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
Joy Division
A meditation on emotional numbness and self-estrangement, delivered in the flat, exhausted cadence typical of Joy Division. The…
emotional numbness self-alienation futility of change
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
Frank Ocean
A two-part song that splits itself at its own midpoint, moving from a hazy, drug-fogged meditation on isolation and hustling…
isolation within closeness hustle and survival memory and nostalgia
Japanese Breakfast
A song about the strange hollowness of creative success, framed as an argument between two voices: one asking triumphant…
creative burnout impostor syndrome the cost of public adoration
The Clash
A first-person portrait of a suburban-raised, media-saturated narrator who tries to buy a sense of self off the shelf and finds…
consumerism and identity isolation within domesticity alienation in urban/suburban life
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
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
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
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
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
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
Robert Johnson
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Nick Drake
A hushed address to a fragile, almost otherworldly listener, offering reassurance while quietly confessing the singer's own…
isolation transcendence versus earthbound suffering fragility and reassurance
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
Hüsker Dü
A song from Hüsker Dü's original run recast here as a live document, this track builds a bleak inventory of loss — a broken…
mortality emotional numbness aging and decline
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
David Bowie
A dramatized radio transmission between mission control and an astronaut becomes an extended metaphor for detachment and…
isolation fame and alienation dissociation
SZA
SZA turns devotion into a kind of hyper-vigilance, pledging extreme loyalty and even violence for a lover while the…
obsessive devotion insecurity masked as confidence loyalty and self-sacrifice
Death Cab for Cutie
A breakup song built around the image of a photograph's frame—one person edged out as the other steps into visibility and…
dissolution of a relationship fame/visibility eclipsing intimacy memory and forgetting
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
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
Gang of Four
Gang of Four fuse the language of romantic breakup with the language of consumer transactions, treating a relationship like a…
commodification of relationships alienation desire vs. disgust
Bon Iver
A raw, fragmentary breakup address built from accusation and self-recrimination in equal measure, sung to a fading relationship…
dissolution of a relationship emotional exhaustion blame and self-blame
Moby
A hushed breakup meditation built from fragments rather than a full narrative, "Porcelain" uses the blur between sleep and…
dissolution of a relationship guilt and self-doubt the porousness of dreams and waking life