Results for “nostalgia disguised as reportage”

Songs

The First Big Weekend

Arab Strap

A spoken-word, diary-style account of one long weekend of drinking, clubbing, and low-level social friction in a Scottish town,…

youthful drift and boredom drink and drug culture as social glue failed or awkward romance

Saturday Night

Misfits

A doo-wop teenage-heartbreak song gets hijacked by murder-ballad menace, with the Misfits layering slasher-movie violence over…

violence disguised as romance nostalgia and loss teenage Americana corrupted

(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night

Tom Waits

Tom Waits sets a young man loose in a car full of gas money and expectation, chasing a mythic idea of Saturday night through a…

working-class ritual nostalgia disguised as anticipation escape and repetition

Fire It Up

Modest Mouse

A loose, sun-bleached travelogue of drifting and stalling, where a broken-down boat or car becomes an excuse to keep…

aimlessness complacency disguised as freedom broken machinery as metaphor for stalled life

Shenandoah

Pete Seeger

This traditional American work song, sung here by Pete Seeger in his folk-revival style, tells a fragmentary story of a white…

longing and distance cultural and racial encounter exploitation disguised as courtship

We Used to Know

Jethro Tull

A wistful meditation on aging and the passage of time, framed as an address to old companions whose paths are diverging. The…

nostalgia aging and mortality disillusionment

Close Your Eyes and Remember

Minnie Riperton

A gentle, pastoral lullaby that uses nature imagery as a doorway into childhood memory and nostalgia. Riperton's airy, high…

nostalgia nature as memory-trigger innocence

Crocodile Rock

Elton John

A pastiche of early rock and roll nostalgia, built around an invented dance craze and a lost teenage romance. The song uses…

nostalgia lost youth first love

Levitz

Grandaddy

A quiet, defensive song about withdrawal from social life in favor of self-imposed isolation, disguised by early Grandaddy as a…

isolation avoidance technology as substitute for connection

Back in the Day

Erykah Badu

A short, groove-driven interlude from Worldwide Underground that turns nostalgia into pure texture. Badu strips the idea of "the…

nostalgia communal joy simplicity vs. complexity

Chromakey Dreamcoat

Boards of Canada

An instrumental piece from Boards of Canada's third album that trades on the gap between its title's cheerful theatrical…

nostalgia childhood media artifice versus memory

That Old Time Feeling

Guy Clark

A meditation on nostalgia and decline, built entirely from a chain of similes comparing an abstract feeling to aging, marginal…

nostalgia aging and decline loneliness

Celebrated Summer

Hüsker Dü

A sun-bleached remembrance of teenage summer freedom curdles into something more isolated and melancholy, as Bob Mould traces…

nostalgia adolescence and its end isolation

On Saturday Afternoons in 1963

Rickie Lee Jones

A brief, hazy meditation on nostalgia and the loss of childhood innocence, framed as direct address to someone urged to hold…

nostalgia loss of innocence memory

Where Have All the Good Times Gone!

Van Halen

A cover of the Kinks' 1965 track, reworked by Van Halen into a loud, sardonic party lament about lost innocence and generational…

nostalgia generational contrast disillusionment

Horchata

Vampire Weekend

A dense, image-heavy song that uses a Mexican rice drink and a mismatched collage of seasons and geographies to talk about…

nostalgia displacement memory and repression

Hey Saturday Sun

Boards of Canada

An instrumental piece built from warm guitar-like tones and a loping, slightly loose beat, evoking a hazy summer afternoon…

nostalgia childhood memory analog warmth

Back On The Chain Gang

The Pretenders

A meditation on loss disguised as protest, the song uses the image of a chain gang to describe how impersonal forces — media,…

loss and separation nostalgia powerlessness against institutions

I Summon You

Spoon

A meditation on nostalgia and yearning, built around the tension between the physical weight of memory (music bought on…

nostalgia longing and invocation distance and separation

Halcyon (Tom Middleton Re-model)

Orbital

This is a remix of Orbital's 1992 ambient-techno landmark "Halcyon," reworked by Tom Middleton for the duo's 20th-anniversary…

nostalgia memory and repetition chemical euphoria

White Christmas

Merle Haggard

This is Merle Haggard's rendition of the Irving Berlin standard, a song of longing for an idealized, snow-covered Christmas from…

nostalgia longing for home idealized past

Remember

Free

A simple, aching blues-rock ballad built around nostalgia for a lost relationship, contrasting warm, sensory memories of shared…

nostalgia lost love loneliness

Way Back

TLC

A nostalgia anthem built on the language of enduring friendship or love, TLC's "Way Back" leans on classic soul and R&B…

nostalgia loyalty over time reunion

Childs Play

SZA

SZA uses the imagery of childhood games—Barbies, video games, playground toys—to talk about growing into a sexual and emotional…

coming of age sexual awakening nostalgia

Down to the Waterline

Dire Straits

A hazy, nocturnal recollection of teenage romance staged in a dockland landscape of quays, stairways, and coasters. The song…

nostalgia working-class romance memory and place

Windmills of Your Mind

Abbey Lincoln

A standard-turned-jazz-vehicle built entirely on circular imagery, this lyric maps the disorienting churn of memory after a…

memory and obsession the end of love time's circularity

Why Can't This Night Go On Forever

Journey

A power ballad built around a single wish—that a fleeting night with a longtime lover could be stretched into permanence.…

transience of love nostalgia fear of separation

The Christmas Song

The Temptations

This is The Temptations' rendition of the standard often called "The Christmas Song" (though it borrows the familiar Mel Torme…

nostalgia childhood wonder seasonal comfort

Roygbiv

Boards of Canada

Roygbiv is an instrumental piece from Boards of Canada's debut album, built around warm analog synth tones and a hazy, nostalgic…

nostalgia childhood memory nature imagery

Bookends Theme

Simon Jäger

A brief solo acoustic guitar instrumental that opens Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends album, built around a simple, wistful…

memory time passing nostalgia

Country Christmas

Loretta Lynn

A nostalgic, plainspoken carol that recreates a rural Appalachian childhood Christmas through small domestic details rather than…

nostalgia family and home rural tradition

Was a Sunny Day

Paul Simon

A breezy, sing-song surface hides a small, deadpan love story about a sailor and a small-town girl. Paul Simon builds the song…

nostalgia innocence and Americana romantic idealization

Winter Wonderland / Sleigh Ride

Dolly Parton

This is a medley of two Christmas standards, spliced together into one seasonal set piece rather than an original composition.…

courtship and domestic fantasy seasonal ritual nostalgia

Moon River

Frank Ocean

Frank Ocean's 2018 cover strips the classic Mancini/Mercer standard down to its skeleton, treating the original as a found…

longing transience companionship

C'est La Vie

Emmylou Harris

This is Emmylou Harris's take on the Chuck Berry classic usually known as "You Never Can Tell," a breezy, affectionate narrative…

young love domesticity working-class aspiration

Winter Wonderland

Eurythmics

This is a cover of the 1934 standard, recorded for a mid-1980s charity Christmas compilation, and it plays the song fairly…

young romance seasonal escapism imaginative play

My City Was Gone

The Pretenders

Chrissie Hynde returns to her hometown and finds it erased -- the train station, the neighborhood, even her own family's house…

loss of place deindustrialization nostalgia

(I Left My Heart) In San Francisco

Tony Bennett

A wandering singer catalogs the great cities of Europe and the loneliness of New York only to reject them all in favor of one…

homesickness idealized place as beloved urban loneliness

Girl Don't Tell Me

The Beach Boys

A teenage summer romance is revisited a year later, but the narrator has learned to guard himself against the sting of…

seasonal romance emotional self-protection adolescent inconstancy

Good Clothes

Little Brother

Little Brother turns a nostalgic riff on teenage clothes-hustling into a sharp, self-aware satire of consumerism and status…

class and scarcity status anxiety consumerism