Results for “impermanence/departure”

Songs

Surfing On a Rocket

Air

A minimalist space-flight fantasy that doubles as a meditation on departure and dissolution, sung with the breezy detachment Air…

escape and departure transcendence romantic reassurance vs. abandonment

The Sea Captain

Sandy Denny

A short, dreamlike ballad in which a wandering narrator and a sea captain mirror each other's escapes from burning or confining…

escape and departure transcendence versus disaster fate and mirroring

As You Said

Cream

An acoustic, largely unamplified Cream track built around a Jack Bruce/Pete Brown lyric that reads like a fractured elegy for…

loss of time impermanence departure and finality

Cruiser

Red House Painters

A travelogue-love-song hybrid in which Mark Kozelek narrates a brief, intense LA romance with a woman who has her own buried…

transient romance idealization of a lover Los Angeles as mood and symbol

Cattails

Big Thief

A hushed, image-driven lullaby-elegy that moves between addresses to different women (Caroline, Violet, an unnamed elder),…

impermanence and mortality comfort without explanation nature as memory

To Live Is to Fly

Townes Van Zandt

A traveling songwriter's meditation on impermanence, love without possession, and the necessity of moving on, framed as both a…

impermanence itinerant life love without attachment

Certainty

Big Thief

A quiet meditation on romantic uncertainty that refuses to resolve into either commitment or departure. Lenker circles the…

ambivalence in love impermanence faith versus doubt

Silver

Pixies

A brief, murky detour on Doolittle, this track trades the album's usual verbal density for a repeated, incantatory fragment…

alienation transience obscured vision/truth

You Are My Sunshine

Carly Simon

Carly Simon's version of this old folk standard strips it down to a hushed, almost prayer-like lullaby, trading the song's usual…

fragile love fear of loss comfort and vulnerability

Rollin' and Tumblin'

Cream

Cream's version of this Delta blues standard strips the song down to a churning, harmonica-driven groove built on repetition and…

loss and abandonment restlessness travel as escape or fate

Take on Me

Weezer

This is Weezer's faithful cover of a-ha's 1985 synth-pop classic, rendered here with the band's signature guitar-driven…

romantic pursuit fear of commitment fleeting connection

Oh Very Young

Cat Stevens

A meditation on mortality and inheritance addressed to a child, using the wearing-out of a pair of jeans as an emblem for how…

mortality impermanence legacy and inheritance

Everything Must Change

Nina Simone

A meditation on impermanence set as a slow, incantatory song rather than a story. Simone (performing a standard she didn't…

impermanence time and aging acceptance

Let's Dance

David Bowie

A dance-floor invitation built on a simple repeated command that gradually reveals an undertow of anxiety about impermanence and…

desire and vulnerability impermanence performance versus intimacy

Leaves That Are Green

Simon Jäger

A young songwriter watches a single year of his life pass and turns that small span of time into a meditation on mortality and…

impermanence aging and time lost love

Frosty the Snowman

The Beach Boys

This is a straightforward cover of the 1950 novelty Christmas standard, delivered by The Beach Boys with their signature vocal…

childhood wonder impermanence seasonal magic

Red Guitar

Cassandra Wilson

This is a meditative, almost devotional song built around a simple ritual: each day's mundane and sensory acts are catalogued by…

impermanence ritual and routine art as anchor

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

Pink + White

Frank Ocean

A soft, wandering meditation on maternal love and mortality, built around the image of a hurricane and the small acts of…

maternal love survival and resilience impermanence

Nothing, Not Nearly

Laura Marling

A brief, elegiac song about a fading connection remembered mostly through fragments of landscape and season, arriving at a…

impermanence memory and forgetting depression and emotional numbness

Life's a Gas

T. Rex

A short, mantra-like ballad in which grandiose romantic promises are raised only to be waved off with a shrug. Bolan's…

romantic grandiosity vs. resignation impermanence cosmic/mystical imagery

Perpetual Change

Yes

A meditation on perception and control dressed in nature imagery, "Perpetual Change" argues that human certainty about mastering…

illusion vs. perception hubris and control impermanence

Rather Be

The Verve

A late-period Verve track that trades the band's earlier cosmic yearning for something more grounded: a declaration of…

contentment versus fear love as refuge disillusionment with fame and modern life

You Can Close Your Eyes

James Taylor

A quiet, unadorned lullaby that doubles as a farewell, offering reassurance through simple natural imagery rather than grand…

reassurance impermanence simplicity as sincerity

Kinda Bonkers

Animal Collective

A woozy meditation on connection and the strangeness of being alive, delivered with the giddy, slightly overwhelmed voice of…

interconnectedness altered perception wonder and overwhelm

The Same Thing (Makes You Laugh, Makes You Cry)

Sly & Robbie

This is a single proverbial statement stretched into a full song: the idea that any given force in life -- pleasure, sustenance,…

duality of experience impermanence skepticism toward truth

Since I Lost You

Genesis

A stark meditation on sudden, irreversible loss, built almost entirely out of repeated images of fragility and dissolution. The…

grief impermanence regret

Her Disappearing Theme

Broken Social Scene

An instrumental from Broken Social Scene's self-titled 2005 album, built as a churning wall-of-sound piece rather than a song…

absence and erasure memory collective vs. individual voice

April Fool

Patti Smith

A buoyant invitation-song built almost entirely from the word 'come,' Patti Smith casts romance as a shared adventure into…

romantic invitation artistic freedom embracing folly

Who Scared You (Recorded at Elektra Studios, 1969)

The Doors

A loose, blues-inflected fragment that circles a single question—what happened to you before I met you—without ever answering…

damage and its origins seduction as consolation escape through intoxication

2/2

Brian Eno

2/2 is the second, more abstract piece on Ambient 1: Music for Airports, built from slow synthesizer drones and processed…

waiting and suspension impermanence technology mediating the human voice

Gold Rush

Death Cab for Cutie

A meditation on urban development as a form of grief, using construction and demolition in a gentrifying neighborhood as a…

gentrification memory and loss impermanence

Feel Flows

The Beach Boys

A near-abstract meditation by Carl Wilson that trades narrative for texture, using dense alliteration and impressionistic…

dissolution of self memory and time transcendence

Never Grow Up

Taylor Swift

A song that moves through three distinct vantage points on childhood — a parent watching an infant sleep, an older sibling or…

the passage of time loss of innocence parental protectiveness

Revelator

Gillian Welch

A slow, self-implicating meditation on identity and honesty, where the singer confesses to being a fraud even as she performs…

self-deception authenticity vs performance impermanence

Third of May / Ōdaigahara

Fleet Foxes

A sprawling, suite-like meditation on friendship, fracture, and reconciliation within Fleet Foxes, built around the real-life…

reconciliation after estrangement time and memory collective identity vs. individual selfhood

2/1

Brian Eno

"2/1" is the second piece on Ambient 1: Music for Airports, built from a small set of slowly looping piano phrases and wordless…

stasis and drift impermanence non-intrusive listening

Lorelai

Fleet Foxes

A breakup song built from small, deflating images of self-worth, sung by someone who has resigned themselves to having been…

romantic rejection self-deprecation memory and haunting

Summer, Highland Falls

Billy Joel

A meditative, almost philosophical ballad about the instability of emotional life, framed through a strained relationship.…

emotional polarity resignation and acceptance the limits of communication

24 Frames

Jason Isbell

A meditation on the fragility of everything a person builds—relationships, careers, a sense of stability—delivered through a…

impermanence mortality self-deception