Results for “passive-aggression”

Songs

Little Motel

Modest Mouse

A relationship curdles into a war of small cruelties, narrated with the strange calm of someone who has already decided the…

romantic disintegration passive-aggression mutual resentment

Dreams

Fleetwood Mac

A breakup song written from a position of eerie calm rather than anguish, in which the departing partner's bid for freedom is…

romantic dissolution detachment as self-protection cyclical nature vs. human choice

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

Car

Built to Spill

A hazy meditation on wanting revelation secondhand, "Car" pairs a plainspoken opening about borrowing a vehicle with a spiraling…

passive longing vicarious experience escape and inertia

Fight Test

The Flaming Lips

A framing device—an announced test with a stopwatch beginning and ending—wraps a plain confession of romantic passivity and…

passivity vs. confrontation regret and self-reproach masculinity and its expectations

My Wave

Soundgarden

A song about radical live-and-let-live individualism that curdles into territorial aggression by its final third. The narrator…

personal autonomy boundary-setting irony of tolerance

I'll Come Running

Brian Eno

A deceptively cheerful pop song built on an image of devoted, almost servile waiting, where the narrator's declared eagerness to…

devotion and dependency passivity disguised as patience domestic confinement

I Know What I Know

Paul Simon

A slippery, satirical cocktail-party exchange dressed up as an Afro-pop groove, in which Paul Simon strings together…

social performance and vanity emptiness of small talk passivity and resignation

By the Rivers Dark

Leonard Cohen

A short, incantatory prayer-song in which the speaker surrenders the illusion of being the one who loves and comes to see love…

surrender of ego divine or transcendent love exile and punishment

Carried Away

Television

A hushed, drifting piece from Television's second album, built around a single confession: the speaker keeps getting swept along…

passivity and surrender dissolution of self memory and its distortions

Red

King Crimson

Red is King Crimson's instrumental title track, a riff-driven power trio piece built around a menacing, angular guitar figure…

dread and menace mechanized aggression cyclical structure

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

Under Control

The Strokes

A slow-burning breakup song built almost entirely from negations and reggae-tinged restraint, where the narrator's insistence on…

emotional detachment as self-protection loss of control disguised as calm fading youth

Fight the Power (From "Do The Right Thing" Soundtrack)

Public Enemy

A rallying anthem built on funk breaks and blunt sloganeering, the track argues that Black cultural pride and outright refusal…

Black pride and self-determination media and cultural gatekeeping collective action versus passivity

The Only Heartbreaker

Mitski

Mitski casts herself as the sole villain in a relationship, resigned to always being the one who does damage while her partner…

self-blame and guilt imbalance in relationships performative repentance

Righteously

Lucinda Williams

A woman lays out terms for a lover who confuses aggression with masculinity, insisting that tenderness and respect are the real…

masculinity and its performance sexual respect and reciprocity desire coexisting with frustration

Sweet

Common

"Sweet" is Common's confrontational rebuttal to the softer, more romantic image he'd cultivated on prior albums, delivered as a…

reclaiming masculinity/toughness hip-hop legacy and authenticity boasting and self-mythologizing

Waiting Room

Fugazi

Fugazi's signature opener frames stasis as a political and personal condition, staging a narrator stuck in a metaphorical…

patience versus action media disengagement self-discipline

Rock and Roll Queen

Mott the Hoople

An early Mott the Hoople track built on a swaggering put-down dressed up as rock bravado, with a narrator addressing a woman he…

misogyny/double standards rock star posturing public image vs private reality

I Would Hurt a Fly

Built to Spill

A song built around an irritation so small it borders on absurd — an inaudible, nagging sound only the speaker can perceive —…

suppressed anger perception and isolation paranoia or hypersensitivity

#3

Aphex Twin

An untitled, numbered ambient piece from Aphex Twin's largely wordless second Selected Ambient Works volume, this track works…

dissociation interior space repetition and stasis

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

Thunder and Lightning

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy in full riff-driven bravado mode, a Saturday-night anthem that fuses schoolyard aggression, romantic…

masculine bravado violence as ritual working-class nightlife

Full Clip

Gang Starr

Full Clip is a boastful, aggressive posse-cut-style anthem in which Guru delivers a barrage of battle-rap threats, positioning…

braggadocio and dominance authenticity vs. imitation violence as metaphor for skill

Waiting In Vain

Annie Lennox

This is Annie Lennox's reading of the Bob Marley & the Wailers song, retooled from reggae original into a slower,…

unrequited devotion patience versus self-respect power imbalance in courtship

All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast

Bill Callahan

Callahan builds an allegory in which his own mind is a bare tree full of small birds—his thoughts and desires—until a predatory…

the mind as ecosystem predation and vulnerability loss of gentleness/desire

DNA.

Kendrick Lamar

DNA. is Kendrick Lamar's opening salvo on DAMN., a hyper-aggressive inventory of inherited traits that refuses to separate the…

inherited identity Black masculinity and violence fame and paranoia