Results for “retreat from a hostile world”

Songs

As the World Falls Down

David Bowie

A courtly, almost hypnotic love song written for the film Labyrinth, in which the speaker offers cosmic gifts to a beloved while…

seduction and enchantment love as surrender impermanence

Around the World

Daft Punk

A single four-word phrase, vocoded and looped for nearly seven minutes, functions less as lyric than as rhythmic material inside…

repetition as form globalism/travel as abstraction the voice as instrument

If I Could See the World

Patsy Cline

A weary adult voice imagines borrowing a child's unclouded vision as a way of escaping accumulated disappointment. The song…

lost innocence nostalgia for childhood perception weariness with adult disillusionment

World On Fire

Dolly Parton

A protest anthem built on a nursery-rhyme taunt, cataloguing political dishonesty, social division and violence while insisting…

political disillusionment social division moral urgency

The World At Large

Modest Mouse

A restless narrator drifts from place to place across seasons, unable to settle, unable to name what he's looking for. The song…

restlessness and rootlessness escapism emotional avoidance

Cover Me

Bruce Springsteen

A song about withdrawal disguised as a love song: the narrator wants a partner not for passion but as shelter from a world he's…

retreat from a hostile world love as refuge/shelter isolation vs. intimacy

If I Could See The World (Through The Eyes Of A Child)

Patsy Cline

A simple, wistful song built on a single wish: that the singer could trade her adult, disillusioned view of the world for a…

lost innocence nostalgia for childhood disillusionment with adulthood

Spitting Off the Edge of the World

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A climate-grief anthem that frames ecological collapse as an inherited catastrophe, addressed both to a failing planet and to a…

climate anxiety intergenerational blame powerlessness

Mean Old World

Sam Cooke

A slow, blues-based lament on solitude, built from a single insistent refrain that circles rather than progresses. Cooke uses…

loneliness longing for love emotional isolation

That's the Way the World Goes Round

John Prine

A shaggy-dog folk tune that shrugs at life's absurdity and cruelty in the same breath, moving from a domestic-violence vignette…

cyclical dysfunction absurdism resignation and acceptance

Everybody Wants To Rule the World

Lorde

Lorde's cover strips Tears for Fears' 1985 synth-pop anthem down to something colder and more brittle, turning a wry commentary…

power and control surveillance complicity

It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

R.E.M.

A torrent of disconnected images—natural disasters, media noise, Cold War figures, cultural detritus—gets fired off at…

information overload apocalyptic anxiety played as comedy media saturation

Black

Pearl Jam

A song about the aftermath of a devastating breakup, built on the image of a world drained of color and identity once a lover is…

heartbreak and loss loss of identity grief's distortion of perception

Mushaboom

Feist

Mushaboom is a domestic daydream sung from the gap between a cramped present and an imagined rural future. Feist narrates a life…

domestic fantasy vs. present reality aspiration and patience rural retreat

Mother

Pink Floyd

A grown man addresses his mother in the anxious, needy voice of a child, asking permission for things no adult should need to…

overprotective parenting infantilization fear of the outside world

How Can I Be Sure of You (Previously unreleased)

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

Doomsday

MF DOOM

The title track of MF DOOM's debut solo album is both a resurrection and a mission statement. Rapping under a new mask after the…

reinvention through persona mortality and legacy underground rap ethics vs. commercial rap

Work Out

J. Cole

A club-and-bedroom track built on interpolated Vanessa Carlton hooks, where a rapper on the come-up frames casual sex and…

casual sex versus emotional attachment material success as leverage fame and status anxiety

Street Flash

Animal Collective

A song about the paralysis of anxious self-consciousness and the small, almost accidental relief of stepping outside. It moves…

anxiety and self-criticism domestic clutter as psychological weight inertia versus movement

People Have the Power

Patti Smith

An anthem built from a dream-vision, in which the speaker imagines armies disbanding and deserts turning to gardens, then hands…

collective political power utopian vision vs. reality dream as prophecy

Shelter from the Storm

Bob Dylan

A wandering, half-mythic narrator recalls a woman who offered him refuge from a hostile, almost apocalyptic world, then traces…

displacement and exile refuge and its loss betrayal and gratitude

'Cello Song

Nick Drake

A hushed address to a fragile, almost otherworldly listener, offering reassurance while quietly confessing the singer's own…

isolation transcendence versus earthbound suffering fragility and reassurance

This Time Tomorrow

The Kinks

A song written from an airplane window seat, using the vantage of altitude to turn geographic distance into emotional and…

displacement touring life alienation from modernity

Liar

Built to Spill

A meditation on obsessive thinking and the indifference of the natural world, built around a repeated denial that functions…

obsessive thought indifference of nature anxiety over decision-making

Grown Ocean

Fleet Foxes

The closing track of Helplessness Blues describes a visionary dream-state of peace and permanence, set against a waking world of…

dreams versus waking life longing for peace impermanence and mortality

Everything Now

Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire turns the ABBA-adjacent disco hook into an inventory of surfeit: a world so saturated with information, content, and…

information overload consumerism emotional numbness

Bleed to Love Her

Fleetwood Mac

A quiet, aching meditation on a love that keeps retreating even as it beckons, sung by someone who has decided that pain is…

romantic devotion as endurance elusiveness and withdrawal sacrifice

There's a Rugged Road

Judee Sill

Judee Sill turns the American frontier myth—the lone pioneer on the prairie—into an allegory for spiritual pilgrimage. The…

spiritual seeking solitude and isolation temptation and asceticism

I'll Be Seeing You

Billie Holiday

A standard from the World War II era, delivered here as a hushed vow of remembrance rather than a jaunty farewell. Holiday turns…

separation and longing memory as consolation wartime parting

Folsom Prison Blues

Johnny Cash

A first-person prison lament in which the narrator, confined and hopeless, is tormented by the sound of a train he cannot board.…

confinement and freedom guilt and moral consequence class resentment

Tour de France 2003

Kraftwerk

This is Kraftwerk's minimalist tribute to the world's most famous bicycle race, built almost entirely from a litany of French…

endurance and the body technology and human effort geography as narrative

N.Y. State of Mind

Nas

A dense, almost stream-of-consciousness portrait of Queensbridge street life, delivered with a density of imagery more…

urban survival mortality and insomnia criminal economy

Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time)

Elton John

A spaceman narrates the mundane dread of leaving home for another routine off-world shift, and finds the glamour of space travel…

alienation the gap between public and private self domestic loss

Black Sun

Death Cab for Cutie

A breakup song dressed as a litany of paradoxes, where the singer catalogs contradictions in the world as a way of processing…

disillusionment after divorce contradiction and paradox forgiveness withheld

FloriDada

Animal Collective

A barrage of interrogative fragments and postcard-sized images collages the world into a single imaginary destination, half…

placelessness and utopian longing collage as method identity without borders

Represent

Weezer

A brash sports-anthem pep talk built for the 2010 World Cup, 'Represent' trades Weezer's usual self-deprecation for…

competition and pride integrity versus winning family and reputation

The Man Comes Around

Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash, in his final recording years, builds an apocalyptic vision almost entirely out of scripture, particularly…

judgment and reckoning mortality apocalypse

Head Over Heels / Broken

Tears for Fears

A love song that keeps interrupting itself, veering between romantic infatuation and anxious social commentary before dissolving…

infatuation and vulnerability fear of loss social conscience amid personal desire

Award Tour

A Tribe Called Quest

A victory-lap travelogue disguised as a posse cut, where the pleasure of touring the world with a hip-hop crew becomes the whole…

hip-hop craft and lineage global travel and touring life authenticity vs. imitation

I Talk to the Wind

King Crimson

A quiet, flute-laced meditation on isolation and futile communication, framed by a cryptic exchange between two figures and a…

alienation failed communication disillusionment