Results for “suppressed rage”

Songs

Yellow Flicker Beat

Lorde

Written for the Mockingjay soundtrack, this song inhabits a figure who has been turned into a symbol and is beginning to…

reluctant leadership transformation into a symbol surveillance and scrutiny

I Would Hurt a Fly

Built to Spill

A song built around an irritation so small it borders on absurd — an inaudible, nagging sound only the speaker can perceive —…

suppressed anger perception and isolation paranoia or hypersensitivity

The Real Me

The Who

An opening track that functions as a diagnostic scream: a young man cycles through the authority figures meant to know him —…

identity and authenticity institutional failure (medicine, family, religion) alienation

Tramp the Dirt Down

Elvis Costello

A furious, funereal protest song in which Costello imagines dancing on the grave of a still-living political leader, using that…

political rage class resentment mortality and vengeance

Fancy Clown

Madvillain

A jealous, wounded rant against a cheating lover and her new partner, delivered as a broken phone call full of accusation, petty…

betrayal and infidelity masculine pride and possessiveness petty revenge

Be Good (Lion's Song)

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter builds an extended allegory of romantic self-diminishment around the image of a caged lion taming itself for a…

self-suppression for love power and taming unrequited or unequal affection

Dedicated

MF DOOM

This is a street elegy built around loss and survival, alternating between grim inventories of urban violence and a repeated vow…

urban violence and mortality chosen family and crew loyalty grief and emotional suppression

Kid

The Pretenders

A speaker addresses a child (or someone treated with childlike tenderness) who has withdrawn into a wounded, silent sadness. The…

parental guilt emotional withdrawal inability to explain oneself

Kissing a Fool

George Michael

A torch song about a love ended by other people's interference rather than a lack of feeling, sung by a narrator who oscillates…

betrayal by outside influence wounded pride unresolved devotion

Two Trains

Little Feat

A blues-rooted meditation on romantic rivalry, told through the extended image of two trains running on the same line. Little…

romantic rivalry jealousy and restraint uncertainty and waiting

Cinnamon Girl

Lana Del Rey

A woman stays tethered to a partner whose emotional and possibly chemical volatility she narrates with sensory precision, even…

emotional withholding addiction and self-medication codependency

Horchata

Vampire Weekend

A dense, image-heavy song that uses a Mexican rice drink and a mismatched collage of seasons and geographies to talk about…

nostalgia displacement memory and repression

Baby It's Cold Outside

Ella Fitzgerald

A duet built entirely on a woman making excuses to leave and a man supplying reasons to keep her there, all while a blizzard…

seduction and resistance social propriety vs desire persuasion and pressure

Mad

Solange

"Mad" is a meditation on the exhaustion of having to justify one's own anger, built around a call-and-response between a…

the right to anger versus the demand for composure respectability and emotional policing of Black people survival and trauma disguised as success

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