bird

Andrew Bird recasts the myth of Sisyphus as a parable about choosing to let go of an endless, futile burden rather than…

myth revision futility vs. agency surrender as choice

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

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

Heavenly

The Temptations

A smooth soul plea in which a narrator tries to talk a wounded woman out of her cynicism about love, positioning himself as…

persuasion and courtship healing after heartbreak idealization of love

If I Ever See You Again

Roberta Flack

A quiet, aching ballad built around a single conditional wish -- the hope of a reunion the singer knows may never come. Flack…

longing regret idealized love

Tiny Dancer

Elton John

A soft-focus portrait of a woman moving through the early-1970s Los Angeles music scene, seen through the eyes of an admirer who…

idealized femininity life on tour / music-industry culture memory versus presence

A Face In the Crowd

Tom Petty

A hushed, almost hymn-like meditation on the moment a stranger becomes singular, this song strips romance down to a single image…

chance encounters fate versus randomness idealization of a stranger

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

Fragile

Cassandra Wilson

This is a cover of a song originally written by Sting, reframed here through Cassandra Wilson's smoky, unhurried phrasing on her…

violence and its aftermath fragility of human life memory versus forgetting

Ghetto Dreams

Common

Common builds a composite fantasy of a woman who fuses hood authenticity with high-end glamour, verse by verse assembling and…

idealized femininity as class fantasy hood authenticity versus upward mobility female strength shadowed by objectification

I Can Change

LCD Soundsystem

A synth-pop confession about the bargaining that happens inside a struggling relationship, built around a single pivot: the same…

self-deception in relationships the fear of change versus the need for it romantic idealization

Unknown Legend

Neil Young

A middle-aged narrator recalls a woman he once admired for her restlessness and beauty, now settled into domestic life but still…

nostalgia freedom versus domesticity female mythology/idealization

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

Cactus Tree

Joni Mitchell

A young woman collects a string of suitors—a sailor, a mountaineer, an office correspondent, and finally an unnumbered crowd of…

freedom versus commitment female autonomy in the 1960s emotional self-protection

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

Choice of Colors

Gladys Knight

A cover of the Impressions' 1969 civil-rights standard, this version turns a direct address to a Black community into a plea for…

racial reconciliation hypocrisy and self-examination education as social remedy

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

Sandusky

Uncle Tupelo

A grim, working-class dirge about exhaustion and dead ends, delivered in the voice of someone addressing a person on the verge…

industrial despair class fatigue futility versus endurance

Devonside

Richard Thompson

A brief, dense narrative-ballad about a woman who abandons a protest march to nurse and possess a sick, faithless man, offering…

codependency self-erasure in love hunger and deprivation

Supercut

Lorde

Lorde uses the language of video editing to describe how memory sands a failed relationship down into its highlight reel. The…

selective memory idealization of a lost relationship self-deception

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

Dirt

Mission of Burma

A song of consolation and anger addressed to someone being torn apart by gossip. The narrator alternates between soothing the…

gossip and rumor protective loyalty the cruelty of onlookers

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

No Surrender

Bruce Springsteen

A road-tested anthem about clinging to youthful vows of loyalty and defiance even as adulthood erodes the certainty behind them.…

youthful idealism versus adult disillusionment friendship and loyalty as survival strategy nostalgia for adolescent certainty

Going to California

Led Zeppelin

A folk-inflected ballad about chasing an idealized woman and a fresh start in California, only to find the search shading into…

romantic idealization escape and reinvention California mythology

A Woman Like You

Bert Jansch

A late-period Bert Jansch song that treats courtship as sorcery, built from a wandering, almost dreamlike set of images rather…

enchantment and desire the limits of language to capture love folkloric imagery

Creep

Radiohead

A song of self-loathing built around a single obsessive comparison: the speaker idolizes someone he sees as flawless while…

self-loathing unrequited desire alienation

This Charming Life

Joan Armatrading

A love song built almost entirely on declaration rather than incident: a narrator confesses an all-consuming attachment, admits…

infatuation self-aware sentimentality gratitude/luck

The Glory of Man

Minutemen

A brief, aphoristic piece in which the Minutemen compress a whole philosophical argument about human self-regard into a handful…

human self-image skepticism vs idealism scale and insignificance