Results for “longing for freedom”

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

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

Wild

Spoon

A restless meditation on the pull between domesticated, image-managed adulthood and some untamed force outside it. The song…

restlessness under routine authenticity vs. performance longing for freedom

Folsom Prison Blues

Johnny Cash

A first-person prison lament in which the narrator, confined and hopeless, is tormented by the sound of a train he cannot board.…

confinement and freedom guilt and moral consequence class resentment

Back Up Train

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

Unknown Legend

Neil Young

A middle-aged narrator recalls a woman he once admired for her restlessness and beauty, now settled into domestic life but still…

nostalgia freedom versus domesticity female mythology/idealization

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on grace and surrender disguised as a portrait of a woman by a river, Cohen's song moves from intimate seduction…

spiritual longing disguised as romance the sacred in the everyday trust and surrender

Distant Lover

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning soul lament built almost entirely on repetition and vocal ad-lib, in which the narrator addresses a lover who has…

longing and absence romantic betrayal memory versus present loss

Boogie Street

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on the pull between transcendent, near-mystical intimacy and the noisy, transactional churn of ordinary life. The…

sacred vs. profane transience of ecstasy spiritual longing

Island In the Sun

Weezer

A deliberately simple escapist fantasy, built almost entirely from stock vacation imagery and a chant-like hook, that trades…

escapism forgetting the past idealized love

Angel

Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan addresses a fragile, self-sabotaging figure imagined as a wounded angel, urging her toward emotional openness and…

emotional vulnerability self-acceptance healing through love

The Midnight Special

Creedence Clearwater Revival

CCR's take on this traditional American folk-blues song reworks a prison-camp lament into a swampy rock anthem, keeping its cast…

incarceration and forced labor folk tradition and inheritance longing for deliverance

Pancho and Lefty

Townes Van Zandt

A ballad about a legendary Mexican bandit and the friend widely suspected of betraying him, told with the flattened affect of a…

betrayal and complicity myth-making versus truth exile and displacement

Bring On the Dancing Horses

Echo & the Bunnymen

A moody, image-driven piece built more from atmosphere than narrative, cataloguing a set of broken or hollow figures before…

emotional guardedness disillusionment longing for redemption

Didn't Cha Know

Erykah Badu

A meditation on getting lost as a form of self-discovery, built around a single wandering vamp that never resolves into a tidy…

self-forgiveness uncertainty as growth intuition over planning

Feeling Good (From "the Roar of the Greasepaint")

Nina Simone

A catalog of natural images—birds, rivers, blossoms, stars—builds toward a declaration of liberation and renewal. Simone's…

liberation and freedom renewal rebirth through nature

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

The Smiths

A restless plea to be driven anywhere but home turns into a swooning fantasy about dying alongside the person behind the wheel.…

homelessness and unbelonging romantic devotion as self-annihilation loneliness disguised as humor

Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan

A six-minute takedown song that watches a once-privileged woman lose every social prop that made her feel untouchable. Dylan…

fall from privilege social exposure and humiliation freedom through loss

Battery Kinzie

Fleet Foxes

A short, dread-laced folk song about arriving too late for a lost love, told through images of bodily decay and a locked door.…

loss and abandonment decay and mortality possessiveness/control

Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy's most explicitly Irish statement, a medley that stitches together fragments of traditional ballads with a…

Irish identity and heritage oral tradition and storytelling myth and heroism

Disorder

Joy Division

Disorder opens Unknown Pleasures as a portrait of emotional numbness accelerating into panic, sung by a narrator who wants to…

emotional numbness loss of control alienation

Black Hole Sun

Soundgarden

A hazy, dissonant piece of psychedelia dressed as a pop single, in which a decaying suburban landscape is invited to be…

apocalyptic longing decay and disguise escapism

It's Good to Be King

Tom Petty

Tom Petty builds a wry daydream around the fantasy of absolute power and ease, using the language of royalty as a stand-in for…

escapism fantasy vs reality longing for control

Blues Run the Game

Laura Marling

This is Laura Marling's rendition of a 1965 folk standard originally written by Jackson C. Frank, a song about restless flight…

itinerancy and escape addiction as coping mechanism inescapability of sorrow

New Slang

The Shins

A hushed, melodically sweet song about romantic regret and a wish to shed adult disappointment carries lyrics that are far more…

regret and self-recrimination longing for innocence small-town disillusionment

FloriDada

Animal Collective

A barrage of interrogative fragments and postcard-sized images collages the world into a single imaginary destination, half…

placelessness and utopian longing collage as method identity without borders

Freeway of Love

Aretha Franklin

A joyous, motorized courtship song built around a single sustained conceit: romance as a drive on an open highway. Aretha…

romance as motion/escape freedom and self-determination playful flirtation

Yesterday

Donny Hathaway

This is a live soul rendering of the Beatles standard, transformed from a chamber-pop miniature into an extended…

romantic loss nostalgia regret

What's Going On

Marvin Gaye

A plea rather than a protest anthem, the song addresses family members directly to voice grief over war and civil unrest at…

Vietnam-era war weariness generational conflict police brutality

Katie Cruel

Bert Jansch

This is a traditional Appalachian folk lament, here rendered by Bert Jansch in his hushed, weathered late-career voice, about a…

exile and rejection itinerancy social reversal of fortune

I'm On Fire

Bruce Springsteen

A minimal, hushed blues built on obsessive desire, where the narrator's want curdles into something closer to torment than…

obsessive desire sleeplessness and mental anguish transgressive attraction

Freddie's Dead

Curtis Mayfield

A eulogy and a warning delivered in the same breath, this song uses the death of a minor drug-trade casualty from the Superfly…

addiction and exploitation systemic racism/economic entrapment urban despair

A New Wave

Sleater-Kinney

A defiant statement of self-invention that refuses easy categorization, either as a musical movement or as a stable identity.…

self-definition against labels resistance to commodification anonymity as autonomy

Flagship

Jason Isbell

A song about watching long marriages calcify and making a private, almost superstitious vow not to let that happen to your own.…

marital decay willed devotion nostalgia

Dreams

Fleetwood Mac

A breakup song written from a position of eerie calm rather than anguish, in which the departing partner's bid for freedom is…

romantic dissolution detachment as self-protection cyclical nature vs. human choice

Wade In the Water

The Staple Singers

This is the Staple Singers' rendition of a traditional African American spiritual, one long believed to have carried coded…

deliverance/salvation biblical exodus imagery collective faith