Results for “self-preservation instinct”

Songs

Borderline (An Ode to Self Care)

Solange

A hushed, weary meditation on withdrawal as an act of love, this A Seat at the Table track frames stepping back from public and…

burnout and self-care solidarity under pressure the personal as political

Beat It

Michael Jackson

A pulsing anti-violence anthem disguised as a street-fight taunt: the title's double meaning lets the song urge retreat from…

peer pressure toxic masculinity violence and its futility

Take It Back

Cream

A jittery blues-rock chant built around a repeated demand to remove some unnamed threatening object, the song reads as a…

conscription anxiety fear of death/violence dependence on a partner for safety

Don't Wish Me Well

Solange

A short, incantatory departure song that frames leaving as an act of self-preservation rather than defeat. Solange uses sparse,…

self-preservation departure and distance misinterpretation and being misread

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

Every Time the Sun Comes Up

Sharon Van Etten

This is Sharon Van Etten at her loosest and most winking, a track built on a single sardonic refrain about self-sabotage rather…

self-sabotage domestic disorder irony and deflection

All My Favorite Songs

Weezer

A catalog of small self-contradictions strung together into a chorus of self-diagnosis, this song treats confusion about one's…

self-contradiction anxiety and self-diagnosis ambivalence toward pleasure

Me and My Husband

Mitski

A brief, waltz-like song that frames marriage not as romance but as a bulwark against mortality and self-loathing. The…

mortality and impermanence self-erasure marriage as survival strategy

All Apologies

Nirvana

A closing statement of exhaustion dressed as a lullaby, where the singer offers blanket apology and self-erasure instead of…

self-effacement marriage and domesticity guilt and blame

Wordless Chorus

My Morning Jacket

This opening track from Z announces a stylistic pivot for My Morning Jacket, trading reverb-soaked murk for something clearer…

loss of instinct commercialism vs. authenticity self-reinvention

Live Oak

Jason Isbell

A murder ballad disguised as a confession of self-improvement, in which the narrator's claim to have left his violent past…

duality of self violence and love intertwined addiction as haunting past self

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

Miss Misery

Elliott Smith

A stripped-down confession of failed self-repair, written for the film Good Will Hunting but functioning as a self-contained…

self-medication and denial romantic abandonment performed resilience

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

Boats to Build

Guy Clark

Guy Clark turns the craft of boatbuilding into a meditation on making a life with your own hands and getting on with it before…

mortality and urgency craftsmanship as self-definition self-reliance

Coming Up Roses

Elliott Smith

A hallucinatory address to a self or double, tracking a slow poisoning that the speaker frames as a kind of blooming. The song…

addiction and self-destruction dissociation from the self toxic inheritance

Lying in the Grass

Animal Collective

A tangled, riddling song about the effort of self-diagnosis — trying to name a discomfort that resists naming. Animal Collective…

self-examination communication breakdown instinct vs. denial

Everything Is Everything

Lauryn Hill

A meditation on cyclical change and self-determination that doubles as a virtuosic display of rap craft, this track pairs a…

cyclical change and renewal self-empowerment spiritual/religious syncretism

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

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

Bigmouth Strikes Again

The Smiths

A serial motormouth apologizes for cruel things he's said, then dramatically inflates his guilt by comparing himself to a martyr…

guilt and self-loathing comic martyrdom the damage of words

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

The Smiths

A breakneck, self-aware confession that treats romantic disappointment as a repeating accident nobody can prevent. The title's…

self-repeating heartbreak denial and accusation masochism and self-punishment

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

My Tulpa

Magazine

A tense, self-lacerating address to a phantom or projection—Devoto's title borrows the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a 'tulpa,' a…

obsession and self-deception desire mixed with fear the unreliability of perception

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

Good Days

SZA

SZA builds a fragile refuge of hope inside a mind otherwise flooded with anxiety, heartbreak, and existential dread. The song…

mental exhaustion romantic disappointment anticipatory dread

Babooshka

Kate Bush

Kate Bush tells a compact fable of a wife who sets a trap for her own marriage by inventing a mysterious alter ego, only to…

jealousy and self-sabotage disguise and identity the decay of romantic feeling

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

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

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')

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

Nobody

Mitski

A disco groove wraps around one of Mitski's bleakest lyrics, turning isolation into something you can dance to. The song tracks…

loneliness self-erasure longing for touch over love

Dancing On My Own

Robyn

A dance-floor confessional in which the narrator watches an ex kiss someone new from across the room, trapped between the…

unrequited longing self-erasure and invisibility public heartbreak

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

A Rose Is Still a Rose

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin plays elder counselor to a wounded young woman, using the image of a rose to insist that sexual betrayal doesn't…

self-worth after betrayal intergenerational female solidarity resilience

Wild Fire

Laura Marling

Laura Marling narrates from the outside of a relationship, watching a woman she's fascinated by perform for others while…

watching versus being seen inherited family damage artistic self-consciousness

Since You Put Me Down

Margo Price

A breakup song built around a single, escalating image: the narrator drinking hard enough to kill off her own conscience so…

heartbreak and self-destruction alcohol as anesthetic hardened self-protection

Blow Up the Outside World

Soundgarden

A song built on a paradox: a narrator who insists he's unbreakable while quietly confessing he's contemplating annihilating the…

invulnerability as self-deception depression and self-destruction isolation vs. connection

I'm a Ram

Al Green

This is a lean, driving groove song built almost entirely around one animal metaphor: the singer as a ram, butting persistently…

persistence in desire masculine self-assertion obstacle and pursuit