Results for “music as irrepressible force”

Songs

Rock the Casbah

The Clash

The Clash build a mock-Orientalist fable in which a ruler bans music and the population -- eventually even his own military --…

censorship and authority cultural resistance satire of power

In Every Dream Home a Heartache

Roxy Music

A deadpan monologue delivered by a wealthy consumer who has replaced human intimacy with a mail-order inflatable doll, framed as…

consumerism alienation artificiality vs authenticity

Spanish Moon

Little Feat

A first-person account of stumbling into a seedy nightclub called the Spanish Moon and being undone by it -- by the music, the…

seduction and ruin vice and nightlife loss of self-control

Love, Reign O'er Me

The Who

This is the climactic closing statement of Quadrophenia, a plea for emotional deliverance disguised as a weather report. The…

spiritual longing emotional exhaustion love as elemental force

Rock & Roll

The Velvet Underground

A simple origin myth for a solitary listener, Jenny, whose bored suburban childhood is transformed the moment she finds a radio…

salvation through music suburban alienation adolescence

Fight the Power

Public Enemy

A protest anthem built as a dance record: Chuck D argues that political consciousness and Black pride are things you build in…

Black pride and self-definition institutional racism who gets to be a national hero

The Midnight Special

Creedence Clearwater Revival

CCR's version of this traditional folk-blues song reworks a prison-labor lament into swampy rock, keeping the old imagery of…

incarceration and forced labor longing for deliverance folk mythology / superstition

Isn't She Lovely

Stevie Wonder

A new father's unfiltered, almost breathless reaction to the birth of his daughter, rendered as a series of rhetorical questions…

fatherhood and new birth gratitude love as creative/generative force

Bizarre Love Triangle

New Order

A euphoric synth-pop track built on lyrics of paralysis and unspoken feeling: the narrator is caught between infatuation and…

romantic paralysis emotional confusion fear of vulnerability

You Keep Me Hanging On

The Supremes

A woman demands her own release from a dead relationship, addressing an ex who refuses to fully let go even though he no longer…

emotional limbo asymmetry of feeling demand for autonomy

In the Street

Big Star

A teenage hangout anthem reduced to its essential ingredients: boredom, minor mischief, and the pleasure of doing nothing with…

adolescent boredom small-town restlessness friendship/companionship

Superstition

Stevie Wonder

A funk sermon against magical thinking. Over one of the most recognizable clavinet riffs in popular music, Wonder catalogues…

superstition and magical thinking the cost of ignorance fear as self-fulfilling prophecy

Unshaken

D'Angelo

A prayer-like meditation on trying to hold steady inside collapse, written for a video game about the death of the American…

endurance amid chaos spiritual uncertainty frontier mythology and its end

Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay

Otis Redding

A man who has moved across the country sits by the water in San Francisco, watching ships come and go, admitting he is doing…

idleness and drift migration and displacement loneliness

Cousin Dupree

Steely Dan

A slick, self-satisfied loser moves onto his aunt's couch and develops a leering fixation on his younger cousin, pitching his…

arrested development delusional self-regard taboo desire treated as comedy

Karma Police

Radiohead

A petulant office-worker fantasy in which the speaker summons an imaginary cosmic police force to arrest people who irritate him…

petty vindictiveness bureaucratic and corporate servitude dehumanisation

Running Up That Hill

Kate Bush

A song about two lovers who keep wounding each other without meaning to, and the narrator's fantasy of a supernatural fix: a…

empathy as an impossible exchange the violence hidden inside love gendered misunderstanding