Results for “longing and insomnia”

Songs

Tomorrow Is a Long Time

Sandy Denny

A Bob Dylan song given to Sandy Denny's voice becomes a study in absence: the singer measures every image of beauty and time…

longing and absence time as burden identity dissolved by loss

Been Too Long On the Road

Bread

A road-weary musician's confession, weighing the hollow glamour of touring life against a longing for home and a steady love…

touring exhaustion loneliness amid success self-doubt and guilt

How Long

Charles Bradley

Charles Bradley turns a simple, repeated question into a soul lament about collective suffering and addiction, moving from…

suffering and endurance addiction and family loss social despair

I Won't Be Long

Beck

A brief, hook-driven single that trades in fragmentary, almost dissociated imagery of division and delay, wrapped around a…

impending departure social division sensory disorientation

For a Long While

Colter Wall

A plainspoken meditation on tradition, work, and restlessness, built around an old guitar as emblem of continuity. Colter Wall…

tradition and continuity the dignity of manual labor restlessness versus rootedness

Been Down So Long

The Doors

A straight blues workout built on a single inverted-fortune boast, this track uses the twelve-bar form's repetition to turn…

confinement and release blues tradition/lineage sexual demand

Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time)

Elton John

A spaceman narrates the mundane dread of leaving home for another routine off-world shift, and finds the glamour of space travel…

alienation the gap between public and private self domestic loss

Long Flowing Robe

Todd Rundgren

A lonely Friday-night bar excursion turns into something closer to a ghost story or wish-fulfillment dream, as a mysterious…

loneliness desire and fantasy the uncanny

Long Division

Fugazi

A short, incantatory piece built around a single arithmetic metaphor for a relationship's dissolution. Fugazi strip the lyric…

breakup and separation refusal of blame fracture as survival

Long Shadows

Josh Ritter

A quiet vow of steadiness offered to someone frightened by loss and uncertainty, built almost entirely around a single repeated…

reassurance and devotion fear and vulnerability loss or absence of another partner

I Can't Stay Long

Ultravox

A meditation on impermanence and dissociation, told through cinematic imagery of dissolving scenes and passing strangers. The…

impermanence alienation transience of identity

Mary Long

Deep Purple

A snarling caricature of moral censorship, this track invents a composite figure of public prudishness and spends three verses…

hypocrisy censorship sexual repression

Long As You're Living

Abbey Lincoln

A direct, sermon-like piece of advice-giving set to jazz phrasing, in which the singer positions herself as a hard-won…

mortality and urgency self-improvement brotherhood and ethics

A Long Walk

Jill Scott

A courtship song that trades the usual seduction script for an invitation to talk, think, and simply spend unhurried time…

conscious courtship spiritual/intellectual intimacy Afrocentric romance

I've Been Loving You Too Long

Seal

This is Seal's cover of the Otis Redding soul standard, a slow-burning plea from a lover watching devotion curdle into…

one-sided devotion fear of abandonment emotional dependency

The Long Way Around

Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne surveys a country he finds both personally and politically unmoored, moving from wry self-assessment to a catalog…

aging and self-reckoning political disillusionment gun violence

Long Black Veil

Rosanne Cash

A ghost narrates his own wrongful execution, explaining that he chose death over revealing the affair that would have cleared…

forbidden love silence and secrecy guilt and sacrifice

You Shook Me All Night Long

AC/DC

A straight-ahead rock anthem built entirely around an extended car-and-combat metaphor for sex, written with the gleeful,…

sexual conquest physical excess masculine bravado

Love Is a Long Road

Tom Petty

A mid-tempo Heartbreakers-style rocker built around a single deflating refrain: whatever romance is being described, the song…

disillusionment with romantic idealism emotional exhaustion letting go

Long Way Home

Tom Waits

A wandering, guilt-soaked ballad in which a restless narrator confesses his inability to settle down even as he pleads for…

restlessness and wanderlust guilt and self-forgiveness domestic responsibility vs freedom

Four Long Years

Wire

A short, elliptical piece built from fragmented statements about breakdown -- of attention, feeling, and communication. It reads…

mental exhaustion alienation failure of language

Long Legged Larry

Aesop Rock

A children's-book superhero story about a heroic frog who rescues people (and a poodle) from peril, delivered with a straight…

heroism as ritual childlike wonder absurdism

Long May You Run

Neil Young

Neil Young's elegy for a car that has died is written with such tenderness it plays as a breakup song or a eulogy for a person,…

loyalty and companionship loss and mortality nostalgia for youth

Short Skirt/Long Jacket

CAKE

CAKE builds a mock personal ad for an ideal woman out of the language of corporate efficiency and finance, fusing physical…

commodification of desire corporate jargon as romantic language gender and ambition

Tender Is the Night (The Long Fidelity)

The Triffids

A narrator recounts the moral and emotional collapse of a man she once knew, then slides into her own restlessness and…

emotional decline displacement and time zones addiction to intensity/pain

Take the Long Way Home

Faithless

A spoken-word meditation over a trance groove, in which Maxi Jazz describes a kind of spiritual wandering and the hard-won peace…

spiritual journey earned wisdom detachment from material striving

Chasing Pirates

Norah Jones

A short, hazy meditation on insomnia and mental overdrive, triggered by a brief, ambiguous exchange with someone the narrator…

insomnia overthinking unspoken longing

It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll)

AC/DC

A touring rock band's complaint song disguised as a boast, cataloguing the grind of road life — theft, injury, bad hotels,…

the cost of ambition road life and touring hardship disillusionment with the music industry

Lullaby

Lamb

A song built almost entirely from a single soothing instruction: sing yourself to sleep while I'm away. Lamb use the form and…

absence and longing self-soothing distance in relationships

Since I Held You

The Cars

A new wave love song built almost entirely around longing and withholding: the narrator admires a partner who keeps emotional…

unrequited longing emotional distance obsession/insomnia

Transatlanticism

Death Cab for Cutie

A song about distance rendered as flood myth: the ocean between two people is imagined as newly created, cutting off any…

long-distance separation longing creation myth as metaphor

Suck

The Wedding Present

"Suck" is a breathless account of one night inside an all-consuming relationship, where talk, sex, and need blur into a single…

obsessive desire codependency loss of self

In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

Carly Simon

This is a torch-song standard (best known from Sinatra's version) recorded by Carly Simon for a film soundtrack, and it's built…

insomnia and longing unrequited love the contrast between day and night

I'm On Fire

Soccer Mommy

This is Soccer Mommy's stripped-down, synth-tinged cover of Bruce Springsteen's 1984 song, originally a brooding come-on from an…

desire and obsession gender and power reversal insomnia and bodily unease

Sweet Dreams

Emmylou Harris

A brief, aching lament built on a single stubborn contradiction: the singer knows she should be done with a lover who doesn't…

unrequited love self-deception longing

Hold Back the Night

Graham Parker

A breakup song that turns insomnia into a kind of combat, with the narrator trying to physically hold off nightfall so he won't…

heartbreak and abandonment fear of memory insomnia as emotional torment

I Want You Here With Me

The O’Jays

A direct plea for physical closeness set against long-distance separation, built almost entirely on repetition and escalating…

long-distance longing romantic urgency vulnerability in devotion

Darkness, Darkness

Mott the Hoople

A plea addressed directly to darkness as a kind of shelter, this song turns night into both refuge and threat. Mott the Hoople's…

fear and refuge insomnia and dread longing for oblivion

Have You Ever

Brandy

Brandy builds an entire ballad out of a single rhetorical device: the repeated question. Rather than narrate a specific…

unrequited love emotional vulnerability the limits of language

Matte Kudasai

King Crimson

A short, hushed love song built around a single Japanese phrase meaning "please wait," describing a woman suspended in stillness…

long-distance longing stillness and waiting transnational intimacy