Simon Jäger
Anji is a solo acoustic guitar instrumental built on a rolling fingerpicked pattern, adapted by Paul Simon from a piece written…
virtuosity folk-revival lineage interiority
Aphex Twin
An untitled, numbered ambient piece from Aphex Twin's largely wordless second Selected Ambient Works volume, this track works…
dissociation interior space repetition and stasis
The War on Drugs
A road-weary meditation on drift and self-doubt, where the narrator addresses a lover or maybe himself while measuring how much…
restlessness depletion and self-estrangement ambivalent love
Solange
A hazy, half-sung interlude built almost entirely from wordless vocal riffs and a few looping fragments about luxury, sex, and…
Black interiority and privacy luxury as self-possession desire and physical memory
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
Massive Attack
An almost-instrumental interlude built from a single repeated proverb about the unknowability of other people. The track…
opacity of others distrust and self-protection the gap between appearance and interior life
Harry Nilsson
A song about tuning out the noise of other people in favor of an interior fantasy of motion and escape. Written by Fred Neil and…
alienation escape/wanderlust isolation amid crowds
Animal Collective
A song about the paralysis of anxious self-consciousness and the small, almost accidental relief of stepping outside. It moves…
anxiety and self-criticism domestic clutter as psychological weight inertia versus movement
Röyksopp
A minimal, incantatory portrait of a woman weighed down by unnamed distress, sung by an observer who circles her without ever…
mental distress observation vs intimacy compulsive repetition
Depeche Mode
A blunt political provocation dressed as an arena anthem, aimed at a populace the singer accuses of complacency in the face of…
political apathy manipulation and propaganda religion and authority
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
Magazine
A song about psychic exposure and depletion, built around a single, obsessively repeated image of light being expelled from a…
self-exposure alienation bodily/psychic collapse
Guy Clark
A meditation on late-life isolation and the compensatory warmth of old friendship, told through two verses of interior unease…
aging and solitude the value of long friendship emotional contradiction
Television
This is Television's first single, a hazy character sketch built on a shuffling, unresolved guitar figure rather than a…
outsider mystique visionary madness voyeurism and judgment
Curtis Mayfield
This is Curtis Mayfield's origin story for the addict who becomes the film's tragic antihero -- a child raised in poverty and…
urban poverty childhood neglect addiction as inheritance
Chet Baker
Chet Baker's reading of this Rodgers and Hart standard turns a bright, playful showtune into something hushed and interior.…
anticipation of love imagination versus reality romantic idealism
Judee Sill
A short, dense allegory in which cosmic and mythological imagery (a phoenix, dragons, an implied battle with the Devil) stands…
spiritual struggle self-doubt and sincerity transformation and rebirth