Results for “soul/gospel tradition of testimony”

Songs

All That You Have Is Your Soul

Emmylou Harris

A mother's warning becomes a hard-won personal confession, as the narrator traces her own failures to heed advice about…

inherited wisdom moral compromise self-possession versus loss of self

Soul Meets Body

Death Cab for Cutie

A gentle, folk-inflected love song built around a fantasy of full integration - body and spirit, self and other - as the…

union of body and soul romantic devotion mortality and shared fate

I'm Still In Love With You

Seal

This is a straightforward love song built almost entirely around one confession, repeated with rising intensity rather than…

enduring devotion surrender to love reciprocity

I've Never Found a Girl

Al Green

A gospel-inflected soul testimonial in which the singer insists, over and over, that he has never had a love like this one. The…

romantic devotion gratitude sufficiency of love over money

Soothe My Soul

Depeche Mode

A blues-electro stalker's chant built almost entirely around a single fixation: sexual compulsion framed as addiction and…

obsession addiction desire as compulsion

Easy on My Soul

Free

A late-period Free track that trades narrative for mantra, circling the questions of what love and life amount to before…

exhaustion self-forgiveness spiritual uncertainty

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

Stakes Is High

De La Soul

A weary state-of-hip-hop address from De La Soul, cataloguing everything the group has grown sick of in mid-90s rap culture…

disillusionment with commercial rap materialism and misplaced love urban survival and violence

Me Myself and I

De La Soul

De La Soul use a mirror-gazing conceit to push back against critics and industry types who wanted to pigeonhole them as hippies…

individuality vs. conformity authenticity in art resistance to stereotyping

Breakadawn

De La Soul

A loose, free-associative posse-cut style track from De La Soul's most abstract album, built on stream-of-consciousness wordplay…

identity and origin hip-hop lineage and Native Tongues affiliation industry skepticism

Say No Go

De La Soul

De La Soul takes on the crack epidemic of the late 1980s not through gritty street reportage but through wordplay, sampling, and…

addiction and its generational cost complicity versus resistance community warning and moral instruction

Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)

De La Soul

De La Soul turns their own answering machine into a comic stage set, using its looping outgoing message as a chorus to frame a…

fame and its unwanted attention the hip-hop demo-tape hustle authenticity versus hype

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

Oooh.

De La Soul

A posse-cut braggadocio track from De La Soul's Art Official Intelligence era, featuring Redman on hooks and ad-libs while Pos…

lyrical supremacy authenticity vs. commercialism hustle and survival

Let It Be

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin's 1970 reading of the Beatles standard transforms a hymn-like pop meditation into full-throated gospel…

consolation in crisis faith and maternal comfort surrender versus struggle

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

I'll Fly Away

Mississippi John Hurt

This is less a full performance than a fragment captured on tape: Mississippi John Hurt sings the familiar gospel chorus of the…

incompleteness oral tradition humility

Ain't No Grave

Johnny Cash

This is a defiant gospel-blues meditation on death recorded near the very end of Johnny Cash's life, built around a single…

death and resurrection faith and defiance mortality as personal reckoning

Knock On Wood

Seal

Seal's version of the Eddie Floyd/Steve Cropper soul standard is a straightforward cover that leans into the song's original…

superstition and fear of loss romantic intensity gratitude in love

White Christmas

Otis Redding

Otis Redding takes the Irving Berlin standard and rebuilds it as soul testimony, stretching its plain, nostalgic lines into…

nostalgia longing devotion

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

Satan Is Real

The Louvin Brothers

A gospel warning sung as a first-person testimony, this track uses a rural church scene and a broken-down old man's confession…

religious fear testimony and confession the corruption of domestic life

Freedom Highway

The Staple Singers

A gospel-soul anthem written as a marching chant, tracking the Civil Rights Movement's literal and spiritual momentum. The…

civil rights and racial justice collective resolve gospel faith as political power

Early In the Morning

Harry Nilsson

A traditional-blues lament about the aftermath of a lovers' quarrel, delivered as a loose, almost improvisational vamp built…

heartbreak and regret isolation blues tradition

Clarksdale Moan

Son House

This is a plainspoken Delta blues meditation on home -- specifically Clarksdale, Mississippi -- rendered through the traditional…

place and belonging poverty endured with dignity memory and habit

Red House

Jimi Hendrix

A twelve-bar blues in the most traditional sense: a man walks to his lover's house only to find himself locked out, suspects…

romantic abandonment resilience through humor the blues tradition itself

I Believe In Music

Donny Hathaway

A gospel-tinged secular hymn that treats music-making itself as a moral and spiritual practice, capable of dissolving conflict…

music as spiritual practice communal unity optimism through repetition

Joy to the World

Whitney Houston

This is Whitney Houston's gospel-inflected reworking of the 18th-century Isaac Watts hymn, transformed from a hymnal recitation…

religious celebration communal exaltation the power of the voice

The Healer

John Lee Hooker

This is less a song than a testimony delivered over a slow-burning groove: John Lee Hooker declares the blues itself a curative…

the blues as spiritual medicine suffering and survival heartbreak and abandonment

La Mañanitas

Nat King Cole

This is Nat King Cole's rendition of "Las Mañanitas," the traditional Mexican birthday and saint's-day serenade, sung not as a…

birth and renewal communal celebration dawn as symbol

Courting Blues

Bert Jansch

A hushed, traditional-sounding love lyric built around a single reassurance repeated to a young woman: come lie beside me, no…

clandestine love youthful courtship reassurance and persuasion

C.C. Rider

Lead Belly

Lead Belly's take on the traditional "C.C. Rider" blues strips the song down to its call-and-response bones: a rolling…

betrayal and desire itinerant love (the "rider" figure) sexual boasting and fantasy

Down

Harry Nilsson

A brief block of aphoristic advice about soul and love gives way to a chant that spirals downward, both literally in pitch and…

moral instruction versus surrender descent/collapse repetition as trance

Rollin' and Tumblin'

Cream

Cream's version of this Delta blues standard strips the song down to a churning, harmonica-driven groove built on repetition and…

loss and abandonment restlessness travel as escape or fate

The Midnight Special

Creedence Clearwater Revival

CCR's take on this traditional American folk-blues song reworks a prison-camp lament into a swampy rock anthem, keeping its cast…

incarceration and forced labor folk tradition and inheritance longing for deliverance

Voodoo Chile Blues

Jimi Hendrix

This is the slow, extended blues incantation that Hendrix later compressed into 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return),' built around a…

self-mythology supernatural power cosmic/psychedelic imagery

Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy's most explicitly Irish statement, a medley that stitches together fragments of traditional ballads with a…

Irish identity and heritage oral tradition and storytelling myth and heroism

Catfish Blues

Jimi Hendrix

This is Hendrix inhabiting the Delta blues tradition wholesale, taking a floating verse form passed down from Muddy Waters and…

desire and transformation infidelity and temptation restlessness/travel

Wayside / Back In Time

Gillian Welch

A ramshackle travelogue through drink, drift, and old-time Nashville nostalgia, stitched to a chorus that keeps yearning to…

wandering and dissipation nostalgia for a vanishing Nashville romantic loss

She

Gram Parsons

A hymn-like tribute to an unnamed Southern Black woman, built around the recurring refrain of her singing voice as the one…

Southern history and labor faith and gospel devotion admiration across difference