Results for “passivity disguised as patience”

Songs

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

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

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

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

Babooshka

Kate Bush

Kate Bush tells a compact fable of a wife who sets a trap for her own marriage by inventing a mysterious alter ego, only to…

jealousy and self-sabotage disguise and identity the decay of romantic feeling

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

Vienna

Billy Joel

A weary older voice counsels a driven young person to ease off the throttle, arguing that ambition pursued without patience…

ambition versus patience fear of mortality burnout

Faith

George Michael

A dance-pop declaration of self-preservation dressed up as a love song: the narrator is attracted to someone but refuses to hand…

romantic self-protection distrust of surface attraction patience versus desire

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

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on grace and surrender disguised as a portrait of a woman by a river, Cohen's song moves from intimate seduction…

spiritual longing disguised as romance the sacred in the everyday trust and surrender

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

Lay Lady Lay

Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes takes Dylan's spare, folk-country invitation and rebuilds it as a slow-burning soul seduction, stretching the…

seduction and invitation patience and waiting domestic intimacy

Run Like Hell

Pink Floyd

A pounding, paranoid rocker from the second half of The Wall, built almost entirely on a chanted command to flee. It stages the…

paranoia and surveillance fascism and mob violence guilt and self-disgust

Black Hole Sun

Soundgarden

A hazy, dissonant piece of psychedelia dressed as a pop single, in which a decaying suburban landscape is invited to be…

apocalyptic longing decay and disguise escapism

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

Mushaboom

Feist

Mushaboom is a domestic daydream sung from the gap between a cramped present and an imagined rural future. Feist narrates a life…

domestic fantasy vs. present reality aspiration and patience rural retreat

True Faith

New Order

A euphoric-sounding synth-pop anthem that turns out to be about addiction and the erosion of innocence, dressed in language so…

addiction and dependency loss of childhood innocence denial and self-deception

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

Josie

Steely Dan

A neighborhood gang works itself into a fever pitch preparing for the homecoming of a woman named Josie, whose arrival promises…

homecoming as ritual collective male desire violence disguised as celebration

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (2011)

Amy Winehouse

This is Amy Winehouse's reading of the Goffin-King standard, a spare torch-song reading of a question that has been asked in pop…

romantic uncertainty the gap between physical intimacy and commitment vulnerability disguised as directness

In Every Dream Home a Heartache

Roxy Music

A deadpan monologue delivered by a consumer trapped inside his own showroom lifestyle, who eventually confesses to owning an…

consumerism and alienation artificiality vs intimacy suburban/domestic satire

Paris Is Burning

St. Vincent

A war-correspondent's letter home collides with a chant that watches a city burn while its people dance in the ashes. The song…

war and its aftermath seduction of false comfort collective denial

Dad's Gonna Kill Me

Richard Thompson

A soldier's-eye monologue from the Iraq War, delivered in the blunt, blackly funny voice of an American GI who narrates the…

war and mortality dehumanization of soldiers media spin and propaganda

Beast Of Burden

The Rolling Stones

A weary declaration of devotion dressed up as a refusal: the singer insists he won't be exploited or taken for granted, even as…

emotional labor in relationships self-worth and insecurity devotion disguised as protest

Wolf

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A brief, incantatory song that uses the wolf as a figure for a hunger that is both predatory and vulnerable. Karen O's narrator…

desire as predation vulnerability disguised as ferocity spiritual longing

Almost Blue

Chet Baker

A torch song built entirely on approximation, where the singer tries to substitute one person for a lost love and finds every…

substitution and self-deception grief disguised as romance emotional numbness

Lost In the Supermarket

The Clash

A first-person portrait of a suburban-raised, media-saturated narrator who tries to buy a sense of self off the shelf and finds…

consumerism and identity isolation within domesticity alienation in urban/suburban life

Favorite Thing

The Replacements

A scrappy, two-minute blast of teenage bravado that barely holds together as a song, which is the point: Westerberg sketches a…

adolescent defiance self-destructive pride desire disguised as indifference

I Gotta Get Drunk

George Jones

A honky-tonk confessional in which the narrator describes his own drinking as an inevitability rather than a choice, framing…

compulsive drinking fatalism disguised as humor social ritual of the bar

Washing Machine Heart

Mitski

A short, disco-tinged plea for someone to use and abandon her, framed through the odd domestic metaphor of a washing machine…

self-abasement in desire substitution and being a stand-in longing disguised as invitation

Save the Last Dance for Me

Harry Nilsson

Nilsson's reading of the Pomus-Shuman standard takes a song already built on a tension between generosity and possessiveness and…

jealousy disguised as devotion possessiveness trust and its limits

Maps

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A stripped-down plea built almost entirely on repetition, "Maps" strips romantic longing down to a handful of phrases repeated…

romantic insecurity possessiveness disguised as devotion fear of abandonment

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

The Smiths

A restless plea to be driven anywhere but home turns into a swooning fantasy about dying alongside the person behind the wheel.…

homelessness and unbelonging romantic devotion as self-annihilation loneliness disguised as humor

Swamp

Talking Heads

"Swamp" plays like a fever-dream noir, David Byrne narrating a shadowy transaction with the devil and a cast of menacing,…

paranoia moral corruption identity dissolution

Natural's Not In It

Gang of Four

A slogan-dense critique of consumer capitalism's colonization of desire, where leisure, sex, and love are recast as products and…

commodification of desire capitalism and leisure power disguised as pleasure

Sail Away

Randy Newman

Randy Newman voices a slave trader luring West Africans onto a ship bound for Charleston with a mock-seductive sales pitch about…

slavery and the slave trade American exceptionalism as propaganda irony and complicity

Loud Places

Jamie xx

A dance-floor breakup song built around a single wounded question: how can the person you loved find transcendence with…

loss and jealousy nightlife as substitute intimacy memory attached to place

Shut Up Kiss Me

Angel Olsen

A driving, garage-pop declaration of romantic persistence, in which the narrator refuses to let a faltering relationship end…

romantic persistence refusal to quit desire versus communication

Dollar Bill Blues

Townes Van Zandt

A ramshackle blues about a broke, drink-craving gambler whose fantasies of easy money and easy love curdle into a confession of…

poverty and want drink and gambling as fate violence disguised as bravado

Angeles

Elliott Smith

A quiet, corrosive warning song addressed to someone being courted by fame and the music industry, personified as a seductive…

temptation and corruption the music industry as predator loss of autonomy