Results for “surveillance and police presence”

Songs

Karma Police

Radiohead

A speaker invokes a childhood fantasy of cosmic justice to punish people who irritate him, then realizes partway through that…

petty vindictiveness corporate/institutional conformity self-recognition and guilt

Out In the Street

Bruce Springsteen

A dockworker counts down the hours of a punishing week toward the one place that restores his sense of self: the sidewalk and…

working-class pride community solidarity surveillance and police presence

Terminator X to the Edge of Panic

Public Enemy

This track is Public Enemy's tribute to their DJ, built around a chant-and-scratch structure that treats turntablism itself as a…

black musical mastery as resistance surveillance and policing industry gatekeeping

Midnight Special

Lead Belly

A prison work-song built around the recurring image of a train's headlight sweeping across a cell, used as both literal detail…

incarceration longing for freedom surveillance and policing

Ascension

Gorillaz

A track that turns apocalyptic dread into a party anthem, pairing Vince Staples' verses about impending doom and social violence…

apocalypse as spectacle hedonism as coping mechanism police violence and surveillance

Everybody Wants To Rule the World

Lorde

Lorde's cover strips Tears for Fears' 1985 synth-pop anthem down to something colder and more brittle, turning a wry commentary…

power and control surveillance complicity

Mathematics

Mos Def

Mos Def builds a dense, statistics-driven indictment of American racial and economic injustice around the conceit of numbers,…

mass incarceration systemic racism economic inequality

Watching the Detectives

Elvis Costello

A jealous, media-poisoned narrator watches a woman who watches TV crime dramas, and the two kinds of watching collapse into each…

voyeurism and media saturation emotional numbness jealousy and control

The Nearness of You

Sarah Vaughan

A standard by Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington, here rendered by Sarah Vaughan as an intimate meditation on physical presence…

desire and presence the inadequacy of romantic cliché vulnerability

Got to Be There

Chaka Khan

A devotional, almost ceremonial love song built on a single vow of presence: to be there at the first light of a relationship,…

devotion presence and belonging new beginnings

Accidents Never Happen

Blondie

A study in control disguised as romance: the narrator insists nothing between her and the person she's watching is chance,…

control vs. fate obsession and surveillance determinism

They Don't Care About Us

Michael Jackson

A protest chant built almost entirely from one repeated grievance, this song stacks fragmented images of police violence, media…

police brutality institutional neglect racial injustice

Slow Hands

Interpol

Interpol pairs one of their most euphoric, propulsive arrangements with a lyric that keeps circling wounds, surveillance, and…

obsessive love surveillance and paranoia self-destruction

The Panties

Mos Def

A slow-burn seduction song built almost entirely on repetition and murmured reassurance rather than narrative incident. Mos Def…

seduction and patience presence over words physical intimacy as the only true communication

The Veil

Peter Gabriel

Written for the film "Snowden," this song turns a whistleblower's act of mass disclosure into a meditation on exposure itself —…

surveillance and privacy whistleblowing and moral risk exposure versus concealment

The Adults Are Talking

The Strokes

The opening track of The New Abnormal frames a generational and interpersonal standoff as one continuous scene of…

generational conflict surveillance and judgment romantic ambivalence

Underneath the Radar

Underworld

This early, pre-techno Underworld track is a nervy pop-funk song about living small and invisible under the threat of…

Cold War anxiety surveillance and invisibility smallness/powerlessness

X Offender

Blondie

Blondie's debut single reframes a streetwalker's infatuation with a police officer as a giddy crime narrative, blurring the…

desire as transgression policing and power irony of legal language repurposed as romance

Serpents

Sharon Van Etten

"Serpents" is a slow-burning indictment of a manipulative partner, built from fragmented images of surveillance, control, and…

emotional abuse surveillance and suspicion self-protection

Chanel

Frank Ocean

"Chanel" is a loose, associative track built around the Chanel logo's interlocking C's as a metaphor for bisexuality and duality…

bisexuality and duality surveillance and paranoia wealth as armor

All of the Lights

Kanye West Tribute Band

A maximalist anthem that fuses celebration with confession, using the image of light in all its forms—stage lights, police…

fame and surveillance guilt and self-justification fatherhood and estrangement

Infinity Fill Goose Down

Aesop Rock

Aesop Rock builds a dense allegory around farm-animal escape and surveillance-state paranoia, using the imagery of Animal Farm…

surveillance and control anxiety and hypervigilance complicity versus escape

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

Christmas In the Room

Sufjan Stevens

A quiet domestic carol that strips Christmas of all its commercial and decorative trappings and relocates the holiday's meaning…

domestic intimacy anti-consumerism presence versus decoration

Yankee and the Brave (ep. 4)

Run the Jewels

This interlude-style track opens RTJ4 with a radio-show framing device that quickly gives way to a dense, boastful verse trading…

outlaw persona and mythmaking police violence and self-preservation brotherhood and loyalty

The Working Hour

Tears for Fears

A meditation on institutional life and creative anxiety disguised as a workplace anthem, built around a long, brooding…

surveillance and judgment fear and self-doubt institutional conformity

The Agony of Laffitte

Spoon

A cryptic, industry-inflected kiss-off aimed at a music-business figure who's been caught performing sincerity rather than…

authenticity vs. image music industry disillusionment betrayal

Numbers

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk turn a numbing exercise in counting into a protest song, framing the reduction of a person to a numeral as a kind of…

dehumanization by bureaucracy loss of identity surveillance and control

Thrown Down

Fleetwood Mac

A Stevie Nicks composition for Fleetwood Mac's 2003 reunion album, this song circles a fraught reconciliation between two people…

romantic obsession broken trust self-abasement in love

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

Season of the Witch (From the Motion Picture "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark")

Lana Del Rey

This is Lana Del Rey's cover of Donovan's 1966 psychedelic classic, recorded for the horror anthology film it lends its title…

paranoia surveillance and being watched cultural anxiety

In the Court of the Crimson King (Abridged)

King Crimson

This is the title track and closer of King Crimson's 1969 debut, a dense allegorical procession of medieval-fantasy imagery that…

decay of empire and idealism surveillance and control ritual and pageantry

Beethoven (I Love To Listen)

Eurythmics

A propulsive, largely nonsensical dance-pop chant built around the fetishized repetition of a single composer's name,…

obsessive repetition performance and artifice gendered desire and control

Suburbia

Pet Shop Boys

A synth-pop portrait of teenage boredom curdling into low-level vandalism and petty violence in a nameless housing estate. Pet…

suburban ennui adolescent restlessness class and media spectacle

One Sweet Day

Mariah Carey

A grief ballad built around unspoken regret and deferred reunion, where the singer addresses a dead loved one directly,…

grief and mourning regret over words left unsaid faith and the afterlife

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

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

Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey's 1994 reading of the 1934 novelty standard turns a simple children's warning song into a full-scale gospel-pop…

surveillance and reward childhood obedience holiday anticipation

The Devil Is in the Details

The Chemical Brothers

An instrumental cue from The Chemical Brothers' score for the film Hanna, built around texture, pulse, and slow accumulation…

surveillance and threat precision versus chaos hidden danger

What's Going On

Marvin Gaye

A plea rather than a protest anthem, the song addresses family members directly to voice grief over war and civil unrest at…

Vietnam-era war weariness generational conflict police brutality