Results for “mortality and nihilism”

Songs

Feeling Mortal

Kris Kristofferson

A late-career meditation on aging and mortality, written by a man in his mid-seventies confronting his reflection and his…

aging and mortality self-scrutiny gratitude amid decline

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Death Cab for Cutie

A quiet, acoustic vow of companionship extended past death, stripped of religious comfort. The narrator promises to follow a…

mortality secular love versus religious afterlife doubt and disillusionment with organized religion

Blockbuster Night Pt. 1

Run the Jewels

This is a pure boast-and-battle track built on braggadocio, wordplay, and violent cartoon imagery, with the duo trading verses…

braggadocio and lyrical dominance violence as performance hypocrisy of the powerful

Oh My Darling Don't Cry

Run the Jewels

A two-verse trade-off between El-P and Killer Mike that functions as pure sonic swagger and threat display, dressed up in…

defiance of authority hypermasculine bravado self-mythologizing

Give Me the Cure

Fugazi

A short, blunt meditation on mortality that treats death not as an abstract idea but as a physical sensation intruding on the…

mortality denial and avoidance illness or loss

I Gotta Get Drunk

George Jones

A honky-tonk confessional in which the narrator describes his own drinking as an inevitability rather than a choice, framing…

compulsive drinking fatalism disguised as humor social ritual of the bar

Lay Me Down

Loretta Lynn

A late-career meditation on mortality that treats death not as an ending to fear but as the final release from a hard life.…

mortality faith and afterlife weariness and endurance

September When It Comes

Rosanne Cash

A meditation on mortality and inherited fate, written in the voice of someone reckoning with the end of life while looking back…

mortality inheritance/family legacy acceptance

Blue Spotted Tail

Fleet Foxes

A brief, almost prayer-like song built entirely from unanswered cosmic questions, framed by a fleeting moment of urban life and…

existential doubt mortality insignificance

Who's Gonna Miss Me?

Loretta Lynn

A late-life meditation on legacy, sung as a plain, repeated question rather than a boast. Loretta Lynn strips away career…

mortality legacy humility

For All We Know

Abbey Lincoln

A standard-era torch song built on a single plea: seize the present because permanence is never guaranteed. Abbey Lincoln's…

carpe diem uncertainty of the future mortality

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

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

Goin' Down Slow

Free

This is a slow, confessional blues about a man reckoning with mortality, sung as a deathbed message to a mother and lover rather…

mortality regret confession

Scattered

The Kinks

A meditation on dispersal that moves from an agrarian image of scattered seeds to personal grief over a lost lover, and finally…

mortality loss and grief impermanence

Montezuma

Fleet Foxes

An opening-track meditation on aging and mortality, framed as a young man surprised to find himself already past the age at…

mortality aging and belated adulthood self-doubt

Who Tells Your Story

The Roots

A meditation on legacy and mortality built around the Hamilton-borrowed refrain about who survives to tell one's story. Three…

legacy and memory mortality Black identity and violence

Ascension Day

Talk Talk

Ascension Day is a fractured, almost liturgical piece of wordplay built from gambling terms and religious imagery, where the…

fate and predestination gambling as spiritual metaphor guilt and judgement

Hurt

Johnny Cash

A cover written originally as a young man's meditation on self-harm and numbness becomes, in Johnny Cash's version, an old man's…

mortality regret addiction and self-destruction

Philadelphia

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

Reach For The Dead

Boards of Canada

An instrumental piece built from wavering analog synths and a slow, hazy tempo, "Reach for the Dead" trades on Boards of…

memory and decay mortality childhood nostalgia

Do Anything You Want to Do

Thin Lizzy

An anthem of defiant self-assertion built almost entirely from imperative pep-talk and repeated affirmation, warning the…

self-empowerment social pressure and gossip autonomy vs. conformity

Keep Yourself Alive

Queen

Queen's debut single is a wry survival manifesto disguised as a rock anthem, tracking a narrator who has chased every…

disillusionment with self-improvement excess and hollow experience survival versus success

Still Not Dead

Willie Nelson

A wry, self-deprecating rebuttal to internet death hoaxes, built as a talking-blues shrug rather than a protest song. Willie…

mortality and aging celebrity death hoaxes touring life and work ethic

Something You Get Through

Willie Nelson

A plainspoken meditation on grief that refuses the language of recovery, arguing instead that loss is endured rather than…

grief and mourning mortality continuity of life

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven

Loretta Lynn

A gospel-tinged novelty hymn that turns a folk saying into a meditation on the human fear of death, even among the faithful.…

fear of death faith versus human nature salvation

Angel

Eurythmics

A meditation on death and disillusioned faith framed as a lullaby for someone who has died, with the singer caught between grief…

mortality loss of faith idolatry and celebrity

One Fine Morning

Bill Callahan

A closing statement for an album called Apocalypse, this song imagines departure as both a literal ride into open country and a…

mortality departure and retirement personal apocalypse

Splitting the Atom

Massive Attack

A slow-burning meditation on decay and dissolution, moving from a compromised birth to an economic wasteland to a final image of…

entropy and decay economic collapse fragile intimacy

The Three Bells

Alison Krauss

This is a folk parable that condenses an entire human life—birth, marriage, death—into three ringing-bell scenes tied to the…

cycle of life community and ritual mortality

Unbelievers

Vampire Weekend

A song about living without religious certainty while still wanting the comforts faith supposedly offers. It frames doubt not as…

religious doubt mortality secular loneliness

Eple

Röyksopp

The lyrics supplied here do not match the actual song: Röyksopp's "Eple" is a well-known instrumental track from Melody A.M.…

mortality artistic camaraderie nostalgia

Little Kids

Deerhunter

A brief, almost folk-tale narrative about children stalking and ultimately setting fire to an old man, framed by a droning,…

cruelty and innocence mortality ritual violence

Taphead

Talk Talk

"Taphead" is less a lyric than a liturgical fragment, a string of near-aphorisms about death, rebirth, and the wearing-down of…

mortality spiritual rebirth doubt versus faith

Jumpers

Sleater‐Kinney

"Jumpers" turns the Golden Gate Bridge into a site of collective and personal despair, framing California's mythic sunshine as a…

suicide and despair California mythology vs. reality isolation within crowds

You Can't Always Get What You Want

The Rolling Stones

A gospel-choir-backed anthem that stitches together disconnected scenes of desire, disillusionment, and death, all resolving…

disillusionment compromise the counterculture's limits

Scarlet Town

Gillian Welch

A traveler recounts a journey to a mythic, menacing place called Scarlet Town, where hospitality curdles into betrayal and…

betrayal mortality folk/ballad inheritance

Godspeed

Frank Ocean

A parting blessing rather than a breakup lament, this song frames love as unconditional even after a relationship or bond has…

unconditional love letting go spiritual devotion

Australia

The Shins

A deceptively upbeat, jangly pop song that uses escapism and evolutionary/existential language to talk about…

existential doubt escapism entrapment vs. freedom

ATM

J. Cole

ATM stages the voice of money addiction itself, with Cole rapping in the boastful cadence of a hustler consumed by accumulation…

materialism and addiction spiritual emptiness self-destruction disguised as success