Results for “original sin / the Fall”

Songs

It's a Sin

Pet Shop Boys

A confessional pop song built on the grinding logic of Catholic guilt, where every desire and action the narrator has ever had…

religious guilt internalized shame repression

Victoria

The Fall

This is The Fall's 1988 cover of the Kinks' 1969 song, a mock-anthem that impersonates Victorian-era patriotic sentiment so…

empire and nationalism class and inequality irony and pastiche

Blindness

The Fall

This is a plainspoken cautionary tale about romantic self-deception: a man ignores his own instincts, falls hard for a woman who…

self-deception romantic ruin pride and consequence

What About Us

The Fall

A talking-animal narrator, a rabbit émigré from East Germany living in Britain, stumbles across a newspaper story about a killer…

displacement and immigration institutional trust and betrayal tabloid horror as everyday backdrop

Pacifying Joint

The Fall

A Mark E. Smith sound-poem built almost entirely around one phrase, worked through its multiple possible meanings — a drug, a…

ambiguity of language youthful drift surveillance/paranoia

Spoilt Victorian Child

The Fall

A fragmented, incantatory sketch of a pampered childhood curdling into adult decay, told through storybook imagery that keeps…

nostalgia as decay class and privilege arrested development

L.A.

The Fall

A brief, collage-like sketch of Los Angeles built from disconnected images rather than a story -- cinema marquees, heat-stressed…

cultural alienation artifice versus nature American excess viewed from outside

As the World Falls Down

David Bowie

A courtly, almost hypnotic love song written for the film Labyrinth, in which the speaker offers cosmic gifts to a beloved while…

seduction and enchantment love as surrender impermanence

Learn How to Fall

Paul Simon

A short, gospel-tinged homily built on a single paradox: mastery of failure precedes any real ascent. Simon frames the idea in…

failure as preparation humility versus ambition folk wisdom

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Laura Marling

This is a cover of Bob Dylan's 1963 apocalyptic ballad, structured as a call-and-response between a questioning parent and a…

apocalypse and prophecy witness and testimony social collapse

Can't Help Falling in Love

Kacey Musgraves

Kacey Musgraves' rendition of this 1961 standard, recorded for the 2022 Elvis biopic soundtrack, strips the song down to its…

surrender to love fate versus choice vulnerability

Summer, Highland Falls

Billy Joel

A meditative, almost philosophical ballad about the instability of emotional life, framed through a strained relationship.…

emotional polarity resignation and acceptance the limits of communication

Rotten Apple

Alice in Chains

"Rotten Apple" builds a chant-like litany out of abstract nouns—innocence, ignorance, confidence, sustenance, arrogance—each…

loss of innocence addiction and self-destruction guilt and repentance

Sin City (B Side)

Uncle Tupelo

This is Uncle Tupelo's take on the Flying Burrito Brothers standard, a doom-laden vision of Los Angeles as a modern Babylon…

moral corruption of wealth apocalyptic judgment urban decay

Big Yellow Taxi (Original A Cappella with Guitar)

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell's early environmental protest song works as a series of loosely connected complaints -- about development,…

environmental loss commodification of nature nostalgia and regret

It Hurts Like Hell (from Waiting to Exhale - Original Soundtrack)

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin sings a ballad about love curdling into pain without dying outright, where the couple still cares but has lost…

love and suffering intertwined emotional exhaustion fear of vulnerability

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

Blind Willie McTell

The Band

A traveler moves through a haunted, mythic American South, stacking images of slavery, exile, and vice into a single vision of…

historical memory of slavery the blues as witness/testimony original sin and corruption

Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan

A six-minute takedown song that watches a once-privileged woman lose every social prop that made her feel untouchable. Dylan…

fall from privilege social exposure and humiliation freedom through loss

Satellite Anthem Icarus

Boards of Canada

Satellite Anthem Icarus is an instrumental piece built from warm, slightly detuned guitar figures laid over a slow, hypnotic…

flight and falling distance/isolation nostalgia for analog technology

Walking in My Shoes

Depeche Mode

A confessional plea from someone who has been publicly judged for private sins, refusing to apologize while insisting his…

moral judgment and hypocrisy temptation and guilt empathy versus condemnation

Blue Sky

Common

Common builds a triumphant victory-lap track around a sampled ELO hook, using the sky as a running metaphor for ascent,…

ambition realized spiritual gratitude celebrity and success

Blue Spirit Blues

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith stages a full descent-into-hell nightmare as a twelve-bar blues, using classic AAB stanzas to build a horror…

mortality and damnation nightmare and dream logic sin and judgment

Breakadawn

De La Soul

A loose, free-associative posse-cut style track from De La Soul's most abstract album, built on stream-of-consciousness wordplay…

identity and origin hip-hop lineage and Native Tongues affiliation industry skepticism

Oceania

Björk

Björk voices the ocean itself as a primordial mother addressing humanity, tracing evolution from sea to land in tender, cosmic…

origin and evolution maternal address deep time versus human time

Celebrate

Common

A party track built around a repeated chant of togetherness and excess, where Common trades his usual introspection for…

celebration and excess loyalty among friends upward mobility

Fruits of My Labor

Lucinda Williams

A hushed, sensuous meditation on hard-won ease, sung to an absent lover whose memory the singer keeps circling back to even as…

earned solitude memory and longing domestic sensuality

Immigrant Song

Led Zeppelin

A short, blunt battle-cry sung from the perspective of Viking raiders sailing west, framed less as narrative than as invocation.…

conquest and invasion myth and legend masculine bravado

Jesus Was a Cross Maker

Judee Sill

Judee Sill turns a betrayal by a charming, elusive lover into a small theology, comparing him to a Jesus who literally built the…

betrayal and seduction sin and redemption entwined spiritual longing

Get Ur Freak On

Missy Elliott

A pure sound-and-swagger track built around a hypnotic, bindi-and-bhangra-inflected beat, where Missy Elliott spends most of the…

self-assertion dominance and rivalry sound over sense

It's Good To Be Here

Digable Planets

Digable Planets frame their own arrival on the hip-hop scene as an interstellar landing, spinning a mock-sci-fi mythology in…

Afrofuturism as playful self-mythology hip-hop and jazz lineage group identity and unity

Still D.R.E.

Dr. Dre

A comeback statement dressed as a boast, in which Dr. Dre answers years of speculation about his relevance by cataloguing…

reputation and legacy authenticity versus commercialism loyalty to origin/streets

Hellacious Acres

Kris Kristofferson

A carnival-barker satire that reimagines hell as a theme park, complete with billboards, ticket lines, and celebrity attractions…

moral corruption as entertainment consumerism and commodified sin celebrity and infamy

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

Have You Ever Seen the Rain

Willie Nelson

This is a cover of the Creedence Clearwater Revival standard, and Willie Nelson's version leans into its plainspoken, riddling…

paradox and contradiction impending trouble endurance through time

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) [Steve Angello Bootleg]

Eurythmics

This is a club remix of the Eurythmics classic, stripping the original's icy synth-pop menace down to a looped mantra built for…

universal desire ambivalence and detachment perseverance

A Case of You

Prince

Prince's rendition strips Joni Mitchell's original down to its bare emotional core, treating a well-known confessional folk song…

romantic longing artistic devotion intoxication as metaphor for love

Can You Feel the Love Tonight

Elton John

A ballad of quiet emotional arrival, written for the moment in The Lion King when a wandering young lion falls into…

romantic surrender maturation and settling down wonder at the natural world

Kentucky Woman

Deep Purple

This is Deep Purple's cover of the Neil Diamond original, a straightforward blues-rock love song built around a repeated title…

idealized love devotion simplicity/contentment

Gimme Shelter

Patti Smith

This is a cover of the Rolling Stones' 1969 apocalyptic ballad, and Patti Smith treats it less as a rock anthem than as an…

apocalypse and dread the fragility of shelter violence versus tenderness