Results for “mood over narrative”

Songs

In the Mood

Talib Kweli

A loose-limbed party track built around braggadocio and seduction, where Talib Kweli shifts between flirtatious come-ons, boasts…

seduction and courtship artistic superiority authenticity vs. performance

Jim Cain

Bill Callahan

A restless, aphoristic meditation on identity and self-narration, borrowing its title's initials to nod toward the noir novelist…

self-mythology impermanence of mood the unreliability of narrative

Kiara

Bonobo

"Kiara" is an instrumental centerpiece from Bonobo's Black Sands, built on a slow-blooming string arrangement, hand percussion,…

atmosphere and mood over narrative organic vs. electronic texture cinematic scale

All In Forms

Bonobo

An instrumental centerpiece from Bonobo's Black Sands, built on shifting textures rather than melody or lyric. It moves through…

accumulation and layering organic vs. electronic texture mood over narrative

Billie Jean

Michael Jackson

A first-person account of a man accused of fathering a child by a woman he insists was never his lover, told as a paranoid,…

paranoia and fame denial and guilt seduction and manipulation

The Message

Nas

Nas stitches together two dense verses of violent, luxury-drenched bravado and a grim first-person shooting narrative, unified…

vigilance and mortality street violence and retaliation loyalty and betrayal

I Love L.A.

Randy Newman

A booming, boosterish anthem that turns out to be a satire of boosterism itself: the narrator's civic pride is so shallow and…

civic pride as delusion class blindness American boosterism

What's on Your Mind?

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

Bedbugs and Ballyhoo

Echo & the Bunnymen

This is a self-titled album's late, throwaway-sounding track built almost entirely from paired nouns and nonsense refrains…

nonsense/wordplay power and submission repetition as meaning

Carmelita

Warren Zevon

A junkie in a rundown corner of Los Angeles narrates his own decline in a strangely tender, almost comic voice, addressing an…

addiction and withdrawal romantic longing as survival strategy poverty and bureaucracy

Toad

Cream

"Toad" is Cream's showcase for drummer Ginger Baker, an instrumental built around a lengthy drum solo bookended by a terse…

virtuosity showmanship rhythm as narrative

Short People

Randy Newman

Randy Newman puts on the voice of a bigot ranting about short people, using the absurdity of the target to expose how prejudice…

prejudice and bigotry satire of hatred's logic unreliable narration

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

House of the Rising Sun

Joan Baez

Baez's early reading of this traditional ballad frames the singer as a woman recounting her own ruin, casting the House of the…

ruin and regret fallen woman narrative fate versus free will

Rodent

Burial

Rodent is built almost entirely around a single vocal fragment, looped and re-pitched until a simple declaration of dependency…

dependency and loss isolation repetition as emotional state

Peaches N Cream

Snoop Dogg

A club-floor party track built almost entirely around a single visual: a woman dancing and the narrator's escalating attempt to…

nightlife and spectacle male desire and pursuit wealth and status display

Crayon

Caribou

A brief, repetitive lyric about restless boredom and the vague urge to escape it, set inside what is otherwise an instrumentally…

boredom restlessness escapism

Easy on My Soul

Free

A late-period Free track that trades narrative for mantra, circling the questions of what love and life amount to before…

exhaustion self-forgiveness spiritual uncertainty

Here She Comes Again

Röyksopp

A minimal, incantatory portrait of a woman weighed down by unnamed distress, sung by an observer who circles her without ever…

mental distress observation vs intimacy compulsive repetition

Wandering Star

Portishead

A slow, dread-soaked meditation on despair that borrows apocalyptic language to describe private, unrelenting psychic pain. The…

despair and depression isolation biblical/apocalyptic imagery

Unite

Burial

This is a track built almost entirely from a single vocal fragment looped and pitched into a kind of emotional smear, more mood…

betrayal emotional numbness isolation

Alone In Kyoto

Air

An instrumental mood piece built from a spare piano motif, brushed drums, and cool synth washes, evoking the specific loneliness…

solitude displacement travel

Give Me Your Love (Love Song)

Curtis Mayfield

A slow-burning soul ballad built almost entirely around a single plea, this track works less through storytelling than through…

romantic devotion vulnerability refuge from hardship

So Fresh, So Clean

OutKast

A hook-driven strut through vintage cars, retro cool, and pickup lines, where the chorus's braggadocio functions less as…

vanity and self-presentation seduction and courtship rituals nostalgia for Black pop-culture iconography

The Saint

Orbital

"The Saint" is an instrumental electronic track built almost entirely from a driving arpeggiated synth line and mounting layers…

momentum and acceleration tension and release machine-like repetition

9th Wonder (Blackitolism)

Digable Planets

A loose, jazz-inflected posse cut in which the Digable Planets crew trade boasts about style, borough pride, and lyrical…

borough/regional pride Afrocentric and cosmic imagery lyrical dexterity as identity

California Roll

Snoop Dogg

A breezy, sun-drenched ode to Los Angeles life that runs its title's double meaning -- rolling a joint and 'going with the flow'…

California/L.A. mythology cannabis culture seduction and courtship

Maggie M'Gill

The Doors

A loose, blues-based closer that trades narrative coherence for atmosphere, following a barfly heroine into a fictional…

urban decay and escape self-mythology blues lineage and authenticity

Hate to Lose Your Lovin'

Little Feat

A wry breakup narrative that keeps undercutting its own heartbreak with comic self-interest. The narrator confronts a cheating…

infidelity and betrayal performed heartbreak vs. real indifference serial romance

If You Needed Somebody

Bad Company

A late-period Bad Company track built around a simple, almost adolescent premise: a narrator paralyzed by unspoken feelings for…

unrequited longing fear of rejection romantic timidity

Ms. Fat Booty

Mos Def

A narrative rap unfolding like a short film in three scenes, tracking a pursuit-and-fallout romance with a woman the narrator…

desire versus discernment the performance of masculinity and vulnerability cynicism eroded by intimacy

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl

Broken Social Scene

A brief, mantra-like lament for someone who has traded rebellious authenticity for polish and distance, sung by a narrator who…

nostalgia for authenticity loss of innocence desire and longing

Frittering

Mercury Rev

A woozy, repetitive lament built on a single glacial image, this early Mercury Rev track circles a corrosive relationship…

erosion of self codependency escapism through intoxication

Crosseyed and Painless

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

Down by the Water

PJ Harvey

A murder ballad told in fragments, where a narrator confesses to drowning a girl referred to alternately as lover and daughter,…

guilt and confession incest/taboo desire folk horror and Southern gothic

Red Dirt Girl

Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris narrates the entire life of a childhood friend from rural Alabama, from adolescence to an early, unremarked…

rural poverty thwarted ambition female friendship

Dancing On My Own

Robyn

A dance-floor confessional in which the narrator watches an ex kiss someone new from across the room, trapped between the…

unrequited longing self-erasure and invisibility public heartbreak

Obstacle 1

Interpol

A fractured, obsessive address to a woman who dominates the narrator's inner life, built from disjointed images of intimacy,…

obsessive desire emotional damage decay and aging

Streets of Baltimore

Gram Parsons

A countrypolitan narrative song told by a man who uproots his life to satisfy his wife's craving for city glamour, only to watch…

rural-to-urban displacement the limits of sacrifice gendered domestic roles

Hard-Core Troubadour

Steve Earle

A wry character sketch of an unrepentant romantic drifter told from the outside, by a narrator warning a woman about the man's…

romantic recidivism performance vs. sincerity the myth of the outlaw lover