Results for “identity through negation”

Songs

Not

Big Thief

"Not" is a song built entirely out of negation, circling an unnamed thing by naming everything it isn't. Lenker piles up sensory…

negation and unnameability impermanence desire and its objects

Monkey Suite

Madvillain

A dense, freewheeling verse from MF Doom that piles up internal rhyme and non-sequitur imagery to sketch a self-portrait through…

identity through negation authenticity vs. costume/disguise street survival and hustling

Changes

David Bowie

A restless self-portrait of an artist who treats identity as provisional, staged against a generational standoff between an…

self-reinvention generational conflict impermanence

Black

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

Who Are You

The Who

A drink-and-punch-soaked night in London becomes the occasion for a much larger identity crisis, as the narrator wakes…

identity crisis self-destruction and burnout urban alienation

The Real Me

The Who

An opening track that functions as a diagnostic scream: a young man cycles through the authority figures meant to know him —…

identity and authenticity institutional failure (medicine, family, religion) alienation

Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy's most explicitly Irish statement, a medley that stitches together fragments of traditional ballads with a…

Irish identity and heritage oral tradition and storytelling myth and heroism

The Magic Number

De La Soul

De La Soul turns Schoolhouse Rock's arithmetic lesson into a manifesto for the trio itself, using the number three as a stand-in…

group identity and unity originality vs. imitation in hip-hop numerology/mysticism as playful device

I Am a Scientist

Guided by Voices

A short, deceptively simple lo-fi anthem in which the narrator cycles through professional identities—scientist, journalist,…

self-examination addiction and escape art as self-medication

Don't Touch My Hair

Solange

Solange turns a simple bodily boundary into a statement about Black identity, autonomy, and the exhaustion of having one's body…

bodily autonomy Black identity and hair politics boundary-setting

ooh la la

Run the Jewels

A high-energy flex built on a chopped vocal hook lifted from an old funk/soul sample, where El-P and Killer Mike trade boastful,…

braggadocio excess and appetite anti-authority posture

Mistaken for Strangers

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

Veronica

Elvis Costello

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

Thank You Friends

Big Star

A gratitude anthem that plays like a mock-showbiz thank-you speech, thanking unnamed collaborators in language so formal it…

gratitude and its limits dependency vs. self-sufficiency showbiz artifice

Paul Revere

Beastie Boys

A cartoonish spaghetti-Western pastiche in which the three Beastie Boys members appear as characters in their own tall tale,…

mythmaking and self-invention outlaw fantasy adolescent bravado

Hatred (A Duet)

The Kinks

A bitter breakup song that refuses reconciliation and instead perversely celebrates mutual loathing as the one stable thing left…

failed reconciliation toxic codependency cynicism about peace and progress

Isn't She Lovely

Stevie Wonder

A new father's unguarded celebration of his infant daughter's birth, structured as a series of rhetorical questions that answer…

fatherhood and new life gratitude love as creative force

Feel Alright

Steve Earle

A defiant survivor's anthem in which the narrator refuses to be pitied or contained, casting himself as a storyteller-outlaw…

survival and defiance inherited identity addiction and recovery

Crosseyed and Painless

Talking Heads

A jittery, funk-driven interrogation of what it means to trust information at all, framed through a narrator who feels…

epistemological doubt information overload identity dissolution

YYZ

Rush

YYZ is an instrumental showcase built around the Morse-code rhythm for Toronto's Pearson International Airport identifier, which…

homecoming and travel technical virtuosity Canadian identity

Shiny Happy People

R.E.M.

A bubblegum-bright chorus of togetherness repeated to the point of hollowness, this is R.E.M. at its most deliberately…

manufactured happiness conformity propaganda and slogans

All Under One Roof Raving

Jamie xx

A dance-floor chant built from a handful of vocal samples looped and rearranged rather than a lyric in any conventional sense.…

collective identity cultural pride/nationalism (subcultural) defiance

Specialist

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

She

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

My Little Town (with Art Garfunkel)

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

Numbers

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

In the City

The Jam

A debut single that doubles as a manifesto, announcing a generational voice against the backdrop of late-70s urban Britain. It's…

generational conflict youth identity urban alienation

Teenage FBI

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

All of Me

Billie Holiday

A standard from the 1930s American songbook, this is a torch song built on a single conceit: the singer offers up her own body,…

romantic surrender self-negation abandonment

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

Nickel Bags

Digable Planets

This track is less a song than a controlled-substance thesis on funk itself, using the language of street-level drug dealing as…

funk as intoxicant urban sensuality collective identity

Come As You Are

Nirvana

A hazy invitation dissolves into contradiction as soon as it's offered: the singer welcomes you exactly as you are, then…

contradiction and self-cancellation false reassurance identity as unstable

Harder Better Faster Stronger

Daft Punk

A single fragmented phrase is chopped, looped, and reassembled through vocoder into a mantra about relentless productivity and…

labor and productivity machine identity repetition and ritual

The Stranger

Billy Joel

Billy Joel builds a meditation on the hidden selves everyone conceals from lovers, using the whistled melody and shifting moods…

hidden identity betrayal in relationships self-deception

Once in a Lifetime

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

The Pilgrim, Chapter 33

Kris Kristofferson

Kristofferson builds a composite portrait of a road-worn artist figure out of fragments of himself and his musician friends,…

self-destruction and creativity spiritual searching without arrival the cost of the touring musician's life

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

Batdance

Prince

A collage rather than a song, this track stitches film dialogue samples, chant-like hooks, and rapid genre-shifting funk into a…

identity and masquerade seduction and menace media spectacle

Dublin Blues

Guy Clark

Guy Clark builds a heartbroken travelogue out of restlessness, cataloguing cities and cultural landmarks as a way of avoiding…

heartbreak and longing restlessness and travel as avoidance pride versus vulnerability

So Fresh, So Clean

OutKast

A hook-driven strut through vintage cars, retro cool, and pickup lines, where the chorus's braggadocio functions less as…

vanity and self-presentation seduction and courtship rituals nostalgia for Black pop-culture iconography