Results for “longing for innocence”

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

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

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

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

Place to Be

Nick Drake

An opening-track confession that traces a single life arc—innocence, vitality, and eventual depletion—in four spare stanzas. The…

decline and aging loss of innocence spiritual exhaustion

That's When I Reach For My Revolver

Mission of Burma

A post-punk anthem about disillusionment and the impulse toward violent or drastic rupture as a response to betrayed idealism.…

disillusionment loss of innocence generational inheritance

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

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

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

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

Sweet Thing

Van Morrison

A rapturous, almost weightless love song built from a single sustained feeling rather than a plot. Van Morrison strings together…

romantic rapture renewal and lost time nature as emotional mirror

Lola

The Kinks

A wide-eyed young narrator recounts a night at a Soho club where he meets a striking, ambiguous figure named Lola, and the song…

gender ambiguity sexual awakening urban nightlife

C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)

Wu‐Tang Clan

Two verses from Raekwon and Inspectah Deck lay out parallel autobiographies of poverty, hustling, and incarceration in…

economic desperation and survival the school-to-prison pipeline urban poverty in New York

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

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

1234

Feist

A deceptively bouncy pop song about the wreckage left by adolescent romance, where a childlike counting hook masks lyrics about…

lost innocence romantic disillusionment nostalgia

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

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

Both Sides Now

Joni Mitchell

A three-part meditation that uses clouds, love, and life as parallel case studies in disillusionment, each verse moving from…

disillusionment the limits of experience loss of innocence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay Up Late

Talking Heads

A household turns a newborn into a novelty toy, with siblings and cooing relatives conspiring to keep him awake past his bedtime…

family and domesticity possession and objectification innocence versus adult impulse

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

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

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