PJ Harvey
A duet-style meditation on a fleeting New York encounter, sung against a backdrop of helicopters, sunsets and skyscrapers that…
transience of connection urban alienation desire versus impermanence
Pavement
A loose, half-improvised sketch from Pavement's most polished album, built around family lineage, corrupt authority, and a wry…
inherited guilt paranoia and surveillance authority and corruption
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
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
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
The Fall
A Mark E. Smith sound-poem built almost entirely around one phrase, worked through its multiple possible meanings — a drug, a…
ambiguity of language youthful drift surveillance/paranoia
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
Guided by Voices
A compact power-pop confession about being trailed by an old, adolescent version of oneself. The narrator can't explain why…
arrested development loss of self-control in relationships surveillance of the self
The Notorious B.I.G.
A victory-lap posse cut that doubles as a meditation on the isolation success brings. Over a buoyant, sample-driven groove,…
success and isolation envy and betrayal paranoia/surveillance
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
David Bowie
A voyeuristic narrator watches a street-corner seduction unfold from a hotel window, alternately mocking and envying the…
voyeurism and surveillance queer desire and rivalry gender performance and camp
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
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
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
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
Wire
Wire recast the nativity story as a satire of digital-age commerce and self-promotion, splicing biblical imagery with the…
technology and faith commodification of belief surveillance and self-branding
The Kinks
The Kinks revive Lola from their earlier hit only to trap her in a nervous, self-lacerating anthem about anxiety and…
paranoia and mental illness self-sabotage fame and surveillance anxiety
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
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
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
Built to Spill
A guitarist-narrator watches a relationship or friendship unravel through the metaphor of broken, uncountable pieces and faulty…
fractured identity failed reconciliation self-consciousness and surveillance
Solange
Solange catalogs every failed strategy for numbing an unnamed grief or unease, building a list of avoidance tactics before…
avoidance and denial emotional exhaustion consumerism as coping mechanism
Willie Nelson
This is a cover of the Creedence Clearwater Revival standard, and Willie Nelson's version leans into its plainspoken, riddling…
paradox and contradiction impending trouble endurance through time
Sharon Van Etten
A quietly devastating account of an abusive relationship told with disorienting flatness, where the speaker's memories of…
domestic abuse and control normalization of harm survival and self-deception