Results for “the nativity story”

Songs

The Story

Brandi Carlile

Brandi Carlile's title track builds a life's worth of scars and travels into a single argument: experience is meaningless…

intimacy as validation hidden suffering behind a public self devotion and destiny

Who Tells Your Story

The Roots

A meditation on legacy and mortality built around the Hamilton-borrowed refrain about who survives to tell one's story. Three…

legacy and memory mortality Black identity and violence

Tour Stories

Souls of Mischief

A road-diary rap where four Oakland MCs trade verses about the surreal mundanity of touring the world -- customs hassles,…

travel and displacement hustle and reward disbelief at success

Story of My Life

One Direction

A folk-tinged ballad from One Direction's third album that trades their usual romantic optimism for a more melancholy, almost…

cyclical heartbreak self-mythologizing emotional exhaustion

Sea Stories

Sturgill Simpson

A first-person memoir-in-song about the narrator's years as an enlisted sailor, moving from grandfatherly advice about survival…

military service and disillusionment masculine coming-of-age nostalgia versus regret

Through the Falling Rain (Love Story)

Teddy Pendergrass

A testimony of romantic survival built almost entirely from repetition and affirmation: a narrator who was once burned by a love…

endurance of love disillusionment and recovery faith and patience

Indian Girl (An Adult Story)

Slick Rick

This is a raunchy, cartoonish narrative told in Slick Rick's signature storytelling style, built around a parody of the Davy…

seduction and conquest toxic masculinity as comedy cultural stereotyping

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

It Wasn't His Child

Trisha Yearwood

A Christmas song that retells the nativity from Joseph's point of view, foregrounding the quiet discomfort and devotion of a man…

adoptive fatherhood faith and acceptance the nativity story

Let's Put Christ Back In Christmas

Tammy Wynette

A straightforward devotional Christmas song that argues for restoring religious meaning to a holiday the singer feels has…

religious devotion nostalgia for tradition commercialization of Christmas

Silent Night

Johnny Cash

This is Johnny Cash's straightforward reading of the traditional carol, sung without irony or reinterpretation. The interest…

nativity reverence light versus darkness

The Choice Is Yours

Black Sheep

A jubilant, self-introducing party track from the Native Tongues era in which Dres lays out his identity and credentials over a…

self-definition and individuality group/crew loyalty (Native Tongues) binary choice as rhetorical device

The First Noel

Emmylou Harris

This is a straightforward reading of the traditional English carol, with Emmylou Harris's plainspoken vocal treating the…

nativity narrative revelation and light humility of shepherds

Was a Sunny Day

Paul Simon

A breezy, sing-song surface hides a small, deadpan love story about a sailor and a small-town girl. Paul Simon builds the song…

nostalgia innocence and Americana romantic idealization

Women

Def Leppard

"Women" is the opening track of Hysteria, a glam-metal creation myth that repurposes the Garden of Eden story as an excuse for a…

desire and temptation mythologizing women as archetype creation/origin story

Light of the Stable

Emmylou Harris

This is a straightforward Nativity carol built around simple exhortation and refrain, casting the singer as one voice among a…

nativity/birth of Christ communal worship guidance and light

Children, Go Where I Send Thee

Kenny Rogers

This is Kenny Rogers' reading of a traditional African American spiritual counting song, built on a cumulative list structure…

cumulative/call-and-response tradition religious catechism communal memory and repetition

Breakadawn

De La Soul

A loose, free-associative posse-cut style track from De La Soul's most abstract album, built on stream-of-consciousness wordplay…

identity and origin hip-hop lineage and Native Tongues affiliation industry skepticism

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen / We Three Kings

Barenaked Ladies

This is a straightforward medley of two traditional English carols, performed rather than reinterpreted lyrically. Barenaked…

nativity and salvation guidance and light worship and sacrifice

Children Go Where I Send Thee

Nick Lowe

This is Nick Lowe's arrangement of a traditional African American spiritual cumulative counting song, built around a…

religious catechism cumulative counting communal call-and-response

Stakes Is High

De La Soul

A weary state-of-hip-hop address from De La Soul, cataloguing everything the group has grown sick of in mid-90s rap culture…

disillusionment with commercial rap materialism and misplaced love urban survival and violence

1970 Somethin'

The Notorious B.I.G.

This posthumously released Biggie track builds a fictionalized autobiography from birth to incarceration, framing it as origin…

mythologized origin story street life and survival mortality and alternate futures

Giorgio by Moroder

Daft Punk

This track is less a song than a spoken-word portrait, built entirely from Giorgio Moroder's own recollection of becoming a…

artistic origin story risk and self-belief technological innovation

Blogging

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

Go Tell It On the Mountain

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton's rendition of the traditional African American spiritual carol is a straightforward proclamation of the Nativity…

proclamation of good news communal celebration awe and reverence

Shenandoah

Pete Seeger

This traditional American work song, sung here by Pete Seeger in his folk-revival style, tells a fragmentary story of a white…

longing and distance cultural and racial encounter exploitation disguised as courtship

The Mariner's Revenge Song

The Decemberists

A revenge ballad told as a story-within-a-story: a man narrates to his childhood tormentor how he tracked him down for ruining…

revenge and obsession childhood trauma maternal loss

Samson and Delilah

The Staple Singers

This is the Staples' take on an old African American spiritual, retelling the biblical Samson story as a folk ballad while a…

betrayal hidden strength divine retribution

Riverside

America

A breezy, deliberately minimal folk-rock sketch about choosing detachment over ambition. The song trades narrative for mood,…

self-sufficiency withdrawal from society contentment

The Man With All the Toys

The Beach Boys

A brief, cheerful Christmas novelty about a passerby who peeks in on Santa's workshop and reports back what he saw. It's less a…

Christmas wonder secrecy and restraint childlike observation

When We Were Young

Adele

A chance reunion at a party becomes the occasion for Adele to measure the distance between who she was and who she's become. The…

nostalgia aging and mortality lost love

Can't Let Go

Lucinda Williams

A song about the gap between knowing a relationship is finished and being unable to act on that knowledge. Built almost entirely…

romantic obsession denial versus awareness emotional paralysis

Other Side to This Life

Karen Dalton

A restless, loosely-strummed confession about rootlessness, sung by a narrator who admits she has no plan and no fixed home. The…

itinerancy and homelessness confession and intimacy disillusionment with conventional life

Foggy Mental Breakdown

Steppenwolf

A retreat-to-the-wilderness song in which a narrator climbs away from a city that has worn him down and shouts his grievance…

urban alienation isolation as cure mental exhaustion

Diamond

Joan Armatrading

A straightforward declaration of devotion built from stacked hyperbolic vows and a central gem metaphor for the beloved. The…

devotion and vowing idealization of a partner constancy through hardship

Amie

Damien Rice

A quiet, understated plea for reassurance from someone watching a relationship drain of its wonder. The narrator dresses up…

loss of wonder fading belief in a relationship nostalgia for shared faith

Rotting In Vain

Korn

A short, violent song about dependency on suffering itself — the narrator admits he feeds on pain (his own and someone else's)…

addiction to suffering emotional dependency self-disgust

Come Wind Come Rain

Vashti Bunyan

A brief, folk-song sketch of itinerant travel, sung with plain acceptance of whatever weather comes. It reads less like a story…

itinerancy acceptance of nature simplicity of rural life

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

People Like Us

The Mamas & the Papas

A brief, almost incantatory celebration of romantic love transforming a shabby setting into something sacred. The song leans on…

transformative love domesticity contentment