Results for “self-naming/identity”

Songs

I Am a Scientist

Guided by Voices

A short, deceptively simple lo-fi anthem in which the narrator cycles through professional identities—scientist, journalist,…

self-examination addiction and escape art as self-medication

Eye Know

De La Soul

"Eye Know" is De La Soul's sunniest love song, built on a Steely Dan sample and playful Daisy Age slang. Both Posdnuos and…

courtship and seduction wordplay as intimacy group identity and self-naming

Darryl and Joe (Krush-Groove 3)

Run-DMC

This is Run-DMC's self-introduction track, a boastful roll call in which each member states his name, role, and superiority in…

self-naming and identity boasting and status group unity vs individual flash

Hit It Run

Run-DMC

A boast-driven b-boy anthem in which D.M.C. asserts lineage, dominance, and craft over Jam Master Jay's stripped-down beats. The…

braggadocio hip-hop lineage and authenticity self-naming/identity

Teenage FBI

Guided by Voices

A compact power-pop confession about being trailed by an old, adolescent version of oneself. The narrator can't explain why…

arrested development loss of self-control in relationships surveillance of the self

A Roller Skating Jam Named "Saturdays"

De La Soul

A radio-skit framed jam that turns Saturday roller-rink culture into a loose celebration of release after the work week,…

leisure and release community ritual casual romance and its double standards

Changes

David Bowie

A restless self-portrait of an artist who treats identity as provisional, staged against a generational standoff between an…

self-reinvention generational conflict impermanence

Chasing a Bee

Mercury Rev

A hazy, druggy fable about pursuit and containment, where sunlit imagery of seduction and pleasure keeps curdling into images of…

intoxication and altered perception freedom versus entrapment instability of the self

Isn't She Lovely

Stevie Wonder

A new father's unguarded celebration of his infant daughter's birth, structured as a series of rhetorical questions that answer…

fatherhood and new life gratitude love as creative force

Mistaken for Strangers

The National

A song about the numbing conformity of adult professional life, addressed in second person to someone (and by extension…

conformity self-alienation loss of innocence

An Ocean In Between the Waves

The War on Drugs

An instrumental-forward, motorik rock track from Lost in the Dream whose lyrics function almost as texture rather than narrative…

emotional distance self-doubt longing

A Song from Under the Floorboards

Magazine

A first-person monologue delivered from a position of self-declared abjection, in which the speaker inventories his own…

self-loathing as identity perverse pride alienation

Bird On a Wire

Leonard Cohen

A confession and an apology run together as the speaker compares himself to a series of unstable, straining images to explain…

freedom versus commitment guilt and self-forgiveness instability of the self

Harder Better Faster Stronger

Daft Punk

A single fragmented phrase is chopped, looped, and reassembled through vocoder into a mantra about relentless productivity and…

labor and productivity machine identity repetition and ritual

Who Are You

The Who

A drink-and-punch-soaked night in London becomes the occasion for a much larger identity crisis, as the narrator wakes…

identity crisis self-destruction and burnout urban alienation

Cranes in the Sky

Solange

Solange catalogs every failed strategy for numbing an unnamed grief or unease, building a list of avoidance tactics before…

avoidance and denial emotional exhaustion consumerism as coping mechanism

Mannish Boy

Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters restages his own 1955 declaration of manhood as a late-career victory lap, spelling out the word itself to leave no…

masculinity and self-definition aging and vitality racial dignity ('man' vs 'boy')

Paul Revere

Beastie Boys

A cartoonish spaghetti-Western pastiche in which the three Beastie Boys members appear as characters in their own tall tale,…

mythmaking and self-invention outlaw fantasy adolescent bravado

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

The Pilgrim, Chapter 33

Kris Kristofferson

Kristofferson builds a composite portrait of a road-worn artist figure out of fragments of himself and his musician friends,…

self-destruction and creativity spiritual searching without arrival the cost of the touring musician's life

Don't Follow

Alice in Chains

A stripped-down acoustic confession from a narrator who insists on leaving while quietly begging to be brought back. The song…

addiction and self-destruction isolation vs. longing for home guilt and self-recrimination

Backwoods Barbie

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton uses her own famously exaggerated image as the subject of a plainspoken self-defense, arguing that artifice and…

appearance vs. substance class and self-invention self-defense against stereotype

So Fresh, So Clean

OutKast

A hook-driven strut through vintage cars, retro cool, and pickup lines, where the chorus's braggadocio functions less as…

vanity and self-presentation seduction and courtship rituals nostalgia for Black pop-culture iconography

Squonk

Genesis

Genesis take the folkloric Squonk—a creature of Pennsylvania legend so ashamed of its own ugliness that it weeps constantly and…

shame and self-loathing the cruelty of pursuit despair and self-destruction

Lola

The Kinks

A wide-eyed young narrator recounts a night at a Soho club where he meets a striking, ambiguous figure named Lola, and the song…

gender ambiguity sexual awakening urban nightlife

Feel Alright

Steve Earle

A defiant survivor's anthem in which the narrator refuses to be pitied or contained, casting himself as a storyteller-outlaw…

survival and defiance inherited identity addiction and recovery

The Stranger

Billy Joel

Billy Joel builds a meditation on the hidden selves everyone conceals from lovers, using the whistled melody and shifting moods…

hidden identity betrayal in relationships self-deception

The Devil Is in the Beats

The Chemical Brothers

This is less a song than a spoken definition looped over a menacing electronic pulse, taken from the Chemical Brothers' score…

self-reference artifice vs feeling mechanization

Veronica

Elvis Costello

A deceptively bouncy pop song about an elderly woman disappearing into dementia, told partly through the eyes of a younger…

dementia and memory loss identity and naming youth versus old age

The Seeker

The Who

A restless, half-comic confession of spiritual searching that name-drops the counterculture's gurus only to find them useless.…

spiritual seeking disillusionment with counterculture idols self-knowledge as impossible task

Cousin Dupree

Steely Dan

A slack, aging drifter moves onto his aunt's couch and develops an unseemly fixation on his young cousin, pitching her a…

arrested development delusional self-image taboo desire played for laughs

The Magic Number

De La Soul

De La Soul turns Schoolhouse Rock's arithmetic lesson into a manifesto for the trio itself, using the number three as a stand-in…

group identity and unity originality vs. imitation in hip-hop numerology/mysticism as playful device

History Lesson, Pt. 2

Minutemen

A punk band's origin story told without irony or distance, this song insists that ordinary friendship and local geography are as…

friendship and collaboration punk rock lineage and influence self-mythologizing vs. humility

A Case of You

Joni Mitchell

A meditation on romantic infatuation that refuses to resolve into either full escape or full surrender, built around the central…

romantic obsession self-sufficiency amid heartbreak creative identity as refuge

Ballad of Mott the Hoople

Mott the Hoople

This is Mott the Hoople's own epitaph and origin story rolled into one, a self-mythologizing autobiography written at the exact…

rock stardom as self-destruction nostalgia and regret band identity and mythology

Unf**ktheworld

Angel Olsen

A quiet, stripped-back breakup song that traces the moment self-abandonment turns into self-recovery. Olsen sings in a plain,…

self-abandonment and self-recovery romantic disillusionment solitude as survival

Anti-Hero

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift turns a self-lacerating confessional into a singalong chorus, cataloguing her worst self-perceptions—insomnia,…

self-loathing and self-awareness fame and disproportion fear of abandonment

Chicago

Sufjan Stevens

A road-trip song about young adulthood as a series of impulsive reinventions, told through fragmented memory rather than plot.…

self-reinvention transience and travel romantic idealism

Carry the Zero

Built to Spill

A guitarist-narrator watches a relationship or friendship unravel through the metaphor of broken, uncountable pieces and faulty…

fractured identity failed reconciliation self-consciousness and surveillance

Come As You Are

Nirvana

A hazy invitation dissolves into contradiction as soon as it's offered: the singer welcomes you exactly as you are, then…

contradiction and self-cancellation false reassurance identity as unstable