Results for “mortality and reprieve”

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

Gallis Pole

Lead Belly

Lead Belly's take on this ancient ballad (widely known as "The Maid Freed from the Gallows" in the folk tradition) turns a…

mortality and reprieve family loyalty versus self-interest folk justice and bribery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossroads

Cream

Cream's version compresses Robert Johnson's Delta blues into a lean, high-velocity rock performance, turning a song about…

isolation spiritual desperation the blues tradition

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

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

The Kiss

Judee Sill

Judee Sill turns a love song into a devotional hymn, blurring the line between romantic union and religious ecstasy until the…

sacred and profane love transcendence mortality

Meet Me On the Equinox

Death Cab for Cutie

A love song built around an astronomical image of perfect balance that the singer knows cannot last. Written for the New Moon…

mortality impermanence of love balance and equilibrium

I Grieve

Peter Gabriel

A meditation on sudden bereavement that moves from numb disbelief through raw protest to a hard-won, unsentimental acceptance…

grief and loss the body as vessel denial and acceptance

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

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

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

Keep Me in Your Heart

Warren Zevon

A dying man's direct address to the people he loves, written and recorded as Warren Zevon faced terminal cancer. The song trades…

mortality memory and legacy love as continuity

Don't Let It Bring You Down

Annie Lennox

This is a Neil Young cover Annie Lennox transforms into a bleak urban nocturne, stringing together images of death and…

urban decay mortality indifference of the city

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

Missed the Boat

Modest Mouse

A meandering, self-lacerating meditation on complacency and missed opportunity, delivered with Modest Mouse's trademark mix of…

missed opportunity self-deception complacency

Nobody's Darling But Mine

Merle Haggard

This is Merle Haggard's reading of a much older folk-country standard, built around a plain, almost childlike plea for constancy…

fidelity and possession tenderness mortality

Space Oddity

David Bowie

A dramatized radio transmission between mission control and an astronaut becomes an extended metaphor for detachment and…

isolation fame and alienation dissociation

King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3

Neutral Milk Hotel

This two-part suite opens with a plainspoken, almost liturgical declaration of love to Jesus Christ before erupting into a…

religious devotion and doubt birth and rebirth language and inarticulacy

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

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

Knockin' On Heaven's Door

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

24 Frames

Jason Isbell

A meditation on the fragility of everything a person builds—relationships, careers, a sense of stability—delivered through a…

impermanence mortality self-deception

The Needle and the Damage Done

Laura Marling

This is Laura Marling's recording of Neil Young's 1972 song about heroin addiction, written after Young watched a bandmate…

addiction loss complicity of the witness