Results for “stasis and drift”

Songs

2/1

Brian Eno

"2/1" is the second piece on Ambient 1: Music for Airports, built from a small set of slowly looping piano phrases and wordless…

stasis and drift impermanence non-intrusive listening

Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay

Otis Redding

A drifter sits by the water in San Francisco, watching boats and tides pass while he takes stock of a life that has stalled out.…

displacement stasis and drift loneliness

#3

Aphex Twin

An untitled, numbered ambient piece from Aphex Twin's largely wordless second Selected Ambient Works volume, this track works…

dissociation interior space repetition and stasis

West End Girls

Pet Shop Boys

A cold, hypnotic portrait of London's class and consumer divide, delivered in a near-rap monotone over a synth-pop groove. The…

class division urban alienation consumption and desire

I Talk to the Wind

King Crimson

A quiet, flute-laced meditation on isolation and futile communication, framed by a cryptic exchange between two figures and a…

alienation failed communication disillusionment

The Space Between

Roxy Music

A minimalist, almost mantra-like meditation on relational distance, where Bryan Ferry reduces a whole failing romance to a…

emotional distance relationship drift repetition as anxiety

The Spoils

Massive Attack

A hushed, circling meditation on romantic ambivalence, sung from the position of someone who claims to wish an ex-lover well…

ambivalence possessiveness disguised as tenderness jealousy

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

La Femme d'argent

Air

An eight-minute instrumental that opens Air's debut album, built on a hypnotic bassline, layered analog keyboards, and a…

retro-futurism seduction and mystery nocturnal drift

Pacifying Joint

The Fall

A Mark E. Smith sound-poem built almost entirely around one phrase, worked through its multiple possible meanings — a drug, a…

ambiguity of language youthful drift surveillance/paranoia

Drive

R.E.M.

Drive opens Automatic for the People as a stark, semi-acoustic address to an unnamed younger generation, built almost entirely…

generational drift autonomy and its risks rock and roll as inheritance and myth

Love Will Tear Us Apart

Broken Social Scene

This is Broken Social Scene's rendition of Joy Division's 1980 classic, recorded for the soundtrack of The Time Traveler's Wife,…

romantic disintegration emotional stasis guilt and self-recrimination

My Babe

Spoon

A song about staying put — emotionally and literally — inside a routine that has worn thin, and choosing devotion anyway. The…

endurance of routine devotion as choice stasis versus escape

Sittin' Here Thinkin'

John Lee Hooker

A slow, brooding solo blues meditation built almost entirely on repetition and a single fixed image: a man alone at a window,…

abandonment jealousy and suspicion loneliness

Sea of Heartbreak

Rosanne Cash

A classic torch song built on a single sustained nautical metaphor for heartbreak, recorded by Rosanne Cash as part of an album…

romantic abandonment isolation longing for rescue

Doin' Time

Lana Del Rey

This is Lana Del Rey's faithful, lightly reworked cover of Sublime's 1996 track, itself a reggae-inflected reimagining of the…

betrayal and possessiveness local pride and belonging romantic disillusionment

I'm Amazed

My Morning Jacket

A falsetto-driven meditation built entirely from the phrase 'I'm amazed,' the song lists private tenderness alongside public…

media distrust personal devotion vs. public decay spiritual/moral drift

Black

Pearl Jam

A song about the aftermath of a devastating breakup, built on the image of a world drained of color and identity once a lover is…

heartbreak and loss loss of identity grief's distortion of perception

Mysterons

Portishead

Mysterons opens Dummy with a woozy, disorienting address to someone caught between denial and defiance. Beth Gibbons' vocal…

denial and repression guilt and judgment futility of desire

Rock & Roll Stew

Traffic

A road-worn account of touring life, set to a loose groove that mirrors its subject's fatigue and drift. The song moves from…

touring exhaustion rootlessness alienation from ordinary life

Hellhound On My Trail

Robert Johnson

A restless, fragmented blues built around the image of pursuit — weather, hoodoo, and dread all fused into a single sense of…

pursuit and dread restlessness/displacement folk magic and superstition

Easy to Slip

Little Feat

A short, melancholic meditation on emotional numbness after a breakup, where drifting into forgetfulness feels dangerously…

emotional numbness memory and forgetting romantic loss

Space Oddity

David Bowie

A dramatized radio transmission between mission control and an astronaut becomes an extended metaphor for detachment and…

isolation fame and alienation dissociation

My Little Town (with Art Garfunkel)

Paul Simon

A bitter recollection of a suffocating hometown, stripped of color and possibility, sung as a reunion piece by Simon and…

small-town claustrophobia loss of faith inherited identity

Hypnotized

Fleetwood Mac

A drifting, unhurried meditation on the pleasure of unexplained phenomena, built from a series of loosely connected anecdotes…

the appeal of the unexplained imagination versus proof folklore and hearsay

Uneventful Days

Beck

A hazy breakup meditation built on repetition and stasis, where time itself seems to have stopped moving. Beck uses flat,…

emotional numbness the end of love stalled time

Funeral

Phoebe Bridgers

A young singer confronts grief secondhand—preparing to sing at a funeral for a peer—while narrating her own chronic depression…

depression grief and guilt dissociation

Kanga Roo

Big Star

A woozy, half-collapsed love song built from disconnected snapshots rather than a story, drifting through washes of noise and…

fractured attention desire as disorientation voyeurism and observation

Everybody's Talkin'

Harry Nilsson

A song about tuning out the noise of other people in favor of an interior fantasy of motion and escape. Written by Fred Neil and…

alienation escape/wanderlust isolation amid crowds

Once in a Lifetime

Talking Heads

A song about waking up inside a life you don't remember choosing, stitched together from the trappings of suburban success and a…

suburban alienation loss of agency time and repetition

All the Young Dudes (David Bowie & Ian Hunter Vocal)

Mott the Hoople

A glam-rock anthem that gathers a cast of restless, damaged teenagers and turns their drift into a rallying cry. Bowie's song,…

youth disaffection generational divide glam identity and androgyny

The World At Large

Modest Mouse

A restless narrator drifts from place to place across seasons, unable to settle, unable to name what he's looking for. The song…

restlessness and rootlessness escapism emotional avoidance

Major Label Debut (Fast)

Broken Social Scene

A short, loop-driven track built around drift and dependency, where a narrator hovers between arrival and departure, never quite…

restlessness dependency ambivalent intimacy

Folsom Prison Blues

Johnny Cash

A first-person prison lament in which the narrator, confined and hopeless, is tormented by the sound of a train he cannot board.…

confinement and freedom guilt and moral consequence class resentment

Four Strong Winds

Neil Young

A drifting laborer weighs a move west for work while quietly accepting that the relationship he's leaving behind won't survive…

itinerant labor resignation fading love

Pink + White

Frank Ocean

A soft, wandering meditation on maternal love and mortality, built around the image of a hurricane and the small acts of…

maternal love survival and resilience impermanence

Deep Blue Day

Brian Eno

Deep Blue Day is a slow, pedal-steel-laced instrumental from Eno's soundtrack to a documentary about the Apollo moon missions.…

weightlessness nostalgia Americana in space

Water Curses

Animal Collective

A dreamlike wish-song built around water as an image of fluidity, ease, and self-erasure, drifting through loosely connected…

desire for formlessness/transformation mortality and impermanence creativity and artistic longing

Frittering

Mercury Rev

A woozy, repetitive lament built on a single glacial image, this early Mercury Rev track circles a corrosive relationship…

erosion of self codependency escapism through intoxication

Come Live with Me Angel

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning seduction song built almost entirely on a single proposition: move in with me. Marvin Gaye layers a soft, almost…

seduction and desire domestic fantasy emotional vulnerability masked as pleasure-seeking