Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia" builds a fractured character sketch around a woman whose mental illness is treated with unsettling…
mental illness and stigma unreliable perception family cruelty
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
The Kinks
The Kinks revive Lola from their earlier hit only to trap her in a nervous, self-lacerating anthem about anxiety and…
paranoia and mental illness self-sabotage fame and surveillance anxiety
The Who
An opening track that functions as a diagnostic scream: a young man cycles through the authority figures meant to know him —…
identity and authenticity institutional failure (medicine, family, religion) alienation
Deerhunter
A brief, jangly pop song that fuses the language of romantic infatuation with imagery of illness, possession, and death, so that…
obsessive love possession and illness death and reincarnation
Neil Young
A spare, hymn-like address to fear and mortality, written for Jonathan Demme's film about a man dying of AIDS-related illness…
mortality stigma and shame need for belonging
Joy Division
A stark, clinical account of watching someone lose command of their own body and mind, built around a mechanical repeated…
loss of control epilepsy/illness powerlessness of the observer
Wire
A short, elliptical piece built from fragmented statements about breakdown -- of attention, feeling, and communication. It reads…
mental exhaustion alienation failure of language
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
Warren Zevon
A cover of Dylan's outlaw death-ballad, recorded by Zevon while he was terminally ill, so the song's fictional frame collapses…
mortality surrender acceptance
Talking Heads
A jittery, funk-driven interrogation of what it means to trust information at all, framed through a narrator who feels…
epistemological doubt information overload identity dissolution
Tears for Fears
A hushed meditation on grief and the threshold between holding on and letting go, written by Roland Orzabal in the aftermath of…
grief and mourning the limits of love in the face of death liminality/thresholds
Eric B.
A New York subway pickup evolves into a slow-building courtship narrative, told from the perspective of a smooth-talking…
courtship and seduction urban geography as narrative backdrop mind versus body
Built to Spill
Built to Spill open their 2006 album with a long, guitar-driven meditation on doubt and self-contradiction, built from a handful…
self-doubt masculinity and its expectations religious skepticism