Radiohead
A petulant office-worker fantasy in which the speaker summons an imaginary cosmic police force to arrest people who irritate him…
petty vindictiveness bureaucratic and corporate servitude dehumanisation
Nirvana
Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough single is a rock anthem built on refusing to say anything anthemic. Over a four-chord riff that…
adolescent apathy and boredom the demand to be entertained self-loathing and self-sabotage
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
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
Bruce Springsteen
A young man stands in a driveway trying to talk a woman named Mary into getting in his car and leaving town with him. Over five…
escape and flight the limits of romantic promise small-town decay
Bob Dylan
A six-minute address to a woman who has fallen out of privilege into destitution, delivered by a narrator who alternates between…
loss of status the fraudulence of privilege freedom through destitution
Joni Mitchell
A three-part meditation in which the speaker sets a naive, image-drunk way of seeing against a disenchanted one, then refuses to…
disillusionment the limits of knowledge aging and changed perception
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