Results for “pastoral/mythic imagery as escape”

Songs

Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin

A slow-building folk-rock epic that follows a mysterious woman convinced she can purchase spiritual transcendence, using her as…

spiritual materialism vs. authentic enlightenment ambiguity of language and meaning pastoral/mythic imagery as escape

Strange Fruit

Billie Holiday

A three-stanza protest song about the lynching of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South, built on a single sustained metaphor:…

racial terror and lynching the corruption of Southern pastoral imagery the body as evidence

Superheroes

Ethan Whitney

This is a straightforward pop declaration of devotion that borrows superhero mythology to dress up a fairly conventional promise…

devotion and support escapism fantasy of destiny

Jump Into the Fire

Harry Nilsson

A short set of declarative lines about escape and entrapment dissolves into a chant that repeats itself into…

entrapment disguised as freedom codependency compulsion and addiction

Look At Miss Ohio

Gillian Welch

A short, circling ballad about a young woman fleeing domestic expectation for a taste of freedom before she settles into the…

deferred responsibility female autonomy vs. convention escape and fantasy

Blues Run the Game

Laura Marling

This is a cover of a mid-1960s folk standard, sung here in Laura Marling's plainspoken, weary register, about the impossibility…

itinerancy and escape addiction as self-medication romantic longing and loss

Thunder Road

Bruce Springsteen

A young man stands in a driveway trying to talk a woman named Mary into getting in his car and leaving town with him. Over five…

escape and flight the limits of romantic promise small-town decay

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Roberta Flack

A slow, hymn-like ballad that traces one relationship's progress through three ascending intimacies: first sight, first kiss,…

awakening love cosmic/natural imagery as emotional scale vulnerability and surrender

Sinnerman

Nina Simone

A traditional African-American spiritual rebuilt by Simone into a ten-minute chase sequence: a sinner runs from judgment on the…

judgment day futile flight refused sanctuary

Freeway of Love

Aretha Franklin

This is a driving-metaphor party song: sex and romance recast as a joyride down an open highway in a pink Cadillac. It's…

romantic/sexual liberation escape and momentum playfulness and flirtation

Starship Trooper

Yes

A three-part suite that moves from pastoral invocation through cosmic address to a mantra-like affirmation of shared awakening.…

cosmic consciousness nature as spiritual messenger transmission of hidden knowledge

Wade In the Water

The Staple Singers

This is the Staple Singers' rendition of the traditional African American spiritual, built almost entirely on call-and-response…

deliverance and salvation collective faith and community crossing over / transition between states

Baby, This Love I Have

Minnie Riperton

A love song built around the anxiety of being misunderstood -- the singer insists that her feelings are genuine even if her…

communication and its failure reassurance devotion

Feeling Good (From "the Roar of the Greasepaint")

Nina Simone

A catalogue of natural images -- birds, rivers, blossoms, stars -- builds into a declaration of personal liberation and renewal.…

renewal freedom self-possession

Diamond Day

Vashti Bunyan

A short pastoral hymn that treats an ordinary rural day as something precious, using the smallest units of farm life to build…

rural simplicity contentment cyclical time

The Kiss

Judee Sill

Judee Sill's 'The Kiss' fuses erotic and devotional language until they become indistinguishable, imagining spiritual union as a…

sacred and profane love transcendence death as release

Pink + White

Frank Ocean

A hazy, sun-warmed meditation on being shaped and protected by someone else's love, set against a backdrop of natural disaster…

maternal or protective love survival and disaster memory and childhood

Red Dirt Girl

Emmylou Harris

A narrator looks back at a childhood friend, Lillian, whose life in a small Southern town never escapes the gravity of that…

rural poverty and stasis female friendship the cost of unfulfilled ambition