Results for “memory and impermanence”

Songs

Memories

The Temptations

A ballad of retrospective heartbreak in which the narrator catalogues small domestic pleasures from a lost relationship,…

nostalgia loss of love unresolved grief

Back Down Memory Lane

Minnie Riperton

A single found photograph pulls the narrator involuntarily into a past relationship she thought she'd buried. What starts as…

involuntary memory grief over lost love loss of control

Beach Baby

Bon Iver

A short, hazy meditation on a departure that's treated with strange tenderness -- the singer asks a lover to leave without…

parting and impermanence memory intruding on the present ambivalence about closure

Bookends Theme

Simon Jäger

A brief solo acoustic guitar instrumental that opens Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends album, built around a simple, wistful…

memory time passing nostalgia

Avril 14th

Aphex Twin

Avril 14th is a brief solo piano piece by Aphex Twin, built from a simple, halting melodic phrase that repeats with small…

memory fragility impermanence

Her Disappearing Theme

Broken Social Scene

An instrumental from Broken Social Scene's self-titled 2005 album, built as a churning wall-of-sound piece rather than a song…

absence and erasure memory collective vs. individual voice

Broken Halos

Chris Stapleton

A meditation on loss framed through the image of angels who appear briefly in our lives, help us, and then vanish. Stapleton…

grief and mourning impermanence faith and doubt

When We Were Young

Adele

A chance reunion at a party becomes the occasion for Adele to measure the distance between who she was and who she's become. The…

nostalgia aging and mortality lost love

Gold Rush

Death Cab for Cutie

A meditation on urban development as a form of grief, using construction and demolition in a gentrifying neighborhood as a…

gentrification memory and loss impermanence

Feel Flows

The Beach Boys

A near-abstract meditation by Carl Wilson that trades narrative for texture, using dense alliteration and impressionistic…

dissolution of self memory and time transcendence

Third of May / Ōdaigahara

Fleet Foxes

A sprawling, suite-like meditation on friendship, fracture, and reconciliation within Fleet Foxes, built around the real-life…

reconciliation after estrangement time and memory collective identity vs. individual selfhood

Nothing, Not Nearly

Laura Marling

A brief, elegiac song about a fading connection remembered mostly through fragments of landscape and season, arriving at a…

impermanence memory and forgetting depression and emotional numbness

Brass Buttons

Gram Parsons

A quiet elegy built almost entirely out of physical detail rather than statement, this song mourns a mother figure through the…

grief and maternal loss memory as objects impermanence

Say Something Loving

The xx

A love song built out of doubt rather than certainty, tracking a narrator relearning intimacy after emotional numbness. The xx…

emotional numbness vulnerability in new intimacy memory and forgetting

Lorelai

Fleet Foxes

A breakup song built from small, deflating images of self-worth, sung by someone who has resigned themselves to having been…

romantic rejection self-deprecation memory and haunting

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Neutral Milk Hotel

A meditation on love, mortality, and impermanence that blurs the line between romantic address and elegy, filtered through Jeff…

mortality and impermanence romantic devotion memory and loss

Water Under the Bridge

Guy Clark

Guy Clark builds an entire meditation on time, memory, and mortality around a single river metaphor, letting a childhood image…

mortality and release memory and impermanence folk religion and redemption

Melody Day

Caribou

Melody Day is a swirling, hazy address to a lost figure—part lover, part memory—built almost entirely from a handful of repeated…

loss and longing guilt and self-blame memory distortion

In My Life

Roberta Flack

Roberta Flack's reading of the Lennon-McCartney standard slows the original into a meditative ballad, treating the lyric less as…

memory and nostalgia romantic devotion impermanence and loss

My City Was Gone

The Pretenders

Chrissie Hynde returns to her hometown and finds it erased -- the train station, the neighborhood, even her own family's house…

loss of place deindustrialization nostalgia

They Can't Take That Away from Me

Frank Sinatra

A Gershwin standard turned into a wistful catalog of small, physical habits belonging to a lover the singer may lose. Sinatra…

memory as possession impermanence of romance the erotics of small habits

33 “GOD”

Bon Iver

A fragmented, half-spoken meditation on a relationship's dissolution that keeps colliding with a search for spiritual footing.…

spiritual doubt impermanence of intimacy self-reliance after heartbreak

White Ferrari

Frank Ocean

A hushed meditation on a fading relationship, framed through the image of a car ride and the drift between two people who once…

fading intimacy transience and impermanence emotional withholding

Saturday Sun

Nick Drake

A gentle waltz-time meditation on transience, built around the image of a single Saturday's sunlight that arrives, gathers…

transience nostalgia impermanence of happiness

Cattails

Big Thief

A hushed, image-driven lullaby-elegy that moves between addresses to different women (Caroline, Violet, an unnamed elder),…

impermanence and mortality comfort without explanation nature as memory

Simulation Swarm

Big Thief

A hazy, image-drenched love song that treats intimacy as something both cosmic and fragile, staged inside a metaphor of the…

impermanence and renewal love as refuge from unreality memory and childhood

Goodbye

Steve Earle

A quiet, unadorned reckoning with a relationship dissolved somewhere in a haze of substance abuse, told by a narrator who can…

addiction and memory loss romantic loss guilt and self-reproach

Are You Sleeping?

Harry Nilsson

A gentle, lullaby-like meditation on a fading or already-lost relationship, framed as a bedside address to a sleeping (or…

love's impermanence uncertainty and doubt tenderness amid loss

Dreamline

Rush

Dreamline is a road song built from a series of paired travelers, each chasing escape and possibility across mapped and imagined…

restlessness and escape youth and mortality the open road as freedom

To Live Is to Fly

Townes Van Zandt

A traveling songwriter's meditation on impermanence, love without possession, and the necessity of moving on, framed as both a…

impermanence itinerant life love without attachment

You Are My Sunshine

Carly Simon

Carly Simon's version of this old folk standard strips it down to a hushed, almost prayer-like lullaby, trading the song's usual…

fragile love fear of loss comfort and vulnerability

Everything Must Change

Nina Simone

A meditation on impermanence set as a slow, incantatory song rather than a story. Simone (performing a standard she didn't…

impermanence time and aging acceptance

Oh Very Young

Cat Stevens

A meditation on mortality and inheritance addressed to a child, using the wearing-out of a pair of jeans as an emblem for how…

mortality impermanence legacy and inheritance

Recurring

Bonobo

"Recurring" is an instrumental mood piece from Bonobo's Days to Come, built on looping samples, muted percussion, and layered…

repetition memory cyclical time

Let's Dance

David Bowie

A dance-floor invitation built on a simple repeated command that gradually reveals an undertow of anxiety about impermanence and…

desire and vulnerability impermanence performance versus intimacy

Pink + White

Frank Ocean

A soft, wandering meditation on maternal love and mortality, built around the image of a hurricane and the small acts of…

maternal love survival and resilience impermanence

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Roberta Flack

A slow, hymn-like meditation on falling in love, told through three escalating 'first times' — seeing, kissing, and lying with a…

romantic awakening the sacredness of intimacy time and permanence

Leaves That Are Green

Simon Jäger

A young songwriter watches a single year of his life pass and turns that small span of time into a meditation on mortality and…

impermanence aging and time lost love

Red Guitar

Cassandra Wilson

This is a meditative, almost devotional song built around a simple ritual: each day's mundane and sensory acts are catalogued by…

impermanence ritual and routine art as anchor

Remember

Free

A simple, aching blues-rock ballad built around nostalgia for a lost relationship, contrasting warm, sensory memories of shared…

nostalgia lost love loneliness