Results for “surveillance and policing”

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

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

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

Holes

Mercury Rev

"Holes" is a hazy, impressionistic meditation on loss and the failure of memory to hold together, built almost entirely from…

memory and forgetting grief disorientation

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

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

In the City

The Jam

A debut single that doubles as a manifesto, announcing a generational voice against the backdrop of late-70s urban Britain. It's…

generational conflict youth identity urban alienation

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

Work

Gang Starr

A boastful street-level anthem built around the double meaning of 'work' as both hustle/grind and criminal labor, delivered with…

hustler ethic street surveillance and paranoia status and reputation

Heads Will Roll

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A dancefloor incantation built on a beheading command, this track turns a nightclub into a site of ecstatic dissolution. Karen O…

ecstatic dissolution surveillance/spectacle of the body ritual and repetition

You Need To Calm Down

Taylor Swift

A bright, bubblegum pop track that pivots halfway through from scolding online trolls to a broader plea for LGBTQ acceptance.…

online harassment LGBTQ solidarity celebrity feuds

Oxford Comma

Vampire Weekend

A jaunty, harpsichord-inflected pop song that uses a grammar joke as a launching pad for a satire of upper-crust pretension and…

class and privilege cultural tourism and appropriation linguistic pedantry vs authenticity