Results for “mechanization of the human”

Songs

Human Behaviour

Björk

Björk approaches humanity as an outside observer might, treating human behaviour as an alien phenomenon to be studied rather…

outsider perspective on humanity unpredictability and irrationality fascination over judgment

Human Nature

Michael Jackson

A nocturnal meditation on urban restlessness and desire, framed as a defense against unnamed accusers who question the…

urban alienation desire and impulse self-justification

Seconds

The Human League

A brooding album closer that reconstructs an assassination in fragmentary, almost clinical language, widely understood to allude…

political violence fame and its dangers the instant of irreversible action

Adrenalin

Bauhaus

Bauhaus turn a single hormone into a mechanical, near-industrial chant, treating adrenaline as both a drug rush and a…

bodily extremity mechanization of the human addiction and revival

Mindful Solutionism

Aesop Rock

Aesop Rock delivers a rapid-fire history of human technology, tracing tools from prehistoric stone implements through…

technological progress human ingenuity moral ambivalence of innovation

The Devil Is in the Beats

The Chemical Brothers

This is less a song than a spoken definition looped over a menacing electronic pulse, taken from the Chemical Brothers' score…

self-reference artifice vs feeling mechanization

The Glory of Man

Minutemen

A brief, aphoristic piece in which the Minutemen compress a whole philosophical argument about human self-regard into a handful…

human self-image skepticism vs idealism scale and insignificance

Gold Star for Robot Boy

Guided by Voices

A short, riff-driven track from Bee Thousand that turns self-reliance into a kind of mechanical badge of honor. The narrator…

self-determination irony toward achievement/reward systems artistic autonomy

Clockwork Angels

Rush

The title track of Rush's final studio album stages a public spectacle of mechanical seraphim presiding over a city square, and…

manufactured faith spectacle and control surrender of reason

Oceania

Björk

Björk voices the ocean itself as a primordial mother addressing humanity, tracing evolution from sea to land in tender, cosmic…

origin and evolution maternal address deep time versus human time

Another Brick In the Wall, Pt. 3

Pink Floyd

This is the moment PinkInk's protagonist Pink completes his self-imposed isolation, rejecting comfort, chemical or human, as a…

emotional withdrawal self-destruction disguised as independence accumulated trauma

Underneath the Radar

Underworld

This early, pre-techno Underworld track is a nervy pop-funk song about living small and invisible under the threat of…

Cold War anxiety surveillance and invisibility smallness/powerlessness

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven

Loretta Lynn

A gospel-tinged novelty hymn that turns a folk saying into a meditation on the human fear of death, even among the faithful.…

fear of death faith versus human nature salvation

Somewhere

Jimi Hendrix

A hallucinatory vision of social collapse filtered through a drinker's blurred perception, where reaching hands never quite…

social unrest spiritual longing alienation

Into the Void

Black Sabbath

A doom-laden science-fiction parable in which humanity, having ruined the earth through war and pollution, launches a rocket…

ecological collapse war and dehumanization spiritual/political disillusionment

Flower

Moby

This track isn't really a Moby lyric at all but a looped field-recording-style sample of an African American work/children's…

labor and repetition folk memory loss

Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Pt. 2

King Crimson

This is the instrumental closer to King Crimson's 1973 album, a jagged, riff-driven companion piece to the suite's opening part.…

mechanized violence precision versus chaos asymmetry

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

Tiny Foldable Cities

Orbital

Tiny Foldable Cities is an instrumental piece from Orbital's Monsters Exist, its title suggesting miniature, collapsible urban…

urban miniaturism impermanence and portability construction and collapse

Scattered

The Kinks

A meditation on dispersal that moves from an agrarian image of scattered seeds to personal grief over a lost lover, and finally…

mortality loss and grief impermanence

Da Funk

Daft Punk

"Da Funk" is an instrumental house track built around a single squelching synth-bass riff that Daft Punk let mutate and rub…

mechanized funk repetition and variation urban grit

Red

King Crimson

Red is King Crimson's instrumental title track, a riff-driven power trio piece built around a menacing, angular guitar figure…

dread and menace mechanized aggression cyclical structure

Computer Love

Kraftwerk

A minimal, deliberately flat lyric sets domestic isolation against the promise of a technological fix for loneliness. The song…

isolation technology mediating intimacy modern alienation

Electric Funeral

Black Sabbath

A doom-laden vision of nuclear apocalypse rendered as a kind of blackened hymn, cataloguing the literal physical destruction of…

nuclear annihilation dehumanization/mechanization environmental collapse

You Are My Sunshine

Johnny Cash

This is Johnny Cash's stripped-down take on the standard "You Are My Sunshine," but the version on Unearthed leaves the tape…

heartbreak and loss irony of the title versus the lyric the mechanics of recording

30,000 Pounds of Bananas

Harry Chapin

Harry Chapin turns a real Pennsylvania trucking accident into a grim shaggy-dog story, building tension through a doomed…

fate and mechanical failure working-class labor and mortality the absurdity of tragedy

Kirby

Aesop Rock

A song built entirely around addressing a cat named Kirby, whose small, absurd domestic behaviors become a lens for talking…

companionship as coping mechanism mental illness and medication domesticity

QKThr

Aphex Twin

QKThr is an instrumental piece from Aphex Twin's Drukqs, an album built from a mix of frantic drill-and-bass programming and…

mechanization vs. intimacy fragmentation controlled chaos

Lampshades On Fire

Modest Mouse

A frantic party anthem doubles as a parable about environmental and cultural exhaustion, tracking a group that burns through one…

environmental collapse consumerism and disposability willful denial

Lithium

Nirvana

A song built entirely out of a mantra of self-reassurance, in which a narrator on the edge of suicide talks himself into staying…

suicidal ideation and survival religious substitution for mental illness isolation and imagined companionship

About the Weather

Magazine

A song about emotional unpredictability disguised as a meteorological report, where the weather becomes a running metaphor for a…

emotional volatility detachment as coping mechanism control and helplessness

Buzzcut Season

Lorde

Lorde builds a woozy, disaster-numbed daydream where global catastrophe on television is background noise to teenage escapism.…

escapism media desensitization adolescent detachment

Save Me

Nina Simone

A woman in the grip of a bad romance turns her plea into a comic-desperate cry for rescue, invoking cartoon superheroes…

romantic entrapment self-sacrifice in love desperation and helplessness

When It Rain

Danny Brown

A relentless portrait of Detroit street violence set to a hyper-fast, footwork-inspired beat, where the manic tempo and…

urban poverty and survival violence and fatalism addiction as coping mechanism

A Change at Christmas (Say It Isn't So)

The Flaming Lips

A studio-chatter intro gives way to a wistful meditation on the seasonal illusion of collective goodwill, asking whether the…

seasonal sentimentality vs. cynicism impermanence of collective goodness hope against experience

Tour de France 2003

Kraftwerk

This is Kraftwerk's minimalist tribute to the world's most famous bicycle race, built almost entirely from a litany of French…

endurance and the body technology and human effort geography as narrative

Electric Blue

Arcade Fire

A breakup song filtered through disco-pop sheen, where the singer (Régine Chassagne on lead vocal) tries to process a lost love…

romantic disillusionment anonymity in crowds self-deception

Fingerbib

Aphex Twin

Fingerbib is a mostly wordless ambient-jungle piece built around a fragile, childlike melody line and treated vocal coos, set…

childhood and innocence artificial tenderness tension between fragility and mechanism

Uncontrollable Urge

DEVO

A frantic, almost cartoonish anthem about a compulsion so total it strips its narrator down to grunts and shouts. Devo turns the…

compulsion and loss of control dehumanization/mechanization of impulse repetition as content

Me & Mr Jones

Amy Winehouse

A blistering, funny complaint about a lover who keeps letting the narrator down, built around a chant of ownership that keeps…

possessive love betrayal and self-deception ambivalence