Results for “moral vigilance”

Songs

The Vigilante

Judee Sill

Judee Sill builds an allegorical portrait of a tireless spiritual guardian, half folk-hero and half angel, who patrols against…

spiritual guardianship good versus deception faith and service

Be Careful of Stones That You Throw

Hank Williams

This Luke The Drifter recitation-style song tells a small parable about a gossiping neighbor and the woman she condemns,…

hypocrisy gossip and reputation moral judgment

The Gates

Aesop Rock

A dense, image-flooded piece from a concept album about visions and threshold spaces, in which the speaker positions himself at…

liminality and thresholds exhaustion/burnout distrust of moral binaries

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'm Sticking With You

The Velvet Underground

A deceptively childlike singsong from Moe Tucker turns into an odd meditation on loyalty without limits, where devotion to a…

unconditional loyalty childlike innocence vs. danger identity merging with another

Devil's Gonna Git You

Bessie Smith

A blues warning delivered as a curse: the narrator threatens a philandering partner with damnation, using the devil as a…

infidelity and betrayal moral reckoning female assertiveness

Other Side of the Game

Erykah Badu

A woman narrates loving a man whose livelihood comes from illegal hustling, weighing pride and dread as she carries their child.…

street economics and survival love under pressure pregnancy and continuity

The Cold Hard Truth

George Jones

George Jones builds this song around a striking conceit: the truth itself shows up as a character, confronting a man about the…

personified truth/conscience infidelity and self-deception moral reckoning

God's Gonna Cut You Down

Johnny Cash

An old African-American spiritual, reworked by Cash near the end of his life, this is a stark warning that moral reckoning is…

divine judgment mortality moral reckoning

Sinner or Saint

Sarah Vaughan

This is a devotional address built almost entirely on paired opposites, culminating in a refrain of unconditional love. The…

unconditional love moral duality forgiveness

On the Turning Away

Pink Floyd

A gentle, hymn-like protest song that addresses complacency toward poverty and suffering directly, using the recurring image of…

social indifference collective responsibility moral awakening

Paradise Circus

Massive Attack

A slow-burning meditation on desire as self-inflicted damage, built from a handful of repeated images—storms, sin, flame,…

desire and self-destruction moral ambivalence addiction to feeling

Dollar Bill Blues

Townes Van Zandt

A ramshackle blues about a broke, drink-craving gambler whose fantasies of easy money and easy love curdle into a confession of…

poverty and want drink and gambling as fate violence disguised as bravado

On That Day

Leonard Cohen

A spare, almost prose-like meditation on the September 11 attacks, in which the speaker refuses to endorse any explanatory…

9/11 and national trauma refusal of ideology complicity of the observer

When the Bridegroom Comes

Judee Sill

A hymn-like meditation built almost entirely from biblical allusion, urging spiritual readiness for a mystical bridegroom figure…

spiritual readiness divine union mercy and reversal

Snooze

SZA

SZA turns devotion into a kind of hyper-vigilance, pledging extreme loyalty and even violence for a lover while the…

obsessive devotion insecurity masked as confidence loyalty and self-sacrifice

Something I Learned Today

Hüsker Dü

A rapid-fire punk song that opens Zen Arcade with a set of clipped, almost proverbial observations about perception, autonomy,…

moral ambiguity autonomy vs. imposed rules perception and empathy

The Rainbow

Talk Talk

An oblique meditation on justice, guilt, and the gap between legal verdicts and moral truth, built from fragments of courtroom…

justice and its failures guilt and repentance institutional power

The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song

The Flaming Lips

A deceptively bouncy singalong turns into a moral thought experiment, asking listeners to imagine unlimited power and confront…

power and corruption self-knowledge and its limits selfishness vs altruism

Heaven and Hell

Black Sabbath

This is Black Sabbath's title track marking the arrival of Ronnie James Dio, trading the band's earlier horror-movie doom for…

moral ambiguity illusion versus reality corrupted power

Tearz

Wu‐Tang Clan

A grim, cautionary storytelling track built around two narrated tragedies -- a child's death from a street robbery and a…

mortality street violence consequence of recklessness

Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)

Van Halen

This is a defiant, almost reckless assertion of self-determination, delivered through a string of extreme hypothetical choices —…

free will vs fate rejection of moral instruction self-destruction as autonomy

Are You Ready?

Wire

Wire builds this track almost entirely from a single interrogative structure, hammering out a litany of yes/no questions that…

complicity and complacency consumerism/branding as identity moral and existential reckoning

Bleed The Freak

Alice in Chains

A confrontational early Alice in Chains track that inverts biblical language and moral hierarchies to attack self-righteous…

religious hypocrisy judgment and retribution cruelty of moral authority

Hellacious Acres

Kris Kristofferson

A carnival-barker satire that reimagines hell as a theme park, complete with billboards, ticket lines, and celebrity attractions…

moral corruption as entertainment consumerism and commodified sin celebrity and infamy

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Laura Marling

This is a cover of Bob Dylan's 1963 apocalyptic ballad, structured as a call-and-response between a questioning parent and a…

apocalypse and prophecy witness and testimony social collapse

Higher Ground

Stevie Wonder

A funk sermon built on a clavinet riff, the song frames spiritual urgency as physical momentum: the narrator treats a second…

reincarnation and second chances social corruption vs. individual awakening urgency of moral time

Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It

Ice Cube

Ice Cube uses the media's stock accusation that gangsta rap 'causes' violence as a satirical device, exaggerating the charge…

media scapegoating and moral panic authenticity vs commercial gatekeeping black masculinity and self-reliance

Savage Good Boy

Japanese Breakfast

A song written in the voice of a wealthy, self-justifying man who frames his hoarding and moral compromises as acts of devotion.…

late capitalism and wealth hoarding toxic masculinity and possessiveness climate apocalypse

Work

Gang Starr

A boastful street-level anthem built around the double meaning of 'work' as both hustle/grind and criminal labor, delivered with…

hustler ethic street surveillance and paranoia status and reputation

Get Down

Nas

Nas narrates a series of street-life anecdotes and near-death encounters spanning decades of New York and West Coast gang…

cycles of violence street mythology and legacy fatalism vs. moral awakening

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

Something In The Way

Nirvana

A hushed, almost inert closer to Nevermind that trades the album's loud-quiet-loud dynamics for a single sustained murmur. The…

isolation destitution moral numbness

Unshaken

D'Angelo

A meditative prayer set against apocalyptic collapse, this song written for a game about the closing of the American frontier…

spiritual endurance moral reckoning memory and forgetting

Forever Young

The Band

This is a benediction set to music, a parent's or elder's string of blessings addressed to someone young, wishing them…

blessing and benediction innocence versus experience moral instruction

Jesus Walks

Kanye West Tribute Band

Kanye West stages a war between street survival and spiritual longing, using a marching-drum gospel choir to frame hustling,…

faith under duress racial profiling and criminalization survivor's guilt

Sex, Drugs and Violence

Public Enemy

Public Enemy uses three loosely connected vignettes of unsolved shootings tied to hip-hop culture to indict the industry and…

media complicity violence in hip-hop culture commercialization of black death

Pancho and Lefty

Townes Van Zandt

A ballad about a legendary Mexican bandit and the friend widely suspected of betraying him, told with the flattened affect of a…

betrayal and complicity myth-making versus truth exile and displacement

Good Christian Soldier

Kris Kristofferson

A soldier's letter-home voice traces the collapse of a boyhood religious idealism into weary survival instinct. Kristofferson…

loss of faith war and disillusionment masculinity and repressed grief

Deep Dark Truthful Mirror

Elvis Costello

A bruising address to someone who won't confront their own dishonesty, wrapped in dense, surreal imagery of boxing, city…

self-deception cruelty as entertainment urban decay