X‐Ray Spex
A short, hammering punk track that treats the idea of self-image as a literal wound. Poly Styrene repeats the word "identity"…
media saturation self-image and alienation consumer culture
Pearl Jam
A song about the aftermath of a devastating breakup, built on the image of a world drained of color and identity once a lover is…
heartbreak and loss loss of identity grief's distortion of perception
Chris Stapleton
A straightforward heartbreak song built almost entirely on a temperature metaphor, where sudden emotional withdrawal is rendered…
sudden heartbreak emotional abandonment disbelief
Lucinda Williams
A blues-rock breakup song that treats emotional loss as a stolen, physical object that can theoretically be tracked down and…
loss and reclamation anger as motion the breakup as theft
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell's early environmental protest song works as a series of loosely connected complaints -- about development,…
environmental loss commodification of nature nostalgia and regret
Don McLean
A quiet, confessional meditation on identity dissolution, in which the speaker admits he no longer recognizes himself and turns…
identity loss spiritual/emotional healing dependence on another
Loretta Lynn
A late-career declaration of resilience, this song has Lynn taking stock of a long, hard-won life and refusing to concede any…
resilience aging and identity working-class pride
Neko Case
A short, hymn-like song of exhaustion and self-erasure, in which the speaker repeatedly wishes to become the moon rather than…
exhaustion and burnout identity loss isolation
New Order
A song about a relationship curdling under the weight of unspoken resentment, built on the tension between wanting release and…
emotional withholding breakup and loss communication breakdown
Alison Krauss
A grief-stricken narrator describes herself as literally haunting her own home after a devastating breakup, using the ghost…
heartbreak and grief isolation and withdrawal memory and haunting
The xx
A quiet post-breakup song built around the strange etiquette of running into an ex and pretending not to be devastated. The xx's…
post-breakup estrangement performed indifference loss of intimacy
Vampire Weekend
A meditation on retired warriors and burned-out rebels, using the image of a decommissioned weapon to talk about aging out of…
aging and obsolescence nostalgia for youthful intensity loss of purpose
Tyler, The Creator
A dense, deliberately abrasive verbal assault built on non sequitur, shock imagery, and sudden lurches into confession. Beneath…
alter-ego and fractured identity provocation as defense mechanism absent father
SZA
SZA uses the imagery of childhood games—Barbies, video games, playground toys—to talk about growing into a sexual and emotional…
coming of age sexual awakening nostalgia
Aesop Rock
Aesop Rock revisits his abandoned career as a visual artist, tracing how technical devotion to drawing and painting curdled into…
creative identity and its loss depression and self-sabotage artistic craft and obsession
Big Star
A stark second-person address to someone in the grip of total psychic collapse, delivered by Alex Chilton in one of the bleakest…
depression and self-annihilation abandonment isolation
Elvis Costello
This is Costello's recording of a song originally written by Charles Aznavour, best known in English through Herbert Kretzmer's…
the elusiveness of the beloved identity as multiplicity devotion despite uncertainty
Paul Simon
A bitter recollection of a suffocating hometown, stripped of color and possibility, sung as a reunion piece by Simon and…
small-town claustrophobia loss of faith inherited identity
ABC
This is a reading of ABC's version of a widely known song about self-destructive ambition and the fear of being abandoned by…
self-destruction fame and recognition codependency
Fugazi
Repeater sketches a first-person portrait of someone reduced by drug dependency and social judgment to a statistic, then widens…
addiction and criminalization dehumanization media detachment
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk turn a numbing exercise in counting into a protest song, framing the reduction of a person to a numeral as a kind of…
dehumanization by bureaucracy loss of identity surveillance and control
R.E.M.
A sequel of sorts to earlier R.E.M. songs about Athens, Georgia, this track finds the narrator returning to a hometown battered…
homecoming recovery and resilience civic identity
The National
A song about the numbing conformity of adult professional life, addressed in second person to someone (and by extension…
conformity self-alienation loss of innocence
The Animals
This is The Animals' 1977 cover of Bob Dylan's 1965 farewell song, a surreal address to a departing figure told entirely through…
endings and departure identity dissolution surreal imagery
Interpol
Interpol's 'Specialist' is a sprawling, image-drunk portrait of a relationship that oscillates between erotic surrender and…
obsessive love loss of control confinement and freedom
Tears for Fears
A cool, synth-driven meditation on estrangement between two people who once knew each other well, built around the anxious…
emotional distance loss of identity regret and hesitation
Talking Heads
A song about waking up inside a life you don't remember choosing, stitched together from the trappings of suburban success and a…
suburban alienation loss of agency time and repetition
Chet Baker
A short, spare torch song sung from the vantage of someone who has driven away a devoted partner and now sits in the wreckage of…
regret and self-recrimination undeserved devotion loss of comfort and stability
Big Thief
A hazy address to an otherworldly presence that may be a lover, a hallucination, or an actual extraterrestrial, the song treats…
disappearance and loss altered perception vs. reality longing for transcendence
Steve Earle
A quiet, unadorned reckoning with a relationship dissolved somewhere in a haze of substance abuse, told by a narrator who can…
addiction and memory loss romantic loss guilt and self-reproach
Lauryn Hill
A duet-style love song (with D'Angelo) that uses the phrase 'nothing even matters' as both a declaration of romantic devotion…
romantic obsession loss of perspective devotion vs. dependency
Van Morrison
An impressionistic, nearly nine-minute elegy built around a single scene: a gathering in a Belfast back room presided over by a…
loss of innocence ambiguous identity and gender nostalgia for place
A deceptively bouncy pop song about an elderly woman disappearing into dementia, told partly through the eyes of a younger…
dementia and memory loss identity and naming youth versus old age
Okkervil River
A departure-by-ship conceit turns into an extended meditation on touring, collaboration, and the erosion of purpose that comes…
disillusionment with leadership/authority collective vs individual identity touring and rootlessness
Guided by Voices
A compact power-pop confession about being trailed by an old, adolescent version of oneself. The narrator can't explain why…
arrested development loss of self-control in relationships surveillance of the self
Saba
Saba lays out the daily arithmetic of survival on Chicago's West Side, cycling between a hypnotic hook about chasing money as…
economic survival loss and mortality West Side Chicago identity
Jimi Hendrix
This is a raw, improvisatory blues lament built almost entirely on vamped repetition rather than a finished lyric. Hendrix works…
loss and longing obsessive devotion the blues tradition of the departed woman
Angel Olsen
A brief, incantatory meditation on self-recognition slipping away, built almost entirely on repetition rather than narrative…
aging and loss of self-image memory and repetition identity dissolution
Deerhunter
Deerhunter turn a mental-health condition into a fantasy of shelter, imagining confinement as safety rather than affliction.…
withdrawal and self-erasure confinement as comfort sensory deprivation
Sandy Denny
A Bob Dylan song given to Sandy Denny's voice becomes a study in absence: the singer measures every image of beauty and time…
longing and absence time as burden identity dissolved by loss