Results for “mob/call-and-response conformity”

Call Me Up

Gang of Four

A clipped, funk-inflected critique of consumer leisure culture, where a narrator recites the empty slogans of 'having fun' while…

consumerism alienation competition as ideology

The Mob Rules

Black Sabbath

A short, riff-driven warning about crowd panic and the collapse of authority, delivered as a series of urgent commands and grim…

mob mentality loss of control societal collapse

London Calling

The Clash

A blitzkrieg of apocalyptic headlines delivered as a radio broadcast, "London Calling" imagines a city besieged by nuclear…

nuclear anxiety urban decay disillusionment with youth culture

The Telephone Call

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk turns a simple romantic wish—to reach someone by phone—into a meditation on technology's failure to close emotional…

technological mediation of intimacy longing and unfulfilled connection repetition as isolation

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

Call Your Girlfriend

Robyn

Robyn scripts a breakup for a man on behalf of the woman he's about to leave someone for, coaching him line by line on how to…

infidelity and self-justification emotional labor the ethics of kindness

Call to Arms

Sturgill Simpson

A blistering protest song wrapped in a lullaby's intent, addressed from a father to a son, that names the machinery of endless…

militarism and foreign policy loss of individual identity in institutions media saturation and distraction

Jesus Is Calling

Hank Williams

A plain-spoken gospel invitation built almost entirely on a single repeated refrain, this is Hank Williams working in the…

religious faith spiritual weariness redemption

I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues

Elton John

A ballad of consolation addressed to a partner during an absence, built around the idea that longing itself is what the blues…

separation and longing reassurance under strain romantic devotion

Above And Beyond (The Call Of Love)

Rodney Crowell

A plainspoken proposal song built almost entirely around one repeated pledge: that devotion, not money, will be the measure of a…

romantic devotion class and money courtship and destiny

Call It Stormy Monday

B.B. King

This blues standard (originally T-Bone Walker's) walks through the days of the week to trace a slow accumulation of despair,…

weekly grind/labor loneliness religious supplication

Call Mr. Lee

Television

I Just Called To Say I Love You

Stevie Wonder

A simple, deliberately unadorned love song built on a single conceit: stripping away every calendar occasion that might justify…

unconditioned love everyday devotion anti-occasion romance

We the People....

A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest opens their comeback album with a song that fuses street-level survival talk with a chorus that mimics the…

racism and xenophobia economic precarity media distortion

The Space Program

A Tribe Called Quest

A cosmic metaphor becomes a blunt indictment of racial exclusion: the space program stands in for every promise of American…

racial exclusion collective uplift disillusionment with progress

Burn the Witch

Radiohead

A tightly wound miniature about mob justice and social conformity, built on the imagery of witch-hunts and plague-era paranoia.…

mob mentality scapegoating surveillance and conformity

We Can Get Down

A Tribe Called Quest

A loose, celebratory posse-style track from Midnight Marauders in which Q-Tip runs through defenses of hip hop's authenticity,…

hip-hop authenticity anti-commercialism group identity and pride

Award Tour

A Tribe Called Quest

A victory-lap travelogue disguised as a posse cut, where the pleasure of touring the world with a hip-hop crew becomes the whole…

hip-hop craft and lineage global travel and touring life authenticity vs. imitation

Lyrics to Go

A Tribe Called Quest

A pure showcase track in which Q-Tip and Phife Dawg trade verses of boastful wordplay, with the title hook functioning less as a…

braggadocio craft and mastery of rhyme group identity and loyalty

Excursions

A Tribe Called Quest

Q-Tip opens The Low End Theory with a genealogy lesson, tracing hip-hop back through his father's love of bebop and framing rap…

lineage and continuation of Black music integrity versus phoniness time and history repeating

God Lives Through

A Tribe Called Quest

A high-energy posse-cut braggadocio track built around the exclamation "Oh my God" as both hook and punctuation, where Q-Tip and…

boasting and lyrical supremacy borough/regional pride crew loyalty

Oh My God

A Tribe Called Quest

A showcase track built almost entirely on braggadocio, wordplay, and interlocking verses from Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, with the…

braggadocio lyrical dexterity group chemistry

Steve Biko (Stir It Up)

A Tribe Called Quest

A three-MC posse cut built almost entirely from boasts, wordplay, and Queens pride, borrowing the name and instrumental cue of…

hip-hop bravado and lyrical skill group identity and borough pride fleeting social consciousness

Like It Like That

A Tribe Called Quest

Oh Happy Day

Etta James

Etta James takes the classic gospel standard 'Oh Happy Day' and delivers it as a testimony of release, built almost entirely on…

redemption spiritual cleansing joy as testimony

Children Go Where I Send Thee

Nick Lowe

This is Nick Lowe's arrangement of a traditional African American spiritual cumulative counting song, built around a…

religious catechism cumulative counting communal call-and-response

My Love Is Your Love

Whitney Houston

A reggae-tinged declaration of love built around apocalyptic and historical extremes, the song insists that a bond between two…

unconditional love survival and endurance spirituality and judgment

Slippery People

Talking Heads

Talking Heads build a call-and-response gospel workout out of fragmented, almost nonsensical verses and a reassuring chorus that…

religious ecstasy vs. skepticism surrender of rational control community and reassurance

C.C. Rider

Lead Belly

Lead Belly's take on the traditional "C.C. Rider" blues strips the song down to its call-and-response bones: a rolling…

betrayal and desire itinerant love (the "rider" figure) sexual boasting and fantasy

F.U.N.K.

Betty Davis

This is less a song than a spoken-and-sung roll call, a lineage claimed rather than argued for. Betty Davis treats funk as a…

musical lineage and inheritance Black artistic community funk as identity/blood

The Next Movement

The Roots

A pure showcase track built on DJ-style hype-man calls and dense, boastful verses from Black Thought, "The Next Movement" is…

self-mythologizing lyrical craft as spectacle community/call-and-response

Run Like Hell

Pink Floyd

A pounding, paranoid rocker from the second half of The Wall, built almost entirely on a chanted command to flee. It stages the…

paranoia and surveillance fascism and mob violence guilt and self-disgust

This Is It

Betty Davis

This Is It is less a song than a live declaration of arrival, built almost entirely on repetition and vamp rather than…

self-assertion authenticity/rawness performance as proof

Little Girl

Muddy Waters

A raw, low-slung blues courtship number in which the narrator badgers a woman with flirtatious questions, building desire…

flirtation and pursuit sensual desire Southern imagery

Chained and Bound

Otis Redding

A classic Stax-style soul ballad in which devotion is figured as captivity, but the captivity is celebrated rather than feared.…

romantic surrender devotion as bondage gratitude/relief in love

If We Don't Have Each Other

Smokey Robinson

A late-career Smokey Robinson ballad built almost entirely around one rhetorical question: what does a couple actually possess…

romantic interdependence gratitude and devotion completeness through partnership

Gotta Get: Closer

Maxwell

A live, largely improvised jam built around a single desperate hook, this performance treats sexual desire as a kind of…

desire as compulsion sex and spiritual ecstasy merged call-and-response performance

I Want to Be Loved #2

Muddy Waters

A blues plea built on a familiar Chicago blues formula: the narrator lavishes praise on a woman who barely acknowledges him, and…

unrequited desire romantic frustration adoration versus neglect

We The People

The Staple Singers

This is a communal exhortation song built almost entirely around a repeated collective refrain, using the language of civic…

racial unity collective responsibility social observation

Mistaken for Strangers

The National

A song about the numbing conformity of adult professional life, addressed in second person to someone (and by extension…

conformity self-alienation loss of innocence