Results for “scarcity versus abundance”

Songs

Corona

Minutemen

A terse, two-minute sketch that moves from a blunt political indictment of poverty and inherited injustice to a single, almost…

economic inequality inherited injustice the US-Mexico border region

Fight the Power

Public Enemy

A protest anthem built as a dance record: Chuck D argues that political consciousness and Black pride are things you build in…

Black pride and self-definition institutional racism who gets to be a national hero

Superwoman

Gladys Knight

A domestic monologue in which a woman catalogs the daily labor she performs for a partner who has grown cold and inattentive,…

emotional labor and domestic care the myth of female self-sufficiency withdrawal and neglect in a relationship

Lola

The Kinks

A naive young man recounts his disorienting, thrilling encounter with Lola, a nightclub companion whose gender identity…

gender fluidity and identity sexual awakening innocence versus experience

Change Gonna Come

Otis Redding

Otis Redding's rendition of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem transforms a carefully wrought protest song into a raw,…

racial injustice and endurance faith versus doubt family and disappointment

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen

A three-part meditation in waltz time that moves from a woman by a river, to Christ walking on water, and back to the woman…

erotic love as spiritual apprehension faith and doubt surrender to a guide

Once in a Lifetime

Talking Heads

A preacher-like voice addresses an unnamed "you," cataloguing the accidental furniture of a middle-class life and then asking…

mid-life disorientation the unearned life time as drift

Bring On the Dancing Horses

Echo & the Bunnymen

A moody, image-driven post-punk lyric that trades narrative clarity for atmosphere, cycling through fragmented character…

emotional self-protection turning to cruelty isolation and alienation artifice versus authenticity

Didn't Cha Know

Erykah Badu

A meditation on getting lost, both literally and existentially, that refuses to resolve into a tidy moral. Badu treats…

self-doubt and self-trust fate versus choice spiritual wandering

My Little Town (with Art Garfunkel)

Paul Simon

A reunion single from Simon and Garfunkel that reads as a bitter anti-nostalgia song, dismantling the idea of small-town…

small-town disillusionment loss of faith suppressed violence

Damaged Goods

Gang of Four

Gang of Four fuse a breakup song with the language of consumer transaction, treating a relationship as a defective purchase to…

commodification of relationships desire versus love alienation under capitalism

Shot By Both Sides

Magazine

A song about ideological homelessness, built around a narrator who has infiltrated a crowd or movement only to find himself…

ideological disillusionment alienation from crowds and movements cynicism about political certainty

Superstition

Stevie Wonder

A funk sermon against magical thinking. Over one of the most recognizable clavinet riffs in popular music, Wonder catalogues…

superstition and magical thinking the cost of ignorance fear as self-fulfilling prophecy

You've Got a Friend In Me

Randy Newman

Written for the animated film 'Toy Story,' this is a plain-spoken pledge of loyalty from one companion to another, stripped of…

loyalty reassurance humility versus devotion

Pictures of You

The Cure

A meditation on grief and memory in which a narrator clings to photographs of a lost lover, unsure whether the images preserve…

grief and loss memory versus reality idealization of the dead or departed

Break On Through (To The Other Side)

The Doors

A driving, insistent rock song built almost entirely around one imperative: push past the limits of ordinary perception and…

transcendence and liminality desire and intoxication confinement versus freedom

Starship Trooper

Yes

A three-part suite that moves from pastoral invocation through cosmic address to a mantra-like affirmation of shared awakening.…

cosmic consciousness nature as spiritual messenger transmission of hidden knowledge

Flagship

Jason Isbell

Isbell uses a fading hotel as an extended metaphor for a long marriage at risk of going stale, watching an older couple's silent…

marital complacency the labor of sustaining love aging and decline

Veronica

Elvis Costello

A deceptively bouncy pop song about an elderly woman lost inside dementia, watched by relatives and caregivers who can no longer…

aging and memory loss identity erasure institutional care/neglect

Pancho and Lefty

Townes Van Zandt

A ballad about a Mexican bandit's death and the shadowy figure who may have betrayed him, told with the flat affect of folklore…

betrayal and complicity myth-making versus truth exile and diminishment

YYZ

Rush

YYZ is an instrumental showcase built around the Morse-code rhythm for Toronto's Pearson International Airport identifier, which…

homecoming and travel technical virtuosity Canadian identity

Long Way Home

Tom Waits

A wandering man confesses to a lover that he's constitutionally unable to take the straight path home, in love or in life. Waits…

restlessness and wanderlust romantic unreliability the tension between domesticity and freedom