Results for “numerology/mysticism as playful device”

Songs

The Magic Number

De La Soul

De La Soul turns Schoolhouse Rock's arithmetic lesson into a manifesto for the trio itself, using the number three as a stand-in…

group identity and unity originality vs. imitation in hip-hop numerology/mysticism as playful device

Where Do the Children Play?

Cat Stevens

A gentle folk-rock lament that questions the cost of technological and industrial 'progress' by asking a simple, unanswerable…

environmental destruction industrial progress vs. nature loss of childhood innocence

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

I'd Like to Walk Around In Your Mind

Vashti Bunyan

A quiet, whimsical song about wanting intimate access to someone's inner life while wishing to remain undetected in it. Bunyan…

longing for intimacy the limits of knowing another person playful invasiveness

Freeway of Love

Aretha Franklin

A joyous, motorized courtship song built around a single sustained conceit: romance as a drive on an open highway. Aretha…

romance as motion/escape freedom and self-determination playful flirtation

Chicken Soup With Rice

Carole King

A children's calendar song that runs through all twelve months, using a single absurd fixation—chicken soup with rice—as the…

the passage of time childhood imagination comfort and ritual

Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin

An eight-minute ballad that starts as a gentle folk critique of spiritual materialism and gradually swells into a mystical,…

spiritual materialism doubt and ambiguity nature as mystic guide

Work It

Missy Elliott

Missy Elliott's signature single is a maximalist celebration of sexual confidence and self-invention, built on a literal sonic…

sexual agency self-invention and reinvention female solidarity and hustle

Cousin Dupree

Steely Dan

A slack, aging drifter moves onto his aunt's couch and develops an unseemly fixation on his young cousin, pitching her a…

arrested development delusional self-image taboo desire played for laughs

Many a Mile to Freedom

Traffic

A short, incantatory piece built almost entirely from pastoral and folkloric imagery, this bonus track functions less as a…

freedom and journey unity with nature unanswered questions

Where It's At

Beck

A cut-and-paste party anthem that treats meaning as beside the point, stitching together carnival barker patter,…

collage/pastiche nostalgia for analog music-making irony toward hip-hop authenticity tropes

Rock and Roll Doctor

Little Feat

This is a good-humored tall tale that dresses up dancing and music as medical treatment, casting a mysterious small-town figure…

music as healing Southern folklore/tall tale communal ritual

Stay Up Late

Talking Heads

A household turns a newborn into a novelty toy, with siblings and cooing relatives conspiring to keep him awake past his bedtime…

family and domesticity possession and objectification innocence versus adult impulse

Magic Dance

David Bowie

A propulsive novelty-funk number written for the film Labyrinth, in which a chant-like spell is cast to soothe a crying infant…

childhood fear transformation through play ritual and incantation

Not

Big Thief

"Not" is a song built entirely out of negation, circling an unnamed thing by naming everything it isn't. Lenker piles up sensory…

negation and unnameability impermanence desire and its objects

I Am a Scientist

Guided by Voices

A short, deceptively simple lo-fi anthem in which the narrator cycles through professional identities—scientist, journalist,…

self-examination addiction and escape art as self-medication

It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

R.E.M.

A torrent of disconnected images—natural disasters, media noise, Cold War figures, cultural detritus—gets fired off at…

information overload apocalyptic anxiety played as comedy media saturation

I'm Every Woman

Whitney Houston

A cover of Chaka Khan's disco-era declaration of feminine totality, reworked by Whitney Houston into a glossy, gospel-tinged…

female empowerment universality of womanhood self-possession

Hard-Core Troubadour

Steve Earle

A wry character sketch of an unrepentant romantic drifter told from the outside, by a narrator warning a woman about the man's…

romantic recidivism performance vs. sincerity the myth of the outlaw lover

Do You Wanna Dance

Ramones

A three-minute cover of a 1958 rock and roll standard, stripped down and sped up until the invitation to dance becomes an…

teenage romance dance as ritual nostalgia for 1950s rock and roll

Boogie Street

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on the pull between transcendent, near-mystical intimacy and the noisy, transactional churn of ordinary life. The…

sacred vs. profane transience of ecstasy spiritual longing

Kashmir

Led Zeppelin

A hypnotic travelogue through desert and vision, where the journey itself becomes indistinguishable from a mystical state. The…

spiritual quest desert imagery as transcendence time and displacement

Oxford Comma

Vampire Weekend

A jaunty, harpsichord-inflected pop song that uses a grammar joke as a launching pad for a satire of upper-crust pretension and…

class and privilege cultural tourism and appropriation linguistic pedantry vs authenticity

Ooh Las Vegas

Gram Parsons

A honky-tonk lament about a gambler caught in the loop of losing, drinking, and going back for more, with Las Vegas cast as a…

addiction and compulsion poverty vs. glamour self-destruction

Hot Thing

Talib Kweli

A breezy, radio-ready love-and-lust song built around a repeated hook praising a woman's heat and appeal. Talib Kweli trades his…

desire and attraction romantic idealization pop culture reference as flattery

Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight

Emmylou Harris

A folk-ballad narrative about a young Louisiana woman named Mary who runs off with a drifter, told through a shifting cast of…

escape and restlessness cautionary romance generational warning

Hurtin' (On the Bottle)

Margo Price

A honky-tonk drinking song that plays the genre's oldest trick—turning heartbreak into a barroom joke—while quietly admitting…

heartbreak self-destruction futility of escape

Who's Zoomin' Who?

Aretha Franklin

A mid-80s dance-pop track built around a single street-slang question: who's manipulating whom in a game of seduction. Aretha…

romantic gamesmanship female agency and self-possession seduction as strategy

Thank You Friends

Big Star

A gratitude anthem that plays like a mock-showbiz thank-you speech, thanking unnamed collaborators in language so formal it…

gratitude and its limits dependency vs. self-sufficiency showbiz artifice

Long May You Run

Neil Young

Neil Young's elegy for a car that has died is written with such tenderness it plays as a breakup song or a eulogy for a person,…

loyalty and companionship loss and mortality nostalgia for youth

In My Hour of Darkness

Gram Parsons

A closing hymn built around three elegies for people the narrator has lost, framed by a repeated plea for divine clarity and…

mourning and loss mortality and premonition faith under duress

Hidden Treasure

Traffic

A gentle, meditative song that treats a riverbank walk as a spiritual exercise, urging the listener toward openness and…

contemplation and inner openness nature as teacher spiritual seeking

The Cape

Guy Clark

Guy Clark takes a childhood game of playing superhero and stretches it across a whole life, turning a boy jumping off a garage…

faith versus caution refusal to grow up conventionally risk and self-belief

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Neutral Milk Hotel

A meditation on love, mortality, and impermanence that blurs the line between romantic address and elegy, filtered through Jeff…

mortality and impermanence romantic devotion memory and loss

Rehab

Amy Winehouse

A defiant, retro-soul kiss-off to the people urging the narrator into treatment, delivered with a swagger that keeps curdling…

denial and self-mythology addiction autonomy vs. paternalism

Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It

Ice Cube

Ice Cube uses the media's stock accusation that gangsta rap 'causes' violence as a satirical device, exaggerating the charge…

media scapegoating and moral panic authenticity vs commercial gatekeeping black masculinity and self-reliance

Lazy

Deep Purple

"Lazy" is less a lyric than a pretext for a long instrumental workout, its handful of blues-derived lines circling a single…

indolence and refusal futility of persuasion blues fatalism

Respect

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin's reworking of a song originally about a working man asking for domestic peace turns it into a declaration of…

self-respect reciprocity in relationships female autonomy

The Midnight Special

Creedence Clearwater Revival

CCR's take on this traditional American folk-blues song reworks a prison-camp lament into a swampy rock anthem, keeping its cast…

incarceration and forced labor folk tradition and inheritance longing for deliverance

Legend Has It

Run the Jewels

A boastful, mythmaking duo track in which El-P and Killer Mike cast themselves as outlaw legends -- part supervillain, part folk…

self-mythologizing violence as performance drug use and excess