Results for “identity versus memory”

Songs

Memories

The Temptations

A ballad of retrospective heartbreak in which the narrator catalogues small domestic pleasures from a lost relationship,…

nostalgia loss of love unresolved grief

Back Down Memory Lane

Minnie Riperton

A single found photograph pulls the narrator involuntarily into a past relationship she thought she'd buried. What starts as…

involuntary memory grief over lost love loss of control

Identity

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

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

The Frozen Man

James Taylor

James Taylor spins a science-fiction folk tale about a 19th-century sailor revived after a century frozen in ice, using the…

mortality and the fear of dying twice technology versus nature alienation and displacement in time

The Truth Won't Fade Away

Procol Harum

A late-career Procol Harum track built on the plainest possible vocabulary, this song stages a generational retrospective in…

memory and aging conviction versus doubt generational identity

Comeback Kid

Sharon Van Etten

A pulsing, synth-driven track that turns the phrase "comeback kid" into a mantra of self-address, tracking the tension between a…

identity and self-address escape versus commitment recovery

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

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

Don't Shut Me Down

ABBA

A woman returns to the apartment she once shared with a former partner, watching from a park bench until she works up the nerve…

self-reinvention aging and time reconciliation

Africa

D'Angelo

A meditation on fatherhood framed as a lineage running back through Africa, presented less as narrative and more as blessing or…

diasporic identity fatherhood and legacy spiritual protection

I Can't Forget

Leonard Cohen

A wry, half-comic meditation on aging and memory dressed up as a road song. The narrator sets out to reclaim some lost person or…

memory and forgetting aging exodus/departure

Driveway to Driveway

Superchunk

A hazy, fragmented recollection of a drunken night that may or may not have involved romance, tallied up through physical…

memory and forgetting intoxication erased identity

Still Woman Enough

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

Ghost In This House

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

Slowness

Calexico

A quiet meditation on a nighttime car journey through the Southwest, where a small mishap and a slow, starlit drive become a…

memory and time gratitude toward a companion landscape as emotional space

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

In My Life

The Beatles

A quiet reckoning with memory, this song moves from cataloguing remembered places and people to settling on a present love that…

memory and nostalgia mortality the present versus the past

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

Keep Looking

Sade

A weathered address to a partner (or possibly the self) about the exhaustion of trying to keep a fading relationship alive,…

fatigue in long-term love resilience versus surrender memory as anchor

Stay Happy

Broken Social Scene

An instrumental-heavy Broken Social Scene track built around a fragmented, almost mantra-like address to another person, where…

identity formed through relationship time and repetition vulnerability and exposure

Water Under the Bridge

Guy Clark

Guy Clark builds an entire meditation on time, memory, and mortality around a single river metaphor, letting a childhood image…

mortality and release memory and impermanence folk religion and redemption

Eid Ma Clack Shaw

Bill Callahan

A meditation on grief and the failure of language to console it, built around a dream in which the narrator writes down what he…

grief and mourning the limits of language dreams versus waking reality

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

Music Is Math

Boards of Canada

A near-wordless piece built almost entirely from a warm, looping synth pattern, punctuated by a handful of manipulated vocal…

nostalgia and memory childhood innocence versus threat repetition and ritual

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

Forget About It

Alison Krauss

A breakup song built on a paradox: the narrator repeats the command to forget as a way of proving she can't. Every dismissive…

denial as coping unresolved heartbreak performed indifference

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

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

Pictures of You

The Cure

A grief-drenched meditation on a lost relationship, told entirely through the act of staring at photographs and the memories…

grief and loss memory versus reality obsessive love

Favourite

Fontaines D.C.

A hazy love song that keeps slipping into memory and unease, as the singer addresses someone who has been a constant presence…

nostalgia and endurance class and place disorientation/return

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

Never Meant

American Football

A short, spare breakup song that opens American Football's debut, built almost entirely around the fantasy of erasing a…

denial as self-protection the unreliability of spoken words erasure versus memory

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

Earthbound

Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell weighs the pull of escape—into fantasy, death, or transcendence—against the stubborn pleasures of ordinary life,…

mortality and mid-life reflection gratitude versus escapism love and social barriers

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

Tom's Diner (A Cappella)

Suzanne Vega

A woman sits alone in a diner, cataloguing the small, disconnected human traffic around her — a stingy coffee pour, a couple's…

urban anonymity observation versus connection everyday ritual

All Mirrors

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

Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round

The Roots

This is The Roots' rendition of a civil rights-era freedom song, built almost entirely on a single vow of forward motion…

nonviolent resistance perseverance collective identity

Jennifer

Eurythmics

A minimal, incantatory sketch of a woman rendered almost entirely through color, repeated like a chant until a single image of…

absence obsession dissolution of identity