Results for “optimism as practice”

Songs

Adventures In Paradise

Minnie Riperton

A gentle affirmation of self-created reality, this title track treats optimism and imagination as tools for daily transcendence…

manifestation and belief inner freedom everyday transcendence

I Believe In Music

Donny Hathaway

A gospel-tinged secular hymn that treats music-making itself as a moral and spiritual practice, capable of dissolving conflict…

music as spiritual practice communal unity optimism through repetition

Land of Dreams

Rosanne Cash

A gentle invitation song that frames creativity and connection as a shared, almost tangible place rather than an abstract goal.…

creative inheritance invitation and encouragement intimacy

It's Gonna Get Better

Genesis

A closing-track anthem of forced optimism, built on simple exhortations to hold on and reach out against a backdrop of urban…

urban alienation perseverance solidarity

Dashboard

Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse builds a shaky optimism out of wreckage imagery, insisting that even a broken-down vehicle still gets you…

near-disaster and survival willed optimism emotional evasiveness

Moonshadow

Cat Stevens

A gentle folk song that turns the image of a shadow cast by moonlight into a meditation on loss and acceptance. Through a series…

acceptance of loss optimism in adversity spiritual companionship

Blue Skies

Tom Waits

A domestic wreck of a song dressed in the sunniest possible title: the narrator is broke, abandoned, and effectively parenting…

irony of optimism poverty and abandonment loneliness

Love Will Find a Way

Yes

A commercial-rock love song built on hesitation rather than certainty, in which the narrator wavers between wanting closeness…

romantic ambivalence reassurance through repetition emotional confusion

When We Get By

D'Angelo

A slow-groove love song built almost entirely from a single circling phrase, promising that romantic devotion is enough to…

romantic devotion as survival domestic intimacy sensuality

Glad Tidings

Van Morrison

A closing benediction addressed to someone heading out into the world, mixing wary warnings about commerce and pretension with…

departure and blessing cynicism about commerce and status innocence versus experience

Where Do You Start

Shirley Horn

This is a torch song about the domestic aftermath of a breakup — not the dramatic rupture but the tedious, heartbreaking…

disentanglement after love grief as practical logistics memory and ownership

Boats to Build

Guy Clark

Guy Clark turns the craft of boatbuilding into a meditation on making a life with your own hands and getting on with it before…

mortality and urgency craftsmanship as self-definition self-reliance

Peace Train

Cat Stevens

A buoyant early-70s anthem that turns hope for global reconciliation into a literal vehicle, imagined as a train that anyone can…

utopian hope collective longing for peace spiritual/religious undertones

Pacifics (From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack “N.Y. Is Red Hot")

Digable Planets

Digable Planets turn a Sunday in New York into an extended meditation on rest, community, and creative replenishment, moving…

urban leisure and rest Black cultural inheritance (jazz, literature, hip-hop lineage) community and belonging

Change

Tears for Fears

A cool, synth-driven meditation on estrangement between two people who once knew each other well, built around the anxious…

emotional distance loss of identity regret and hesitation

Where I'm From

Digable Planets

This posse-cut catalog builds a portrait of a hip-hop upbringing not through a single narrator but through overlapping voices…

cultural identity and community Afrocentric consciousness hip-hop as inheritance

Harder Better Faster Stronger

Daft Punk

A single fragmented phrase is chopped, looped, and reassembled through vocoder into a mantra about relentless productivity and…

labor and productivity machine identity repetition and ritual

The Day I Tried to Live

Soundgarden

A song about the futility of trying to change or improve oneself, told through a narrator whose every attempt at effort or…

self-doubt futility of effort inversion of moral action

Sycamore

Bill Callahan

A meditative address built around inherited wisdom about growth and endurance, using the sycamore tree as its central emblem.…

inheritance and fatherhood growth versus impatience resilience

Ever Again

Robyn

A dance-pop declaration of self-protective optimism, in which the narrator tries to talk both a partner and herself into…

emotional self-protection cyclical relationships vulnerability disguised as resolve

Follow God

Kanye West Tribute Band

A confessional track built around a real argument with his father that keeps interrupting itself with the same rebuke: that's…

hypocrisy and self-awareness father-son conflict public image vs private faith

Float On

Modest Mouse

A catalogue of everyday mishaps—fender benders, cons, firings, verbal blunders—gets deflated by a chorus that refuses to treat…

resilience through indifference everyday misfortune collective endurance

Our Day Will Come

Amy Winehouse

This is Amy Winehouse's cover of the 1963 Ruby & the Romantics doo-wop standard, recast in her contralto as a slow, hazy soul…

young love patience and deferred happiness faith against doubt

Everything it Takes

Loretta Lynn

A wronged woman confronts her partner's infidelity by dismantling the appeal of the other woman, insisting the rival's power is…

betrayal and infidelity female rivalry possessiveness

Keep It Between the Lines

Sturgill Simpson

This is a father's list of hard-won advice to a young son, delivered as a string of practical warnings and folksy aphorisms…

fatherhood and inheritance cautionary wisdom addiction and self-destruction

Home By Another Way

James Taylor

Taylor takes the biblical Magi's detour around Herod after visiting the infant Jesus and turns it into a wry parable about…

biblical allegory avoidance of tyranny/corruption wisdom and discretion

New World Coming

Nina Simone

This is a short, incantatory hymn of hope written by Nina Simone (music by her, lyrics credited to Simone and Gene Taylor) that…

utopian hope collective liberation religious apocalypse