Kate Bush
This short closing piece functions as an emergence from crisis into ordinary gratitude. After the storm and drowning imagery of…
rebirth gratitude family bonds
Big Star
A Christmas carol built from borrowed and paraphrased hymn imagery, recorded by a band whose songwriter was in visible crisis at…
rebirth and renewal faith versus despair tradition and inheritance
Van Morrison
Van Morrison's title track drifts through a hazy, half-remembered landscape in search of rebirth and connection, using dreamlike…
rebirth and renewal spiritual longing displacement
Judee Sill
A short, dense allegory in which cosmic and mythological imagery (a phoenix, dragons, an implied battle with the Devil) stands…
spiritual struggle self-doubt and sincerity transformation and rebirth
Neutral Milk Hotel
This two-part suite opens with a plainspoken, almost liturgical declaration of love to Jesus Christ before erupting into a…
religious devotion and doubt birth and rebirth language and inarticulacy
Nina Simone
A catalog of natural images—birds, rivers, blossoms, stars—builds toward a declaration of liberation and renewal. Simone's…
liberation and freedom renewal rebirth through nature
Sade
A stark, slow-burning meditation on grief and survival, written in the voice of someone descending into loss while insisting on…
grief survival descent and rebirth
Cat Stevens
A hymn of thanksgiving that treats an ordinary sunrise as if it were the first morning of creation. Cat Stevens' recording turns…
gratitude renewal and rebirth nature as sacred
Depeche Mode
A song that opens Songs of Faith and Devotion with a burst of religious ecstasy repurposed as erotic and romantic devotion. It…
sacred/profane fusion erotic transcendence conversion and rebirth
Free
A short, incantatory song built around images of ascension and release, using afterlife and angelic imagery to describe a…
transcendence death and rebirth freedom from bondage
Ann Peebles
A gratitude-soaked soul ballad in which the narrator credits a lover with rescuing her from despair and teaching her what love…
redemption through love gratitude rebirth/renewal
Talk Talk
"Eden" opens Spirit of Eden with a fragmentary, hymn-like meditation on loss and belief, using biblical imagery of Eden and…
loss of innocence religious doubt and faith death and rebirth
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A folk-tinged incantation built around a mythic animal-guide figure, the song trades narrative clarity for mood and repetition,…
loss of control seeking guidance/protection transformation and rebirth
Grandaddy
A short, incantatory song about self-renewal that treats change as a kind of switch that, once flipped, can't be reversed.…
renewal and rebirth escape from stagnation transformation as irreversible
Black Sabbath
This is Black Sabbath's opening statement with a new singer, and it plays like a mission statement disguised as…
heroic fantasy renewal/rebirth good versus evil
Deerhunter
A brief, jangly pop song that fuses the language of romantic infatuation with imagery of illness, possession, and death, so that…
obsessive love possession and illness death and reincarnation
A frantic, horn-driven elegy that fuses the story of Anne Frank with a surreal, almost hallucinatory imagery of reincarnation…
death and afterlife war and atrocity obsessive love/grief