Results for “rejection and humiliation”

Songs

Sheela-Na-Gig

PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey turns the offer of a woman's body into a confrontation, borrowing the name of a medieval carved figure to skewer male…

female sexuality and shame rejection and humiliation the body as spectacle

Lorelai

Fleet Foxes

A breakup song built from small, deflating images of self-worth, sung by someone who has resigned themselves to having been…

romantic rejection self-deprecation memory and haunting

Ever Fallen in Love?

Buzzcocks

A power-pop punk song about the humiliation of loving someone who treats you badly, built around a chorus whose grammar…

romantic humiliation self-recognition through a partner codependency

Dear Madam Barnum

XTC

A wounded husband quits the role of comic fool in his own marriage, reframing infidelity as a circus act he refuses to keep…

betrayal and infidelity public humiliation loss of dignity

Hear My Train a Comin'

Jimi Hendrix

A blues fantasy of escape, built around the image of a train that will carry the singer away from rejection and poverty into…

escape and departure romantic rejection poverty and social judgment

The Eton Rifles

The Jam

A savage class-conflict narrative disguised as a sports report: a ragtag group of protesters or strikers clashes with the Eton…

class conflict failed solidarity British class system

Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)

Van Halen

This is a defiant, almost reckless assertion of self-determination, delivered through a string of extreme hypothetical choices —…

free will vs fate rejection of moral instruction self-destruction as autonomy

Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan

A six-minute takedown song that watches a once-privileged woman lose every social prop that made her feel untouchable. Dylan…

fall from privilege social exposure and humiliation freedom through loss

F**k Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')

Dr. Dre

This is a genre-defining diss track in which Dr. Dre, joined by Snoop Doggy Dogg, uses the launch of Death Row Records to…

betrayal and loyalty dominance and territory label rivalry

Thirteen

Elliott Smith

A cover of a Big Star song, reworked here into something quieter and more aching, this is a teenage courtship scene rendered in…

adolescent love innocence and vulnerability rock and roll as shared language

If You Needed Somebody

Bad Company

A late-period Bad Company track built around a simple, almost adolescent premise: a narrator paralyzed by unspoken feelings for…

unrequited longing fear of rejection romantic timidity

Going Mobile

The Who

A buoyant, almost novelty-song ode to caravan life, in which freedom is defined entirely by motion and lack of fixed address.…

freedom through motion rejection of domesticity escapism

Katie Cruel

Bert Jansch

This is a traditional Appalachian folk lament, here rendered by Bert Jansch in his hushed, weathered late-career voice, about a…

exile and rejection itinerancy social reversal of fortune

I Will Possess Your Heart

Death Cab for Cutie

An extended, deliberately monotonous instrumental build frames a lyric spoken by someone who refuses to accept another person's…

obsession denial of rejection unreciprocated desire

Change Gonna Come

Otis Redding

Otis Redding's cover of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem strips the original's orchestral polish into raw, gospel-inflected…

racial oppression and hope endurance and exhaustion fear of mortality

What's on Your Mind?

Eric B.

A New York subway pickup evolves into a slow-building courtship narrative, told from the perspective of a smooth-talking…

courtship and seduction urban geography as narrative backdrop mind versus body

Off the Wall

Michael Jackson

A pulsing invitation to abandon the grind of daily routine and lose yourself in dance, this title track sells liberation through…

escapism nightlife as liberation rejection of convention

Run With the Pack

Bad Company

A defiant kiss-off anthem built around the image of running free from a controlling relationship or authority. The narrator…

escape and freedom distrust of authority independence

Ether

Nas

This is the definitive diss track of the Nas–Jay-Z feud, a single sustained assault built to end an argument rather than…

rap rivalry and hierarchy authenticity vs. fabrication legacy and lineage

Underground

David Bowie

Written as the opening theme for Jim Henson's Labyrinth, this song sells escape as salvation while quietly undercutting it.…

escape and flight the seduction of easy comfort childhood vulnerability

The Modern World

The Jam

A young, defiant voice pushes back against everyone who ever underestimated him, staking a claim to self-knowledge and…

class resentment and defiance self-education vs institutional judgment youthful independence

Forget About It

Alison Krauss

A breakup song built on a paradox: the narrator repeats the command to forget as a way of proving she can't. Every dismissive…

denial as coping unresolved heartbreak performed indifference

My Girls

Animal Collective

A domestic vow set to euphoric, cascading production: the narrator strips away ambition and status anxiety down to a single…

fatherhood and provision rejection of materialism class anxiety disguised as simplicity

Which Will

Nick Drake

A quiet, almost unbearably direct song built entirely around a single repeated question, addressed to someone the narrator loves…

romantic uncertainty fear of rejection self-doubt

Days To Come

Bonobo

This is a soft-focus, incantatory piece built more from sound and image than argument -- a hazy invitation to abandon…

renewal and hope spiritual seeking rejection of materialism/violence

Corrina, Corrina

Mississippi John Hurt

This is Mississippi John Hurt's spare, fingerpicked take on the traditional blues standard "Corrina, Corrina," a song about a…

romantic longing abandonment fidelity despite rejection

Please Don't Bury Me

John Prine

A comic-macabre novelty song in which the narrator dies a mundane kitchen death, ascends to heaven, and delivers a posthumous…

death and mortality absurdism/black comedy generosity and connection after death

Love of My Life

Queen

A ballad of direct, almost naked pleading, structured as a repeated appeal to a departing lover rather than a story with events.…

romantic loss pleading and supplication devotion despite rejection

Poetic Machine Gun

Buzzcocks

A speaker pitches his own verbal outpouring as a weapon of seduction — a "poetic machine gun" that's supposed to get someone…

failed seduction language as weapon/drug male bravado vs. rejection

Ballad of a Thin Man

Bob Dylan

A surreal, carnival-grotesque interrogation of a bewildered establishment figure who wanders into a world he can't parse. The…

cultural disorientation generational/establishment divide intellectual pretension exposed

Don't Give Up

Peter Gabriel

A duet built as an argument between despair and consolation: one voice details the humiliation of joblessness and displacement,…

unemployment and economic shame loss of identity and belonging depression and suicidal ideation

Another Brick In the Wall, Pt. 3

Pink Floyd

This is the moment PinkInk's protagonist Pink completes his self-imposed isolation, rejecting comfort, chemical or human, as a…

emotional withdrawal self-destruction disguised as independence accumulated trauma

Money (That's What I Want)

The Supremes

This is a cover of Barrett Strong's 1959 Motown founding single, redone by the Supremes as a driving, chant-heavy dance number.…

materialism vs. sentiment economic realism desire and demand

A Change Is Gonna Come

Sam Cooke

A first-person testimony of endurance under racial oppression, built around a single hope that refuses to die even as evidence…

racial injustice endurance faith and doubt

Don't Say You Love Me

Free

A blues-rock confession about a relationship built on mutual convenience rather than love, sung by a narrator who admits he let…

loneliness and self-deception transactional intimacy emotional honesty vs. convenient lies

Take Me to the Alley

Gregory Porter

A gospel-inflected ballad that imagines a king or messiah figure rejecting the pomp prepared for his arrival in favor of the…

religious allegory compassion for the marginalized critique of materialism

This Is Hell

Elvis Costello

Costello imagines the afterlife as a tacky nightclub of endless small humiliations rather than fire and brimstone. The song's…

damnation as banality social embarrassment kitsch and bad taste

Blueprint

Fugazi

"Blueprint" is Fugazi's manifesto against the music industry's game-playing, delivered as a repeated refusal that gradually…

artistic integrity refusal of commercial games consumer complicity

You Should Probably Leave

Chris Stapleton

A late-night seduction song built on reverse psychology, where the narrator repeats a warning to leave while doing everything…

temptation and self-denial desire versus restraint vulnerability disguised as control

Cruel Summer

Taylor Swift

A synth-pop track built around the contradiction of wanting someone who is bad for you, structured so that the euphoric surface…

obsessive desire emotional concealment self-sabotage