Results for “sex and spiritual ecstasy merged”

Songs

Gotta Get: Closer

Maxwell

A live, largely improvised jam built around a single desperate hook, this performance treats sexual desire as a kind of…

desire as compulsion sex and spiritual ecstasy merged call-and-response performance

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

Sex, Drugs and Violence

Public Enemy

Public Enemy uses three loosely connected vignettes of unsolved shootings tied to hip-hop culture to indict the industry and…

media complicity violence in hip-hop culture commercialization of black death

Angel

Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode's "Angel" describes a visitation - an overwhelming spiritual or erotic encounter that strips the narrator of…

religious ecstasy surrender and dissolution erotic/spiritual conflation

Boogie Street

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on the pull between transcendent, near-mystical intimacy and the noisy, transactional churn of ordinary life. The…

sacred vs. profane transience of ecstasy spiritual longing

Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Pt. 2

My Morning Jacket

A repetitive, ecstatic track built almost entirely around a single sensation of being overstimulated by connection or desire. It…

sensory overload desire and vulnerability spiritual/erotic conflation

The Music Is the Magic

Abbey Lincoln

A late-career meditation from Abbey Lincoln that treats music itself as a spiritual refuge rather than a subject to be…

music as sanctuary interiority spirituality

Jacob's Ladder

The Staple Singers

This is The Staple Singers' rendition of the traditional African American spiritual "Jacob's Ladder," a call-and-response hymn…

spiritual ascent perseverance communal faith

Getting In Tune

The Who

Pete Townshend uses the physical act of tuning an instrument as a metaphor for emotional and even spiritual connection,…

music as metaphor for intimacy authenticity versus performance spiritual/emotional alignment

Money Can't Buy It

Annie Lennox

A gospel-tinged anthem built on a simple negation—money, sex, and drugs can't purchase what actually matters—before pivoting…

materialism vs. spiritual fulfillment the emptiness of wealth love as redemptive force

Africa

D'Angelo

A meditation on fatherhood framed as a lineage running back through Africa, presented less as narrative and more as blessing or…

diasporic identity fatherhood and legacy spiritual protection

Machine Gun

Portishead

A stark meditation on self-recrimination dressed as spiritual crisis, delivered over one of the coldest, most mechanical beats…

guilt and self-blame failed salvation isolation

Miles from Nowhere

Cat Stevens

A solitary traveler narrates a spiritual and physical journey toward an undefined destination, treating isolation as liberation…

spiritual seeking freedom through solitude mortality and the body

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

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

Down Where the Valley Are Low

Judee Sill

A hymn-like meditation built almost entirely on paradox, where lowness produces height and cold conceals warmth. Judee Sill…

spiritual longing paradox and inversion surrender

All Around You

Sturgill Simpson

A father addresses his infant son with a promise of enduring presence and love, framed as spiritual reassurance against the…

parental love mortality and continuity spiritual comfort

Down By the Riverside

Etta James

Etta James reworks the spiritual tradition of the riverside as a site of release and communion, turning a familiar gospel image…

spiritual longing surrender and trust peace after suffering

Saturn

SZA

SZA imagines an escape to another planet as a way of processing exhaustion with earthly suffering, spiritual doubt, and cyclical…

existential despair spiritual doubt escapism

Hidden Treasure

Traffic

A gentle, meditative song that treats a riverbank walk as a spiritual exercise, urging the listener toward openness and…

contemplation and inner openness nature as teacher spiritual seeking

Far from Home

Traffic

A late-period Traffic track built around restless motion — a narrator pushing toward an undefined destination, framing the…

restlessness and departure spiritual seeking disillusionment with false comfort

I Get Out

Lauryn Hill

This is Lauryn Hill's most confrontational Unplugged track, a spoken-sung indictment of institutional control framed as a…

spiritual liberation institutional control autonomy vs. conformity

When the Bridegroom Comes

Judee Sill

A hymn-like meditation built almost entirely from biblical allusion, urging spiritual readiness for a mystical bridegroom figure…

spiritual readiness divine union mercy and reversal

Oh Happy Day

Etta James

Etta James takes the classic gospel standard 'Oh Happy Day' and delivers it as a testimony of release, built almost entirely on…

redemption spiritual cleansing joy as testimony

I Gotta Find Peace of Mind

Lauryn Hill

A raw, semi-improvised confessional performed live, in which Hill wrestles aloud with an internal voice of doubt and control…

psychological bondage vs. freedom spiritual surrender toxic control in relationships

The Pearl

Judee Sill

A spiritual seeker's monologue that treats enlightenment as a literal object always just out of reach, until the song's final…

spiritual longing false prophets and shortcuts self-reliance versus divine grace

People Get Ready

Seal

Seal's version of the Curtis Mayfield gospel-soul standard is a faithful, reverent cover that leans into the song's spiritual…

salvation and grace spiritual readiness judgment and mercy

Ray of Light

Madonna

A cosmic dance track that fuses spiritual searching with astronomical imagery, using the image of light and celestial motion to…

spiritual awakening cosmic scale vs. personal feeling impermanence

Thunderbuck Ram

Mott the Hoople

An instrumental-heavy Mott the Hoople track built around a sparse, questioning lyric that reads almost as a fragment or an…

existential doubt hope for change fatalism versus agency

Come On Up to the House

Tom Waits

A gospel-inflected invitation song that catalogs the exhaustion and ruin of a life lived apart from grace, repeating a single…

spiritual surrender exhaustion and despair invitation and refuge

Astral Weeks

Van Morrison

Van Morrison's title track drifts through a hazy, half-remembered landscape in search of rebirth and connection, using dreamlike…

rebirth and renewal spiritual longing displacement

Saw Lightning

Beck

A hypnotic, blues-inflected chant built around a single image—a lightning strike—that expands from a personal vision into a…

apocalypse/environmental collapse revelation and being struck down spiritual surrender

The Phoenix

Judee Sill

A short, dense allegory in which cosmic and mythological imagery (a phoenix, dragons, an implied battle with the Devil) stands…

spiritual struggle self-doubt and sincerity transformation and rebirth

Blue Sky

Common

Common builds a triumphant victory-lap track around a sampled ELO hook, using the sky as a running metaphor for ascent,…

ambition realized spiritual gratitude celebrity and success

Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin

An eight-minute ballad that starts as a gentle folk critique of spiritual materialism and gradually swells into a mystical,…

spiritual materialism doubt and ambiguity nature as mystic guide

Hey Gypsy Boy

Jimi Hendrix

A brief, almost catechism-like exchange between a questioner and a wandering figure called the gypsy boy, whose answers about…

wandering and displacement spiritual seeking peace and love as vocation

Soldier of the Heart

Judee Sill

Judee Sill builds an extended military allegory around a mysterious, idealized rescuer figure who is part lover, part guardian…

spiritual rescue romantic devotion as surrender suffering and redemption

Crossroads

Cream

Cream's version compresses Robert Johnson's Delta blues into a lean, high-velocity rock performance, turning a song about…

isolation spiritual desperation the blues tradition

The Nature

Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli surveys global poverty and violence as symptoms of a single underlying logic he calls 'the nature of the world,'…

poverty and survival spiritual searching media distraction

As

Stevie Wonder

A love song that scales up from natural cycles to cosmic impossibilities in order to make permanence tangible, then widens into…

eternal love natural law as metaphor spiritual/religious affirmation