Results for “interdependence/community”

Songs

Where’s Your Head At

Basement Jaxx

A stomping electro-house track built almost entirely from a repeated question and a repeated warning, using minimal lyrical…

mental strain paranoia and isolation interdependence/community

The Revolution Starts...

Steve Earle

Steve Earle turns a protest chant into a personal call to action, insisting that political change begins in ordinary daily…

political awakening personal responsibility hope versus complacency

Painted on Canvas

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter builds an extended metaphor comparing human identity to a painted canvas, where upbringing, community, and chance…

identity formation agency vs. determinism artistic lineage

Bushes and Briars

Sandy Denny

A meditation on empty churches and forgotten faith, framed as a solitary walker's observation of a Sunday service she stands…

religious doubt rural isolation decay of tradition

Out In the Street

Bruce Springsteen

A dockworker counts down the hours of a punishing week toward the one place that restores his sense of self: the sidewalk and…

working-class pride community solidarity surveillance and police presence

Give Love On Christmas Day

The Temptations

A holiday standard built on a simple, almost sermon-like premise: material gifts are fine, but love is the only present that…

generosity versus materialism universal love seasonal community

Pacifics (From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack “N.Y. Is Red Hot")

Digable Planets

Digable Planets turn a Sunday in New York into an extended meditation on rest, community, and creative replenishment, moving…

urban leisure and rest Black cultural inheritance (jazz, literature, hip-hop lineage) community and belonging

Billy Jack

Curtis Mayfield

A street-corner elegy for a man killed in a shooting, told through the flat, almost gossipy report of a friend passing along…

urban violence respectability and street reputation community versus individualism

The Weight

The Band

A traveler arrives in a town called Nazareth looking for simple lodging and instead gets tangled in a chain of odd requests and…

burden and obligation hospitality and its refusal community entanglement

Spoonman

Soundgarden

A tribute to a real Seattle street performer becomes a compressed meditation on rhythm as communal salvation, with the song's…

music as ritual/salvation street performance and urban folklore community through rhythm

We The People

The Staple Singers

This is a communal exhortation song built almost entirely around a repeated collective refrain, using the language of civic…

racial unity collective responsibility social observation

Christmas Is

Run-DMC

Run-DMC repurpose the charity-compilation Christmas song into a pointed piece of social commentary, contrasting the holiday's…

economic inequality charity and obligation commercialized holiday imagery

The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll

Muddy Waters

A late-career Muddy Waters track that functions as a genealogical claim and a roll call, tracing rock and roll's parentage…

musical lineage authorship and ownership of a genre community and testimony

Slippery People

Talking Heads

Talking Heads build a call-and-response gospel workout out of fragmented, almost nonsensical verses and a reassuring chorus that…

religious ecstasy vs. skepticism surrender of rational control community and reassurance

Stay Flo

Solange

A repetitive, chant-like groove built around the phrase 'stay flo' (stay flowing, stay grounded, stay unbothered) that functions…

resilience under scrutiny hustle and survival self-possession

The Ghetto

Donny Hathaway

This is less a lyric than a groove built around a single word, repeated until it becomes a chant, a claim, and an invitation.…

community and belonging reclamation of a stigmatized word celebration amid hardship

Peace Train

Cat Stevens

A buoyant early-70s anthem that turns hope for global reconciliation into a literal vehicle, imagined as a train that anyone can…

utopian hope collective longing for peace spiritual/religious undertones

The Eternal

Joy Division

A slow-motion funeral procession becomes the occasion for a meditation on grief, estrangement, and the passage of time as seen…

death and mourning isolation from community childhood and incomprehension

I'm So Tired

Fugazi

A stripped-down statement of exhaustion and withdrawal, delivered less as a song built on hooks than as a spoken confession set…

burnout and depletion isolation surrender/withdrawal

A Roller Skating Jam Named "Saturdays"

De La Soul

A radio-skit framed jam that turns Saturday roller-rink culture into a loose celebration of release after the work week,…

leisure and release community ritual casual romance and its double standards

Cobwebs

Animal Collective

A collage of surreal pastoral images and chanted refrains that circles around resistance to withdrawal—refusing to 'go…

entrapment vs. freedom embracing imperfection nature as omen

Jambalaya

Lucinda Williams

This is Lucinda Williams' cover of Hank Williams' 1952 Cajun standard, a breathless invitation to a bayou party built almost…

celebration and escape community and gathering romantic anticipation

Frosty The Snowman

Ella Fitzgerald

This is Ella Fitzgerald's swinging take on the beloved children's Christmas novelty song, complete with an extra descriptive…

childhood wonder impermanence and mortality (softened) magic versus rationality

Meet On the Ledge

Fairport Convention

A young band's meditation on mortality and friendship disguised as a simple folk-rock singalong, written by a teenage Richard…

mortality and remembrance friendship and community loss of youthful idealism

The Three Bells

Alison Krauss

This is a folk parable that condenses an entire human life—birth, marriage, death—into three ringing-bell scenes tied to the…

cycle of life community and ritual mortality

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

Elton John

A newcomer's romantic image of New York collides with the grimmer reality of the city, framed as a meditation on class and…

urban disillusionment class division romantic idealism vs reality

Candy Man

Mississippi John Hurt

A rollicking Piedmont blues built entirely on a single, transparent sexual double entendre. Mississippi John Hurt uses the…

sexual innuendo folk humor itinerant male desirability

If We Don't Have Each Other

Smokey Robinson

A late-career Smokey Robinson ballad built almost entirely around one rhetorical question: what does a couple actually possess…

romantic interdependence gratitude and devotion completeness through partnership

Jambalaya

Hank Williams

A breathless invitation to a Cajun celebration, this song strings together food, music, and a woman's name into a single rushing…

celebration regional identity and place romantic anticipation

Player's Ball

OutKast

Outkast's debut single reframes Christmas as a hustler's holiday, swapping snow and chimneys for Atlanta street life, cars, and…

alternative celebration/holiday subversion Southern regional pride street hustling as lifestyle and code

Diddy Bop

Noname

Diddy Bop opens Telefone as a childhood remembrance of Chicago summers, braiding sensory nostalgia with quiet undertow --…

childhood nostalgia Chicago community and place innocence versus danger

Hot Summer

Prince

A breezy, mantra-like single built almost entirely around one phrase, using the promise of a good summer as a stand-in for hope…

collective optimism chosen family/community uncertainty and fear

Just One of the Guys

Jenny Lewis

Jenny Lewis turns a wry observation about aging and gender roles in male-dominated creative circles into a meditation on…

aging and the double standard childlessness and biological clock anxiety gender roles in creative/professional spaces

Most of My Heroes Still...

Public Enemy

This track is Public Enemy's roll call of unofficial Black history, built around a single stubborn refrain: the people Chuck D…

erasure of Black radical history official vs. lived memory self-mythology and hip-hop lineage

Where I'm From

Digable Planets

This posse-cut catalog builds a portrait of a hip-hop upbringing not through a single narrator but through overlapping voices…

cultural identity and community Afrocentric consciousness hip-hop as inheritance

Afeni

Rapsody

Rapsody builds an extended plea and prayer directed at Black men, asking them to reckon with how they treat Black women, while a…

gender violence and accountability reverence for Black motherhood intra-community healing

Mind Your Own Business (Show 9)

Hank Williams

This is a live radio performance of Hank Williams' comic novelty song, framed by an announcer's folksy introduction before…

privacy versus gossip marital independence rural community friction

Party and Bulls**t

The Notorious B.I.G.

Biggie's debut single is a snapshot of Brooklyn nightlife rendered with documentary precision: the party is inseparable from the…

street life as routine violence normalized within leisure masculinity and reputation

F.U.N.K.

Betty Davis

This is less a song than a spoken-and-sung roll call, a lineage claimed rather than argued for. Betty Davis treats funk as a…

musical lineage and inheritance Black artistic community funk as identity/blood

The Next Movement

The Roots

A pure showcase track built on DJ-style hype-man calls and dense, boastful verses from Black Thought, "The Next Movement" is…

self-mythologizing lyrical craft as spectacle community/call-and-response