The Cure
This is The Cure's cover of Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic classic, recorded as a B-side. Robert Smith takes a song built on…
disorientation altered perception romantic infatuation as intoxication
Mercury Rev
A hazy, druggy fable about pursuit and containment, where sunlit imagery of seduction and pleasure keeps curdling into images of…
intoxication and altered perception freedom versus entrapment instability of the self
Mott the Hoople
A woozy, half-hallucinated love song addressed to a woman who dissolves into imagery as the singer describes her, until it…
obsessive love dissolution of identity intoxication/altered perception
Television
A downtown-New York nocturne about a night walk that tips into a heightened, almost hallucinatory perception of the city,…
urban nightlife altered perception desire and detachment
Röyksopp
A hazy, dreamlike track that stages a search for revelation inside what feels like an altered or trance-like state, where…
altered states / intoxication longing for transcendence isolation and communion
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 Doors
A short, propulsive rock song built almost entirely around a single command repeated until it becomes a mantra. It uses images…
transcendence limits of perception desire and entrapment
Queen
A groove-driven, riff-heavy jam built more on sensation than sense, "Dragon Attack" trades narrative for pure sonic and sexual…
sexual conquest altered perception surrender to instinct
The Flaming Lips
This is a cover of the Beatles psychedelic classic, and the Flaming Lips' version leans into the song's dreamlike dissolve…
altered perception longing for an unreachable figure dream logic
Lana Del Rey
This is Lana Del Rey's cover of Donovan's 1966 psychedelic classic, recorded for the horror anthology film it lends its title…
paranoia surveillance and being watched cultural anxiety
The Who
A disoriented young man rides a commuter train while his mind fractures into fragments of memory, sexual anxiety, and social…
dissociation and identity collapse adolescent sexuality and shame class and Englishness
Big Thief
A hazy address to an otherworldly presence that may be a lover, a hallucination, or an actual extraterrestrial, the song treats…
disappearance and loss altered perception vs. reality longing for transcendence
Portishead
A hazy meditation on the isolation of subjective perception, built from a handful of repeated fragments rather than a developed…
solipsism and isolation the unreliability of perception alienation within intimacy
Jamie xx
This is a dance track built almost entirely from two chants, one about intoxicating love and one about repetition, that function…
ecstasy and repetition collective euphoria love as intoxication
A hazy, ritualistic song about a woman navigating fear and secrecy through altered states and mystical imagery. The Flaming Lips…
altered consciousness fear and avoidance ritual and mysticism
Hüsker Dü
A rapid-fire punk song that opens Zen Arcade with a set of clipped, almost proverbial observations about perception, autonomy,…
moral ambiguity autonomy vs. imposed rules perception and empathy
Cassandra Wilson
This is Cassandra Wilson's 2015 reading of the 1938 Coots/Gillespie standard, delivered as part of a tribute to Billie Holiday.…
intoxication as metaphor for desire self-awareness versus helplessness obsession
Built to Spill
A woozy meditation on childhood perception, drinking, and loneliness, built around the image of the Big Dipper as an unreliable…
perception vs. reality loneliness alcohol and self-deception
The National
A woozy, fragmented meditation on emotional exhaustion and self-medication, delivered from inside a mind that can't quite trust…
emotional numbness self-deception and coping isolation vs. reassurance
Harry Nilsson
A small argument about the color of the sun spirals into a meditation on epistemic vertigo -- how do you trust anything,…
epistemological doubt trust and betrayal perception vs. reality
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
A short, circling meditation on how received wisdom persists even when it no longer fits reality. Built to Spill uses plain,…
conformity vs. change epistemic humility the persistence of habit
Magazine
A tense, self-lacerating address to a phantom or projection—Devoto's title borrows the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a 'tulpa,' a…
obsession and self-deception desire mixed with fear the unreliability of perception
Boards of Canada
An instrumental piece from Boards of Canada's third album that trades on the gap between its title's cheerful theatrical…
nostalgia childhood media artifice versus memory
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
The xx
A short, spare meditation on the way absence corrodes trust in a relationship, where the beloved's reality becomes…
insecurity in intimacy fear of abandonment the unreliability of perception
Carly Simon
A pep talk in song form, urging a woman to stop measuring her steady, familiar relationship against fantasies of glamour and…
long-term love vs. novelty contentment reframed as romance self-perception
Nirvana
Nirvana's debut single is actually a cover of a Dutch band Shocking Blue's psychedelic pop song, retooled into a droning,…
intoxication of desire miscommunication in love repetition as feeling
A short, hazy meditation on time and companionship that trades narrative for atmosphere, repeating its title like a mantra until…
time and impermanence dreamlike perception companionship
Black Sabbath
This closing track from Paranoid pairs a lurching instrumental jam with a half-comic, half-paranoid account of drug-induced…
drug paranoia unreliable perception self-deception
T. Rex
Monolith is a brief, riddling meditation on time, fate, and human blindness, delivered in Marc Bolan's characteristic style of…
fate and determinism time as a ruling force obscured perception
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
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia" builds a fractured character sketch around a woman whose mental illness is treated with unsettling…
mental illness and stigma unreliable perception family cruelty
Underworld
A stream-of-consciousness plunge through a night of drinking and drug-taking on the London Underground, told in fragmented,…
intoxication and dissociation urban nightlife loss of self
A woozy, repetitive lament built on a single glacial image, this early Mercury Rev track circles a corrosive relationship…
erosion of self codependency escapism through intoxication
The War on Drugs
The title track from The War on Drugs' 2014 breakthrough is a hazy, half-legible meditation on disorientation and emotional…
disorientation emotional isolation memory and nostalgia
Sandy Denny
A brief, loosely sketched vignette about a woman who sleeps late and drifts through her days, addressed by a narrator who can't…
idleness and withdrawal ambiguous judgment vs. affection female eccentricity
Ella Fitzgerald
Irving Berlin's standard is a compact declaration of romantic relief, built almost entirely on the pun between 'blue' as color…
romantic joy transformation of perception time and its acceleration in love
The Chemical Brothers
An instrumental-led score piece built around a largely spoken/sung verse that imagines consciousness dissolving into water,…
loss of control altered consciousness transformation/adaptation
Madonna
A meditation on emotional guardedness set to icy, spiritually-inflected electronica, the song addresses a lover whose…
emotional withholding spiritual awakening vulnerability vs. self-protection