Results for “jazz standard repertoire”

Songs

Jazz

Mick Jenkins

Mick Jenkins builds a boast track around the double meaning of "jazz" as both the improvisational honesty of a rapper's speech…

authenticity vs. performance Black musical lineage surveillance and danger of speaking truth

Honeysuckle Rose

Anita O’Day

This is Anita O'Day's vocal-jazz treatment of the Fats Waller standard, a breezy declaration of infatuation built entirely on…

infatuation sweetness as metaphor public admiration

What'll I Do

Harry Nilsson

This is Nilsson's reading of Irving Berlin's 1924 standard, delivered as part of his second collection of pre-rock pop songs.…

heartbreak loneliness memory and photographs

It's Good To Be Here

Digable Planets

Digable Planets frame their own arrival on the hip-hop scene as an interstellar landing, spinning a mock-sci-fi mythology in…

Afrofuturism as playful self-mythology hip-hop and jazz lineage group identity and unity

The Lady Is a Tramp

Frank Sinatra

A Rodgers and Hart standard in which every socially disreputable trait ascribed to the title character turns out, on inspection,…

class satire nonconformity irony of reputation

The Girl from Ipanema

Amy Winehouse

This is a bossa nova standard sung from the vantage of the unseen admirer rather than the girl herself, and Winehouse leans into…

unrequited longing invisibility to the object of desire idealization from a distance

Jimmi Diggin' Cats

Digable Planets

This is Digable Planets riffing on the idea of retro nostalgia as a kind of alternate history, imagining sixties and seventies…

retro-futurism and nostalgia Black cultural lineage funk/jazz as inheritance

Forest Whitiker

Brother Ali

Brother Ali, an albino rapper with a visible disability, turns physical self-description into an act of defiance, cataloguing…

body image and self-acceptance defiance of conventional beauty standards disability and physical difference

You

Bill Withers

A confrontational, deeply personal song in which Bill Withers turns the tables on someone who has been trying to convince him…

gaslighting and psychological manipulation hypocrisy infidelity and betrayal

Move the Crowd

Eric B. & Rakim

This is a foundational hip-hop record about the act of making hip-hop records: Rakim narrates the physical and mental process of…

creative process lyrical mastery performance and control

On My Way to Harlem

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter narrates a pilgrimage to Harlem that turns into a meditation on cultural inheritance and gentrification—the icons…

cultural memory gentrification and displacement artistic lineage

Follow Your Arrow

Kacey Musgraves

A catalog of no-win social judgments builds into a plainspoken anthem for living by one's own compass rather than trying to…

double standards sexual and social freedom religious hypocrisy

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

A Rose Is Still a Rose

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin plays elder counselor to a wounded young woman, using the image of a rose to insist that sexual betrayal doesn't…

self-worth after betrayal intergenerational female solidarity resilience

Part-Time Lover

Stevie Wonder

A slick mid-80s dance-pop track built around the mechanics of a secret affair, complete with coded signals and cover stories.…

infidelity and secrecy coded communication double standards in relationships

Stuff You Gotta Watch

The Band

A blues-rooted warning song built almost entirely on one refrain: the woman you love will mistreat you, and that mistreatment is…

romantic mistrust resignation and complicity double standards in love

Doo Wop (That Thing)

Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill delivers a two-part sermon on sex, self-respect, and modern relationship dysfunction, addressing women in the first…

sexual double standards nostalgia for a simpler past personal responsibility

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

Devil's Gonna Git You

Bessie Smith

A blues warning delivered as a curse: the narrator threatens a philandering partner with damnation, using the devil as a…

infidelity and betrayal moral reckoning female assertiveness

Rock and Roll Queen

Mott the Hoople

An early Mott the Hoople track built on a swaggering put-down dressed up as rock bravado, with a narrator addressing a woman he…

misogyny/double standards rock star posturing public image vs private reality

He's the One I Love

Mary Wells

A young woman addresses her girlfriends directly, defending her choice of boyfriend against the flashier options around them.…

romantic loyalty self-assurance in love rejection of superficial standards

Velvet Green

Jethro Tull

A pastoral seduction song that turns increasingly ambivalent, using the image of a lush green hillside as both a real place and…

pastoral seduction innocence versus experience double standards around sexuality

HUMBLE.

Kendrick Lamar

HUMBLE. is a swaggering, almost gleeful takedown of fakery in the industry and in culture at large, delivered by a narrator who…

authenticity vs. artifice wealth and status misogynoir/beauty standards critique

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

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

She Knows

J. Cole

J. Cole confesses to serial infidelity while dressing the confession in the language of fame, guilt, and self-destruction. The…

infidelity and guilt fame's corrosive pull self-awareness without change

Autumn Leaves

Chet Baker

This is an instrumental reading of a standard, so the analysis works from title, genre convention, and Chet Baker's established…

seasonal change loss and impermanence romantic nostalgia

Beautiful Love

Anita O’Day

A jazz standard from the American Songbook, this is a meditation on love as both blessing and disorienting force, addressed…

love as mystery surrender longing

That's All

Mel Tormé

A jazz standard built on a single rhetorical move: the singer repeatedly downplays what he offers, framing modest, enduring love…

modesty as devotion enduring love vs. material excess reassurance

Windmills of Your Mind

Abbey Lincoln

A standard-turned-jazz-vehicle built entirely on circular imagery, this lyric maps the disorienting churn of memory after a…

memory and obsession the end of love time's circularity

I Put a Spell On You

Annie Lennox

Annie Lennox's reading of this Screamin' Jay Hawkins standard, cut for her covers album Nostalgia, strips the song down to its…

possessive love jealousy desperation

Sleigh Ride

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald's reading of this holiday standard is pure surface pleasure: an invitation to a winter courtship ride rendered…

winter romance togetherness seasonal nostalgia

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln's 1991 reading of the Depression-era standard strips the song back to its bare, bitter arithmetic: a man who built…

economic betrayal labor and disposability war and its aftermath

Blue Monk

Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln sets original lyrics to Thelonious Monk's instrumental theme, turning a jazz standard into a meditation on…

solitude and self-reliance the price of freedom endurance through hardship

The Nearness Of You

Mel Tormé

A standard-era love song that strips romance down to a single argument: physical and emotional proximity matter more than…

presence versus illusion intimacy persuasion

Time After Time

Cassandra Wilson

Cassandra Wilson's version of the Cyndi Lauper standard slows the song into a meditative jazz ballad, trading pop urgency for a…

devotion amid distance memory and nostalgia time and its unreliability

When You're Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)

Billie Holiday

This is a 1938 pop standard performed as a light, buoyant jazz vocal, built on a simple emotional syllogism: your outward…

emotional contagion persuasion toward cheerfulness simplicity as vehicle for performance

Compared to What

Roberta Flack

A furious, jazz-inflected protest song that catalogs the hypocrisies of American life—consumerism, war, religion, race—and keeps…

social hypocrisy war and dissent religious skepticism

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

En Vogue

En Vogue's track reworks the Andrews Sisters' World War II standard about a drafted jazz trumpeter, swapping big-band swing for…

conscription and loss of identity nostalgia filtered through a new era music as marker of cultural cool

Too Marvelous for Words

Joe Williams

This is the standard Johnny Mercer/Richard Whiting torch-song standard, given a warm, unhurried reading by Joe Williams. The…

ineffability of love the limits of language playful hyperbole