Results for “numbness and overmedication”

Songs

Bored In The USA

Father John Misty

A deadpan hymn to middle-class malaise, delivered as if it were a sincere confessional ballad. Tillman lays out the rituals of…

consumerism and materialism marital disillusionment the American Dream's failure

Fake Empire

The National

A quiet, waltz-time song that uses childlike, storybook imagery to describe willful escapism, both personal and political. Its…

escapism denial numbness

Lover's Spit

Broken Social Scene

A hazy, minimal song built around one blunt image repeated until it loses its shock and becomes atmosphere. Broken Social Scene…

intimacy and exhaustion growing up reluctantly ambiguous consent

Hateful

The Clash

A short, jittery song built as a call-and-response addiction narrative, where the speaker's supplier is addressed with the…

addiction and dependency self-deception isolation

Winter Is Blue

Vashti Bunyan

A short, spare lament that treats a failed love as a seasonal death, letting the bleakness of winter stand in for emotional…

loss of love seasonal metaphor for grief emotional numbness

Say Something Loving

The xx

A love song built out of doubt rather than certainty, tracking a narrator relearning intimacy after emotional numbness. The xx…

emotional numbness vulnerability in new intimacy memory and forgetting

Easy to Slip

Little Feat

A short, melancholic meditation on emotional numbness after a breakup, where drifting into forgetfulness feels dangerously…

emotional numbness memory and forgetting romantic loss

New Dawn Fades

Joy Division

A meditation on emotional numbness and self-estrangement, delivered in the flat, exhausted cadence typical of Joy Division. The…

emotional numbness self-alienation futility of change

Uneventful Days

Beck

A hazy breakup meditation built on repetition and stasis, where time itself seems to have stopped moving. Beck uses flat,…

emotional numbness the end of love stalled time

Needles In My Eyes

The Beta Band

A woozy, contradiction-laced account of a relationship curdling into numbness, where pleasure and pain keep swapping places…

emotional numbness romantic ambivalence self-destruction

Lucretia My Reflection

The Sisters of Mercy

A dense, industrial-sounding incantation that fuses imagery of collapsing empires, war machinery, and drug-fueled decadence into…

imperial decline dissociation and numbness decadence and excess

The Ghosts of Beverly Drive

Death Cab for Cutie

A song about emotional numbness and compulsive return, framed through the imagery of Los Angeles wealth and a failed…

emotional numbness compulsive repetition transactional relationships

Nothing Ever Happened

Deerhunter

A short, hypnotic piece about emotional numbness and passive existence, built on a repeated denial that anything of substance…

dissociation passivity time and memory

Insight

Joy Division

A stark, incantatory meditation on numbness and detachment, built around a repeated declaration of fearlessness that reads less…

emotional numbness memory and nostalgia detachment from fear

Standin' In the Rain Blues

Bessie Smith

A minimal, twelve-bar blues built almost entirely around a single weather image, using the rain as a stand-in for hardship that…

resilience emotional numbness poverty and shelter

Disorder (2019 Digital Master)

Joy Division

Disorder opens Unknown Pleasures with a portrait of emotional numbness racing toward crisis, its narrator caught between craving…

emotional numbness alienation loss of control

Bloodbuzz Ohio

The National

A disoriented homecoming song built from fragments rather than a clear story: a man returns to Ohio broke, unmoored, and…

debt and economic anxiety displacement and homecoming emotional numbness

Disorder

Joy Division

Disorder opens Unknown Pleasures as a portrait of emotional numbness accelerating into panic, sung by a narrator who wants to…

emotional numbness loss of control alienation

Someone Great

LCD Soundsystem

A deceptively upbeat, xylophone-driven track that turns out to be about receiving news of a death and moving through the numb,…

grief and loss emotional numbness time and mortality

Anodyne

Uncle Tupelo

A terse breakup song built around a single clinical word repeated like a diagnosis. The narrator describes a relationship's end…

emotional numbness failed relationships irreconcilability

Can't Find My Heart

Broken Social Scene

A hushed, hypnotic plea built almost entirely from conditional clauses and a repeated invitation to go home, undercut by a…

emotional numbness conditional intimacy self-doubt

Creature Comfort

Arcade Fire

A synth-driven anthem that turns confessional details about body image, self-harm, and suicidal ideation into a critique of a…

self-loathing and body image fame as false salvation numbness and dissociation

I Think It's Going to Rain Today

Randy Newman

A short, spare piece built almost entirely on images of decay and false cheer, undercut by a refrain that turns 'kindness' into…

urban decay isolation irony of charity/kindness

Dissolved Girl

Massive Attack

A stripped, weary meditation on romantic inertia, sung by Sara Jézéquel (credited as Sarah Jay) with Robert Del Naja's added…

emotional numbness romantic dependency self-dissolution

Something Changed

Interpol

A late-period Interpol track built around emotional exhaustion and tentative reconnection, where the speaker keeps asking an…

forgiveness without resolution emotional numbness belonging and collective suffering

Once I Had a Love (a.k.a.. The Disco Song)

Blondie

This early Blondie track (later reworked into "Heart of Glass") strips romantic disillusionment down to a chant-like refrain:…

disillusionment in love self-deception emotional numbness

Hardly Getting Over It

Hüsker Dü

A song from Hüsker Dü's original run recast here as a live document, this track builds a bleak inventory of loss — a broken…

mortality emotional numbness aging and decline

Wake Up

Arcade Fire

An anthem built from a children's chant that mourns the loss of childhood wonder while trying to reclaim it. The song moves from…

loss of innocence aging and emotional numbness mortality

Radio Cure

Wilco

A hushed, fragmented meditation on depression and long-distance love, sung as a repeated apology and self-diagnosis. The song…

depression and emotional numbness distance in relationships failure of communication

Crazy Love, Vol. II

Paul Simon

A woozy, deliberately flat account of a marriage falling apart, narrated through a comic-surreal alter ego who claims total…

emotional numbness as defense marital breakdown denial and detachment

I Get a Kick Out of You

Frank Sinatra

A Cole Porter standard in which a jaded sophisticate catalogs every conventional pleasure that fails to move him, only to admit…

ennui and sophistication unrequited or unequal love irony of excess

100%

Sonic Youth

A tribute song built from fragments of grief, aggression, and dark humor, written in memory of a scene figure lost to violence.…

violent death and its aftermath rock scene mythology and idolization gender and predation within a music subculture

Only You

Portishead

A brooding trip-hop meditation on emotional dependency and self-alienation, built around a hypnotic vocal sample and a chorus…

emotional dependency numbness and self-alienation disillusionment

I Need a Forest Fire

James Blake

A minimalist meditation on emotional stagnation, where the speaker asks for destruction as a form of renewal. Blake uses the…

emotional numbness renewal through destruction self-isolation

KOD

J. Cole

The title track of KOD uses a hypnotic, hook-driven trap structure to embody the very drugs of ego, materialism, and violence it…

addiction and self-medication fame and defensiveness cyclical violence

The Greatest

Cat Power

A quiet, almost torch-song meditation on burned-out ambition, framed as a past-tense confession. The narrator recalls a former…

disillusionment with ambition self-burial and surrender past versus present self

Under the Pressure

The War on Drugs

An eight-minute opener that treats emotional exhaustion as a kind of weather system, with Adam Granduciel repeating fragments of…

burnout and psychological strain instability in relationships disillusionment with promised futures

No Surprises

Radiohead

A lullaby-shaped song about a person suffocating quietly inside a comfortable, orderly life, where the wish for peace curdles…

quiet desperation suburban conformity emotional numbness

Changes

Yes

This is Yes's 1980s pivot toward radio-ready pop-rock dressed up with the band's characteristic layered vocals and structural…

romantic dissolution self-reinvention emotional numbness

Road Head

Japanese Breakfast

A terse, cinematic vignette about a roadside sexual encounter framed as an act of desperation rather than intimacy, set against…

desire and desperation emotional numbness youth and recklessness