Results for “stubbornness and independence”

Songs

Belated Promise Ring

Iron & Wine

A hazy, impressionistic sketch of a domestic relationship rendered almost entirely through small physical objects and gestures…

domestic intimacy memory and impermanence stubbornness and independence

Run With the Pack

Bad Company

A defiant kiss-off anthem built around the image of running free from a controlling relationship or authority. The narrator…

escape and freedom distrust of authority independence

I Want to Break Free

Queen

A deceptively simple breakup anthem built on repetition and plain declarative statements, John Deacon's song uses the language…

liberation romantic disillusionment self-assertion

Never Could Toe the Mark

Waylon Jennings

A plainspoken defense of romantic independence, delivered in Waylon Jennings' outlaw drawl. The narrator explains, without…

romantic independence resistance to conformity outlaw self-mythology

The Modern World

The Jam

A young, defiant voice pushes back against everyone who ever underestimated him, staking a claim to self-knowledge and…

class resentment and defiance self-education vs institutional judgment youthful independence

Woman

Cat Power

Cat Power turns a single word into a chant of self-definition, using repetition rather than narrative to insist on a selfhood…

self-definition independence from judgment recovery and transformation

Smooth Dancer

Deep Purple

A deep cut from Deep Purple's 1973 album that reads as a kiss-off to a seductive but hollow figure, wrapped in nightclub imagery…

toxic attraction emotional manipulation independence/self-assertion

Blueprint

Fugazi

"Blueprint" is Fugazi's manifesto against the music industry's game-playing, delivered as a repeated refusal that gradually…

artistic integrity refusal of commercial games consumer complicity

Diving Woman

Japanese Breakfast

A road song about self-invention, built around the image of the haenyeo, the free-diving women of Jeju Island known for their…

self-determination female labor and endurance longing and aspiration

How Strong Is a Woman

Ann Peebles

Ann Peebles takes up a question circulating in early-70s soul and pop culture — who's stronger, men or women — and answers it in…

gender roles and power romantic devotion vs independence strength redefined through love

Cactus Tree

Joni Mitchell

A young woman collects a string of suitors—a sailor, a mountaineer, an office correspondent, and finally an unnumbered crowd of…

freedom versus commitment female autonomy in the 1960s emotional self-protection

Me and Bobby McGhee

Kris Kristofferson

A road-worn narrator recalls a hitchhiking love affair with Bobby McGee, tracing their journey across the American South and…

freedom and loss itinerant love poverty and the open road

Clyde

Waylon Jennings

A loose, novelty-style country blues number about a laid-back dog named Clyde who supposedly plays bass and sings the blues on a…

rural leisure comic anthropomorphism stubbornness/inertia

I've Got What It Takes, But It Breaks My Heart to Give It Away

Bessie Smith

A comic blues built on a pun: the singer boasts she has 'what it takes' — desirability, sex appeal, and money — but refuses to…

financial independence female self-sufficiency sexual innuendo

One Was Johnny

Carole King

A counting rhyme turned into a miniature farce: a boy who wants to be alone finds his home invaded by an absurd, escalating…

solitude and independence order versus chaos assertiveness

Put It Right Here (Or Keep It Out There)

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith delivers an ultimatum blues to a freeloading lover, dressing up a blunt economic demand in barnyard comedy and…

economic independence sexual and domestic reciprocity female autonomy

Mind Your Own Business (Show 9)

Hank Williams

This is a live radio performance of Hank Williams' comic novelty song, framed by an announcer's folksy introduction before…

privacy versus gossip marital independence rural community friction

You and I

Betty Davis

A slow, confessional ballad in which Betty Davis strips away the funk-rock swagger of her usual persona to admit vulnerability…

emotional vulnerability the gap between maturity and desire dependency versus independence

Joy

Lucinda Williams

A blues-rock breakup song that treats emotional loss as a stolen, physical object that can theoretically be tracked down and…

loss and reclamation anger as motion the breakup as theft

Show Me Love

Robyn

A teenage Robyn's breakout single is a straightforward Eurodance declaration of romantic surrender, built around a repeated plea…

romantic vulnerability independence versus surrender demand for reciprocity

The Hardest Cut

Spoon

A driving garage-rock riff underpins a song about leaving under duress and the psychic toll of resisting outside pressure to…

escape and departure conformity vs. independence paranoia and surveillance

That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate

Mission of Burma

A terse post-punk breakup song built around the logic of self-preservation dressed up as generosity. The narrator frames pushing…

self-justification guilt and denial independence vs. abandonment

Don't Say You Love Me

Free

A blues-rock confession about a relationship built on mutual convenience rather than love, sung by a narrator who admits he let…

loneliness and self-deception transactional intimacy emotional honesty vs. convenient lies

Don't Follow

Alice in Chains

A stripped-down acoustic confession from a narrator who insists on leaving while quietly begging to be brought back. The song…

addiction and self-destruction isolation vs. longing for home guilt and self-recrimination

Dry Spell

Kacey Musgraves

A comic, unapologetically horny country song about a woman counting off the days since her last sexual encounter, using rural…

sexual frustration female desire and agency rural/country signifiers as innuendo

Broken Clocks

SZA

SZA sketches the exhaustion of grinding through low-wage work while trying to hold onto self-possession and residual affection…

labor and survival independence vs. lingering attachment time and exhaustion

Another Brick In the Wall, Pt. 3

Pink Floyd

This is the moment PinkInk's protagonist Pink completes his self-imposed isolation, rejecting comfort, chemical or human, as a…

emotional withdrawal self-destruction disguised as independence accumulated trauma

Silver Lining

Rilo Kiley

A breakup song dressed as a triumphant chant, in which the narrator recasts herself from a supporting emotional resource into…

self-worth after breakup transformation and upgrade emotional detachment

Holding On

Gregory Porter

A meditation on a love the narrator can't will himself out of, even when guilt, fatigue, and a bruised past argue for release.…

involuntary devotion emotional exhaustion guilt and self-reproach

Far Cry

Rush

This opening track from Snakes & Arrows surveys a world of disorientation—social unrest, media overload, moral whiplash—and…

disillusionment with inherited expectations information overload and technological anxiety emotional volatility

Rudie Can't Fail

The Clash

A ska-inflected celebration of a London rude boy who refuses to reform, structured as a call-and-response between disapproving…

youth rebellion respectability politics working-class identity

Magic Man

Heart

A young woman narrates her seduction by an older, magnetic man, tracing her passage from girlhood to sexual awakening over the…

sexual awakening loss of innocence maternal anxiety

Cloudbusting

Kate Bush

A song about a child's memory of a father taken away by authorities, told through the lens of weather-making machines and buried…

father-daughter bond loss and separation persecution of the unconventional

Hate to Lose Your Lovin'

Little Feat

A wry breakup narrative that keeps undercutting its own heartbreak with comic self-interest. The narrator confronts a cheating…

infidelity and betrayal performed heartbreak vs. real indifference serial romance

Flagship

Jason Isbell

A song about watching long marriages calcify and making a private, almost superstitious vow not to let that happen to your own.…

marital decay willed devotion nostalgia

The Game

Echo & the Bunnymen

This is a song of self-possessed detachment, addressed to a former partner or rival whose emotional theatrics the narrator…

emotional detachment self-reliance pride versus vulnerability

Never Stop

Echo & the Bunnymen

A terse, image-dense track that pits mercenary greed and dead ideology against a stubborn, almost defiant insistence on love as…

greed vs. love disillusionment with authority/religion moral ambiguity

Still Unbroken

Lynyrd Skynyrd

A survival anthem built on plainspoken endurance imagery, the song catalogs loss and damage while insisting the speaker remains…

survival and endurance loss and dispossession freedom versus belonging

Jesus and Tequila

Minutemen

A working-class narrator recounts losing both a lover and a job, then retreats into a stubborn, self-medicating creed built on…

alienation working-class disillusionment self-destructive coping

It Ain't Over Yet

Rodney Crowell

A weathered narrator takes stock of a life full of mistakes, near-collapses, and stubborn survival, addressing a longtime friend…

aging and mortality friendship as salvation self-deprecation and regret