Results for “state hypocrisy”

Songs

State of the Union (STFU)

Public Enemy

This is a blunt protest track released ahead of the 2020 U.S. election, aimed squarely at Donald Trump and framed as an urgent…

authoritarianism electoral urgency racial oppression

N.Y. State of Mind

Nas

A dense, almost stream-of-consciousness portrait of Queensbridge street life, delivered with a density of imagery more…

urban survival mortality and insomnia criminal economy

La Femme Fetal

Digable Planets

Digable Planets narrate a friend's unplanned pregnancy and impending abortion as a small, intimate scene that opens onto a much…

reproductive rights bodily autonomy class and access to healthcare

A Well Respected Man (Kwyet Kinks EP)

The Kinks

A satirical character sketch of an English middle-class conformist, delivered with mock admiration that curdles into contempt.…

class satire hypocrisy conformity

Mary Long

Deep Purple

A snarling caricature of moral censorship, this track invents a composite figure of public prudishness and spends three verses…

hypocrisy censorship sexual repression

You

Bill Withers

A confrontational, deeply personal song in which Bill Withers turns the tables on someone who has been trying to convince him…

gaslighting and psychological manipulation hypocrisy infidelity and betrayal

Be Careful of Stones That You Throw

Hank Williams

This Luke The Drifter recitation-style song tells a small parable about a gossiping neighbor and the woman she condemns,…

hypocrisy gossip and reputation moral judgment

Bad Mouth

Fugazi

A short, hammering post-hardcore sermon aimed at hypocrisy and inertia, built almost entirely on one refrain that refuses the…

hypocrisy authenticity stagnation vs. change

Biscuits

Kacey Musgraves

A folksy anthem of live-and-let-live, built almost entirely from rural aphorisms and food metaphors. Musgraves argues that…

live and let live judgment and gossip self-sufficiency

My God

Jethro Tull

A sustained attack on institutional religion, contrasting the rigidity of church ritual with a pantheistic sense of the divine…

institutional religion vs. personal spirituality hypocrisy pantheism/immanence

Before You Accuse Me

Creedence Clearwater Revival

This is CCR's cover of Bo Diddley's blues standard, a talking-back rebuttal in a domestic argument where the accused turns the…

infidelity and suspicion hypocrisy romantic desperation

Let's Impeach the President

Neil Young

A blunt protest song built as a literal list of impeachable offenses against George W. Bush, set to the plainest possible music…

political dissent war and deception government surveillance

Why We Thugs

Ice Cube

Ice Cube builds a blunt structural argument: the chorus states a thesis about systemic setup, and the verses supply case studies…

systemic entrapment mass incarceration survival and violence

Bleed The Freak

Alice in Chains

A confrontational early Alice in Chains track that inverts biblical language and moral hierarchies to attack self-righteous…

religious hypocrisy judgment and retribution cruelty of moral authority

Compared to What

Roberta Flack

A furious, jazz-inflected protest song that catalogs the hypocrisies of American life—consumerism, war, religion, race—and keeps…

social hypocrisy war and dissent religious skepticism

Mekon Headman

Wire

A clipped, paranoid vignette that fuses interrogation-room menace with pulp sci-fi imagery, built from disjointed phrases rather…

interrogation and coercion surveillance/security state paranoia

First Light

Brian Eno

An instrumental piano-and-synthesizer piece from Eno and Harold Budd's ambient collaboration, built around slow, spaced piano…

dawn/threshold states stillness gradual emergence

This Must Be It

Röyksopp

A hazy, dreamlike track that stages a search for revelation inside what feels like an altered or trance-like state, where…

altered states / intoxication longing for transcendence isolation and communion

Ain't That Nothin'

Television

A restless, riddling song built from fragmentary images of heat, motion and spinning objects, addressed to a companion who never…

evasion and unanswered questions restlessness and burnout attraction to chaos

Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely

Hüsker Dü

A breakup song built on a contradiction: the narrator claims he wants distance from an ex-partner but keeps monitoring her…

ambivalence after a breakup emotional self-protection denial

Close Your Eyes (And Count to F**k)

Run the Jewels

A high-velocity posse cut where El-P and Killer Mike trade verses of violent bravado, prison-abolitionist rage, and sexual…

mass incarceration and prison abolition institutional hypocrisy (church, courts, police) hypermasculine bravado and sexual conquest

None Shall Pass

Aesop Rock

A dense, image-saturated indictment of predatory social hierarchy, war profiteering, and phony authority, delivered in Aesop…

corruption and hypocrisy violence disguised as order class and survival

Posing In Bondage

Japanese Breakfast

A stark, minimalist opener to Jubilee, this song strips away the album's usual maximalism to sit with a single image: a speaker…

longing and neglect self-objectification as control isolation within intimacy

Not Like Us

Kendrick Lamar

A West Coast diss track that turns a specific rap beef into a broader indictment of cultural appropriation, exploitation, and…

cultural authenticity vs. appropriation predatory behavior and exploitation regional pride (West Coast/Compton)

Bonzo Goes to Bitburg

Ramones

A furious, sardonic protest song written after President Reagan's 1985 visit to a German military cemetery at Bitburg, which…

political complicity historical memory and the Holocaust media disillusionment

God's Comic

Elvis Costello

A dead entertainer-priest narrates his own arrival in the afterlife, only to find God as an unimpressed, bored figure lounging…

religious satire performance and hypocrisy mortality

Hymn 43

Jethro Tull

A caustic broadside against the American co-option of Christianity, pairing frontier violence and cowboy mythology with the…

religious hypocrisy American mythology and violence colonialism

Break On Through (To The Other Side)

The Doors

A short, propulsive rock song built almost entirely around a single command repeated until it becomes a mantra. It uses images…

transcendence limits of perception desire and entrapment

Pot Kettle Black

Wilco

A slippery relationship song that keeps flickering between addressing a lover, a rival, and the narrator's own reflection, so…

self-deception hypocrisy and projection instability/rootlessness

Follow Your Arrow

Kacey Musgraves

A catalog of no-win social judgments builds into a plainspoken anthem for living by one's own compass rather than trying to…

double standards sexual and social freedom religious hypocrisy

Right On for the Darkness

Curtis Mayfield

Mayfield takes on the voice of a blind man to critique a society obsessed with appearance and status while ignoring structural…

blindness as moral clarity social hypocrisy institutional corruption

Rapp Snitch Knishes

MF DOOM

MF DOOM turns a satirical eye on rap's tough-guy posturing, mocking MCs whose lyrics function as confessions that could be used…

hip-hop authenticity and posturing self-incrimination and surveillance street credibility vs. performance

Walking in My Shoes

Depeche Mode

A confessional plea from someone who has been publicly judged for private sins, refusing to apologize while insisting his…

moral judgment and hypocrisy temptation and guilt empathy versus condemnation

Gold Digger

Kanye West Tribute Band

A Ray Charles sample and a party-ready hook frame a much darker set of verses about money, sex, race, and resentment between men…

gender and money distrust and betrayal black masculinity and provider anxiety

Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It

Ice Cube

Ice Cube uses the media's stock accusation that gangsta rap 'causes' violence as a satirical device, exaggerating the charge…

media scapegoating and moral panic authenticity vs commercial gatekeeping black masculinity and self-reliance

Harrowdown Hill

Thom Yorke

A hushed, paranoid elegy widely understood to be about the death of UK weapons inspector David Kelly, sung partly in the voice…

state power and expendability conspiracy and doubt surveillance/paranoia

Small Plane

Bill Callahan

A quiet domestic love song disguised as an account of piloting a small plane together. The flight becomes a working metaphor for…

domestic trust shared control in partnership contentment

New Direction

Echo & the Bunnymen

This is a song about spiritual searching that keeps tripping over its own irony, using the language of religious conversion and…

religious doubt disorientation hypocrisy and false authority

Trouble, Heartaches and Sadness

Ann Peebles

Ann Peebles addresses trouble, heartache, and sadness as if they were unwelcome visitors, ordering them off her doorstep now…

deliverance through love personification of emotional states resilience

Rodent

Burial

Rodent is built almost entirely around a single vocal fragment, looped and re-pitched until a simple declaration of dependency…

dependency and loss isolation repetition as emotional state