Results for “repressed anger”

Songs

Thin Line Between Love and Hate

Annie Lennox

A domestic warning delivered as slow-burning soul: a woman absorbs quiet humiliation night after night until patience curdles…

repressed anger domestic betrayal the limits of patience

How I Wanted To

Richard Thompson

A short, circling song built almost entirely around one unspoken sentence: the narrator never told a former lover he loved her,…

emotional inarticulacy regret unfinished endings

It's a Sin

Pet Shop Boys

A confessional pop song built on the grinding logic of Catholic guilt, where every desire and action the narrator has ever had…

religious guilt internalized shame repression

Mad

Solange

"Mad" is a meditation on the exhaustion of having to justify one's own anger, built around a call-and-response between a…

the right to anger versus the demand for composure respectability and emotional policing of Black people survival and trauma disguised as success

Buckskin Stallion

Townes Van Zandt

A short, quiet meditation on unspoken love and loss, built almost entirely from conditional wishes and unresolved arithmetic.…

unrequited love denial and repression escape and freedom

Mary Long

Deep Purple

A snarling caricature of moral censorship, this track invents a composite figure of public prudishness and spends three verses…

hypocrisy censorship sexual repression

Little Mascara

The Replacements

A song about a woman stuck in a stalled, disappointing marriage, told by an outside voice that's half sympathetic and half…

domestic disappointment emotional repression gendered expectations

Horchata

Vampire Weekend

A dense, image-heavy song that uses a Mexican rice drink and a mismatched collage of seasons and geographies to talk about…

nostalgia displacement memory and repression

Mysterons

Portishead

Mysterons opens Dummy with a woozy, disorienting address to someone caught between denial and defiance. Beth Gibbons' vocal…

denial and repression guilt and judgment futility of desire

A Well Respected Man (Kwyet Kinks EP)

The Kinks

A satirical character sketch of an English middle-class conformist, delivered with mock admiration that curdles into contempt.…

class satire hypocrisy conformity

Waltz, No. 2 (XO)

Elliott Smith

A karaoke bar becomes the stage for a fractured family memory, as the narrator watches a woman he can't quite reach sing a cover…

estrangement from family performed composure vs. real feeling memory and repression

Taking It All Too Hard

Genesis

A mid-tempo Genesis album track that watches an ex-partner spiral into self-blame after a breakup, with a narrator who claims…

emotional distancing denial and self-blame breakup aftermath

Should Have Known Better

Sufjan Stevens

A song about the aftermath of a mother's abandonment and death, staged as a private argument between numbness and the…

maternal abandonment and grief emotional repression childhood memory

Speed Trap Town

Jason Isbell

A narrator sits at his dying father's bedside in a small town he's always known too well, and realizes only in that final vigil…

small-town claustrophobia estrangement from a parent grief and release

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

Girlfriend In a Coma

The Smiths

A miniature comic-tragic monologue in which a narrator processes the possible death of a partner while confessing, almost…

guilt and ambivalence in intimate relationships mortality treated with dark comedy emotional repression and denial

Save Yourself

Sharon Van Etten

A quietly seething breakup song in which the narrator sees through a partner's self-serving reassurances and names the pattern…

emotional self-protection disillusionment in love fading intimacy

Drover

Bill Callahan

Callahan casts himself as a lone cattle-drover pushing a herd through a hostile, near-mythic American landscape, using the drive…

solitude and self-reliance the American frontier as psychological landscape emotional repression and displacement

No Room In Frame

Death Cab for Cutie

A breakup song built around the image of a photograph's frame—one person edged out as the other steps into visibility and…

dissolution of a relationship fame/visibility eclipsing intimacy memory and forgetting

Insanity

Gregory Porter

A plea for reconciliation built around a simple, repeated question: how did two people who loved each other let things unravel…

reconciliation the thin line between love and anger friendship as the durable core of romance

Lost Cause

Beck

A quiet, weary breakup song in which the narrator addresses a partner who is emotionally unreachable, cataloguing small signs of…

romantic exhaustion emotional withdrawal resignation

You Belong To Me

Chaka Khan

A meditation on jealousy and reassurance, sung by a partner who has just been told about some flirtation or attention from an…

jealousy possessiveness self-assurance

There He Goes

Patsy Cline

A brief, plainspoken country ballad in which a woman watches the man she wronged walk off with someone else. There's no anger…

regret and self-blame lost love infidelity's consequences

justified

Kacey Musgraves

A mid-tempo track from star-crossed that treats emotional recovery as nonlinear and messy rather than triumphant. The narrator…

nonlinear healing emotional contradiction self-permission

Disrespectful

Chaka Khan

A woman confronts a partner who has grown cold and careless, cycling between anger at being taken for granted and nostalgic ache…

self-worth romantic disillusionment emotional labor

Dirt

Mission of Burma

A song of consolation and anger addressed to someone being torn apart by gossip. The narrator alternates between soothing the…

gossip and rumor protective loyalty the cruelty of onlookers

Train In Vain

The Clash

A breakup song built almost entirely from plain, conversational complaint, sung with a wounded bafflement that never curdles…

romantic abandonment emotional dependency economic precarity

A Letter to Elise

The Cure

A breakup song built on exhaustion rather than anger: the speaker addresses a partner named Elise and admits that whatever…

emotional exhaustion failed intimacy self-deception

Me & Mr Jones

Amy Winehouse

A blistering, funny complaint about a lover who keeps letting the narrator down, built around a chant of ownership that keeps…

possessive love betrayal and self-deception ambivalence

Freddie's Dead

Curtis Mayfield

A eulogy and a warning delivered in the same breath, this song uses the death of a minor drug-trade casualty from the Superfly…

addiction and exploitation systemic racism/economic entrapment urban despair

I'm Her Daddy

Bill Withers

A man tracks down a former partner after learning she bore him a daughter he never knew about, and the song is essentially one…

absent fatherhood lost time betrayal and withheld truth

Ashes of American Flags

Wilco

A meditation on consumer numbness and spiritual exhaustion set against the mundane ritual of an ATM transaction, this track uses…

consumerism and alienation self-loathing failed transcendence