Little Dragon
A gentle meditation on synchronicity, where a narrator strings together small uncanny moments — trees that seem to watch, a…
synchronicity and fate perception and the uncanny intuition versus rational explanation
Todd Rundgren
A lonely Friday-night bar excursion turns into something closer to a ghost story or wish-fulfillment dream, as a mysterious…
loneliness desire and fantasy the uncanny
Fairport Convention
An old Irish ballad, arranged by Fairport Convention with Sandy Denny's vocal at its centre, in which a young woman's parting…
death and mourning premonition lost love
Portishead
A hazy meditation on the isolation of subjective perception, built from a handful of repeated fragments rather than a developed…
solipsism and isolation the unreliability of perception alienation within intimacy
Roy Harper
A meditation on long-distance flight and the way jet travel scrambles ordinary time, used as a metaphor for the instability of…
time and dislocation illusion versus reality transatlantic distance and longing
Television
A downtown-New York nocturne about a night walk that tips into a heightened, almost hallucinatory perception of the city,…
urban nightlife altered perception desire and detachment
Shawn Colvin
A love song built almost entirely around a single sensory image: the sky looking different, bluer, since a new relationship…
new love transformed perception wonder and gratitude
Hüsker Dü
A rapid-fire punk song that opens Zen Arcade with a set of clipped, almost proverbial observations about perception, autonomy,…
moral ambiguity autonomy vs. imposed rules perception and empathy
Dirty Projectors
An opening track that functions more like an incantation than a narrative song, built on a single cryptic refrain about…
consumption and exploitation perception versus reality anxiety and witness
Built to Spill
A woozy meditation on childhood perception, drinking, and loneliness, built around the image of the Big Dipper as an unreliable…
perception vs. reality loneliness alcohol and self-deception
Harry Nilsson
A small argument about the color of the sun spirals into a meditation on epistemic vertigo -- how do you trust anything,…
epistemological doubt trust and betrayal perception vs. reality
Yes
A meditation on perception and control dressed in nature imagery, "Perpetual Change" argues that human certainty about mastering…
illusion vs. perception hubris and control impermanence
Ride
Lannoy Point opens Ride's 2017 comeback album with a piece of philosophical pop that treats perception and belief as unstable…
perception vs belief impermanence environmental/civilizational collapse
The xx
A short, spare meditation on the way absence corrodes trust in a relationship, where the beloved's reality becomes…
insecurity in intimacy fear of abandonment the unreliability of perception
A short, circling meditation on how received wisdom persists even when it no longer fits reality. Built to Spill uses plain,…
conformity vs. change epistemic humility the persistence of habit
Boards of Canada
An instrumental piece from Boards of Canada's third album that trades on the gap between its title's cheerful theatrical…
nostalgia childhood media artifice versus memory
Small Faces
A brief, dreamy lullaby-like interlude from Small Faces that treats the act of falling asleep as a small psychedelic event. The…
sleep and dreaming altered perception childhood/innocence
The Doors
A short, propulsive rock song built almost entirely around a single command repeated until it becomes a mantra. It uses images…
transcendence limits of perception desire and entrapment
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
Animal Collective
A woozy meditation on connection and the strangeness of being alive, delivered with the giddy, slightly overwhelmed voice of…
interconnectedness altered perception wonder and overwhelm
A young woman walking in the woods meets a strange, magnetic man who half-admits to being an outlaw or something worse, and ends…
seduction and danger the fox as trickster/shapeshifter female agency and vulnerability
Anne Briggs
A quiet meditation on grief or lost love, built from fleeting sightings that dissolve into self-doubt. The singer keeps…
memory and perception absence and haunting self-deception
The War on Drugs
The title track from The War on Drugs' 2014 breakthrough is a hazy, half-legible meditation on disorientation and emotional…
disorientation emotional isolation memory and nostalgia
A short, hazy meditation on time and companionship that trades narrative for atmosphere, repeating its title like a mantra until…
time and impermanence dreamlike perception companionship
Genesis
A slight, hazy pop song from Genesis's most commercial period, built on a chorus of impossible images and a coy premise about a…
romantic idealization altered perception the impossible/surreal
Black Sabbath
This closing track from Paranoid pairs a lurching instrumental jam with a half-comic, half-paranoid account of drug-induced…
drug paranoia unreliable perception self-deception
Queen
A groove-driven, riff-heavy jam built more on sensation than sense, "Dragon Attack" trades narrative for pure sonic and sexual…
sexual conquest altered perception surrender to instinct
T. Rex
Monolith is a brief, riddling meditation on time, fate, and human blindness, delivered in Marc Bolan's characteristic style of…
fate and determinism time as a ruling force obscured perception
The Flaming Lips
This is a cover of the Beatles psychedelic classic, and the Flaming Lips' version leans into the song's dreamlike dissolve…
altered perception longing for an unreachable figure dream logic
Kris Delmhorst
A spare, blues-structured lament built from the simplest possible materials: the natural world has gone dull and wrong because a…
loss and absence nature as emotional mirror grief expressed through understatement
Cassandra Wilson
This is a meditative, almost devotional song built around a simple ritual: each day's mundane and sensory acts are catalogued by…
impermanence ritual and routine art as anchor
Sandy Denny
A brief, loosely sketched vignette about a woman who sleeps late and drifts through her days, addressed by a narrator who can't…
idleness and withdrawal ambiguous judgment vs. affection female eccentricity
Interpol
A drive down a California highway becomes the frame for a meditation on self-improvement, ambition, and the gap between stated…
self-reinvention ambition versus stagnation perception and denial
The Cure
This is The Cure's cover of Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic classic, recorded as a B-side. Robert Smith takes a song built on…
disorientation altered perception romantic infatuation as intoxication
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia" builds a fractured character sketch around a woman whose mental illness is treated with unsettling…
mental illness and stigma unreliable perception family cruelty
Unwound
A short, mantra-like song that treats a yoga pose associated with total relaxation and imitation of death as a metaphor for…
nihilism dissociation distrust of perception
Ella Fitzgerald
Irving Berlin's standard is a compact declaration of romantic relief, built almost entirely on the pun between 'blue' as color…
romantic joy transformation of perception time and its acceleration in love
Madonna
A meditation on emotional guardedness set to icy, spiritually-inflected electronica, the song addresses a lover whose…
emotional withholding spiritual awakening vulnerability vs. self-protection
Low
Low's version of the 1818 carol is less a performance of the song than a slow dismantling of it: the familiar words are…
sacred stillness reverence vs. dread minimalism as devotion
Michael Hurley
A loose, hummed talking-blues about brewing and drinking tea that uses the ritual as cover for loneliness, heartbreak, and a…
solitude heartbreak masked by ritual domestic comfort