Howlin’ Wolf
This is one of the foundational texts of Chicago blues: a hypnotic, one-chord vamp built around the image of a train's…
migration and trains as symbol unrequited or faithless love isolation and being unheard
Alice in Chains
A short, stark meditation on isolation and self-erasure, built from two spare verses and a wordless, keening refrain. The song…
isolation loss of autonomy despair
Son House
Son House recounts the death of a lover through a series of stark, repeated images: a letter, a wake, a burial, a failed prayer.…
grief and loss delayed recognition of love religious doubt
Pearl Jam
This is a cover of The Who's 1973 track, rendered here for a film soundtrack about grief and recovery. Pearl Jam's version leans…
longing emotional drought catharsis
Burial
Built almost entirely from pitch-shifted vocal samples looping a handful of phrases, this track uses repetition and vocal…
isolation longing for belonging fragile intimacy
Cream
Cream's version compresses Robert Johnson's Delta blues into a lean, high-velocity rock performance, turning a song about…
isolation spiritual desperation the blues tradition
Waylon Jennings
A short, obsessive breakup lament built almost entirely around one plea repeated over and over: some accusation aimed at a…
heartbreak escape and flight self-destruction
Portishead
A slow, dread-soaked meditation on despair that borrows apocalyptic language to describe private, unrelenting psychic pain. The…
despair and depression isolation biblical/apocalyptic imagery
Johnny Cash
A cover written originally as a young man's meditation on self-harm and numbness becomes, in Johnny Cash's version, an old man's…
mortality regret addiction and self-destruction
This is a track built almost entirely from a single vocal fragment looped and pitched into a kind of emotional smear, more mood…
betrayal emotional numbness isolation
Al Green
A young man begs a train conductor to reverse course so he can return to a lover he left too hastily. Al Green, still developing…
regret and reversal longing isolation
Rosanne Cash
A classic torch song built on a single sustained nautical metaphor for heartbreak, recorded by Rosanne Cash as part of an album…
romantic abandonment isolation longing for rescue
Jimi Hendrix
This is Hendrix's take on a blues standard about fatalism and hard luck, stripped down to a single circling complaint. The song…
fatalism poverty and hardship isolation
Brian Eno
Deep Blue Day is a slow, pedal-steel-laced instrumental from Eno's soundtrack to a documentary about the Apollo moon missions.…
weightlessness nostalgia Americana in space
Wilco
A short, disoriented piece about someone trying to locate himself through self-deception and memory failure, using the image of…
self-deception disorientation distorted memory
Rodent is built almost entirely around a single vocal fragment, looped and re-pitched until a simple declaration of dependency…
dependency and loss isolation repetition as emotional state
Robert Johnson
A restless, fragmented blues built around the image of pursuit — weather, hoodoo, and dread all fused into a single sense of…
pursuit and dread restlessness/displacement folk magic and superstition
The Shins
A woozy, image-dense monologue about self-protection and emotional avoidance dressed up in surreal, almost dreamlike language.…
emotional avoidance self-deception aging and inertia
David Bowie
A dramatized radio transmission between mission control and an astronaut becomes an extended metaphor for detachment and…
isolation fame and alienation dissociation
Harry Nilsson
A traditional-blues lament about the aftermath of a lovers' quarrel, delivered as a loose, almost improvisational vamp built…
heartbreak and regret isolation blues tradition
Roxy Music
A quiet plea for romantic risk-taking from a narrator who has been burned by love before. The song trades Roxy Music's earlier…
romantic vulnerability emotional fatigue hope after disappointment
The Who
A single, almost liturgical plea builds around one pun -- love as both sovereign force and literal downpour -- to dramatize a…
spiritual thirst emotional exhaustion love as redemptive force
Nirvana
A hushed, almost inert closer to Nevermind that trades the album's loud-quiet-loud dynamics for a single sustained murmur. The…
isolation destitution moral numbness
Etta James
Etta James takes the 1933 Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler standard and strips it down to raw, aching testimony, using weather as an…
heartbreak and abandonment weather as emotional metaphor spiritual longing
Pink Floyd
A grown man addresses his mother in the anxious, needy voice of a child, asking permission for things no adult should need to…
overprotective parenting infantilization fear of the outside world
A slow, aching invitation built on a repeated refrain about shelter from rain, the song fuses seduction with mourning for a lost…
loss and abandonment sexual invitation as consolation poverty and hard times
St. Vincent
A woman narrates a summer of collapse—medication, isolation, avoidance of family and mail—while a chorus repeats a request to be…
depression and isolation medicalization of the self desire for external repair
The Replacements
A wallflower's confession dressed up as a party invitation, this song uses the image of a never-ending bash to talk about…
social anxiety self-deprecation isolation within community
Gorillaz
A collaboration between Gorillaz and Jamaican dancehall artist Popcaan, the track fuses a patois-inflected verse about hard-won…
survival and upward mobility fame's emptiness isolation within relationships
Nick Drake
A quiet love song built almost entirely from negation and plea, in which the speaker describes a lifetime of numbness suddenly…
awakening through love isolation and wandering doubt and vulnerability
Lead Belly
An old Appalachian murder ballad, filtered through Lead Belly's version, that interrogates a woman about a night spent away and…
accusation and evasion death and dismemberment isolation/exile
Nat King Cole
A jilted lover appeals past his unfaithful partner to God and the sea as witnesses to his grief, then trails off into…
betrayal in love unanswered devotion isolation and distance
Talk Talk
An oblique meditation on justice, guilt, and the gap between legal verdicts and moral truth, built from fragments of courtroom…
justice and its failures guilt and repentance institutional power
Boards of Canada
Satellite Anthem Icarus is an instrumental piece built from warm, slightly detuned guitar figures laid over a slow, hypnotic…
flight and falling distance/isolation nostalgia for analog technology
This short opening piece establishes the album's central image—the wall built from accumulated emotional injuries—by introducing…
paternal absence childhood grief war's aftermath
Ann Peebles
A woman alone on a rainy night confesses to a desire strong enough to make her willing to wreck another relationship just to…
forbidden desire loneliness emotional compulsion versus morality
An old Southern folk ballad, filtered through Lead Belly's version, that turns a simple question about infidelity into something…
betrayal and suspicion death and unexplained violence isolation/exile
Judee Sill
Judee Sill turns the American frontier myth—the lone pioneer on the prairie—into an allegory for spiritual pilgrimage. The…
spiritual seeking solitude and isolation temptation and asceticism
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
Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen turns a boardwalk carnival ride into an extended metaphor for marriage, using the mechanics of a funhouse tunnel to…
marriage and disillusionment intimacy versus isolation fear beneath romantic ritual