Results for “the unreliability of self-perception”

Songs

Self Control

Frank Ocean

A wistful, fragmented account of a fading summer romance that never quite resolved into anything permanent, sung from the…

unrequited or asymmetrical desire nostalgia for a shared past that never fully existed self-restraint and its collapse

My Tulpa

Magazine

A tense, self-lacerating address to a phantom or projection—Devoto's title borrows the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a 'tulpa,' a…

obsession and self-deception desire mixed with fear the unreliability of perception

Turn Out the Lights

Julien Baker

A quiet, unflinching account of a mind alone at night, where the speaker admits to self-harm ideation without melodrama and asks…

depression and isolation self-harm ideation asking for help while deflecting it

Borderline (An Ode to Self Care)

Solange

A hushed, weary meditation on withdrawal as an act of love, this A Seat at the Table track frames stepping back from public and…

burnout and self-care solidarity under pressure the personal as political

Fiction

The xx

A short, spare meditation on the way absence corrodes trust in a relationship, where the beloved's reality becomes…

insecurity in intimacy fear of abandonment the unreliability of perception

Live Oak

Jason Isbell

A murder ballad disguised as a confession of self-improvement, in which the narrator's claim to have left his violent past…

duality of self violence and love intertwined addiction as haunting past self

Big Dipper

Built to Spill

A woozy meditation on childhood perception, drinking, and loneliness, built around the image of the Big Dipper as an unreliable…

perception vs. reality loneliness alcohol and self-deception

Chasing a Bee

Mercury Rev

A hazy, druggy fable about pursuit and containment, where sunlit imagery of seduction and pleasure keeps curdling into images of…

intoxication and altered perception freedom versus entrapment instability of the self

Jack the Stripper / Fairies Wear Boots

Black Sabbath

This closing track from Paranoid pairs a lurching instrumental jam with a half-comic, half-paranoid account of drug-induced…

drug paranoia unreliable perception self-deception

Street Flash

Animal Collective

A song about the paralysis of anxious self-consciousness and the small, almost accidental relief of stepping outside. It moves…

anxiety and self-criticism domestic clutter as psychological weight inertia versus movement

Cousin Dupree

Steely Dan

A slack, aging drifter moves onto his aunt's couch and develops an unseemly fixation on his young cousin, pitching her a…

arrested development delusional self-image taboo desire played for laughs

I Am a Scientist

Guided by Voices

A short, deceptively simple lo-fi anthem in which the narrator cycles through professional identities—scientist, journalist,…

self-examination addiction and escape art as self-medication

Every Time the Sun Comes Up

Sharon Van Etten

This is Sharon Van Etten at her loosest and most winking, a track built on a single sardonic refrain about self-sabotage rather…

self-sabotage domestic disorder irony and deflection

All My Favorite Songs

Weezer

A catalog of small self-contradictions strung together into a chorus of self-diagnosis, this song treats confusion about one's…

self-contradiction anxiety and self-diagnosis ambivalence toward pleasure

Me and My Husband

Mitski

A brief, waltz-like song that frames marriage not as romance but as a bulwark against mortality and self-loathing. The…

mortality and impermanence self-erasure marriage as survival strategy

Strangers

Portishead

A hazy meditation on the isolation of subjective perception, built from a handful of repeated fragments rather than a developed…

solipsism and isolation the unreliability of perception alienation within intimacy

All Apologies

Nirvana

A closing statement of exhaustion dressed as a lullaby, where the singer offers blanket apology and self-erasure instead of…

self-effacement marriage and domesticity guilt and blame

So Like Candy

Elvis Costello

A jilted narrator sifts through the physical debris a lover has left behind, treating each object as evidence of who she was and…

romantic obsession grief and loss self-deception

Toni

Interpol

A drive down a California highway becomes the frame for a meditation on self-improvement, ambition, and the gap between stated…

self-reinvention ambition versus stagnation perception and denial

I Don't Live Here Anymore

The War on Drugs

A song about outgrowing a former self and a former place, told through the loosening grip of memory and the strange comfort of…

self-transformation nostalgia and its unreliability displacement

Jim Cain

Bill Callahan

A restless, aphoristic meditation on identity and self-narration, borrowing its title's initials to nod toward the noir novelist…

self-mythology impermanence of mood the unreliability of narrative

All Mixed Up

The Cars

A closing-track meditation on a relationship (or self) that never quite resolves into anything solid, built almost entirely on…

emotional confusion unreliable intimacy self-deception

Anti-Hero

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift turns a self-lacerating confessional into a singalong chorus, cataloguing her worst self-perceptions—insomnia,…

self-loathing and self-awareness fame and disproportion fear of abandonment

Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales

Car Seat Headrest

A meditation on addiction, self-destruction, and the possibility of change, filtered through the recurring image of driving…

addiction and self-destruction shame and self-loathing the possibility of redemption

Miss Misery

Elliott Smith

A stripped-down confession of failed self-repair, written for the film Good Will Hunting but functioning as a self-contained…

self-medication and denial romantic abandonment performed resilience

Hot & Heavy

Lucy Dacus

Lucy Dacus revisits an old, formative relationship with a former self who has since become someone else entirely — more…

nostalgia and revisitation growth and self-transformation guilt and self-protection

Bird On a Wire

Leonard Cohen

A confession and an apology run together as the speaker compares himself to a series of unstable, straining images to explain…

freedom versus commitment guilt and self-forgiveness instability of the self

Boats to Build

Guy Clark

Guy Clark turns the craft of boatbuilding into a meditation on making a life with your own hands and getting on with it before…

mortality and urgency craftsmanship as self-definition self-reliance

Coming Up Roses

Elliott Smith

A hallucinatory address to a self or double, tracking a slow poisoning that the speaker frames as a kind of blooming. The song…

addiction and self-destruction dissociation from the self toxic inheritance

Definitive Gaze

Magazine

A short, jagged meditation on the trap of self-consciousness, where the singer's supposed clarity of vision becomes a curse…

self-consciousness detachment perception vs reality

Reason to Believe

Karen Dalton

Karen Dalton's reading of the Tim Hardin standard turns a folk-pop lament into something closer to a slow reckoning with…

self-deception emotional dependency betrayal

Everything Is Everything

Lauryn Hill

A meditation on cyclical change and self-determination that doubles as a virtuosic display of rap craft, this track pairs a…

cyclical change and renewal self-empowerment spiritual/religious syncretism

A Fond Farewell

Elliott Smith

A quiet, devastating self-elegy disguised as a song about someone else, in which the narrator uses the third person to describe…

addiction self-annihilation denial and dissociation

An Ocean In Between the Waves

The War on Drugs

An instrumental-forward, motorik rock track from Lost in the Dream whose lyrics function almost as texture rather than narrative…

emotional distance self-doubt longing

Goin' Against Your Mind

Built to Spill

Built to Spill open their 2006 album with a long, guitar-driven meditation on doubt and self-contradiction, built from a handful…

self-doubt masculinity and its expectations religious skepticism

Always This Way

Laura Marling

A quiet meditation on loss and self-accounting, where the narrator processes the departure of someone close by returning…

heartbreak and abandonment self-reliance as coping mechanism fate versus choice

Frozen

Madonna

A meditation on emotional guardedness set to icy, spiritually-inflected electronica, the song addresses a lover whose…

emotional withholding spiritual awakening vulnerability vs. self-protection

Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)

Pixies

This is the slowed, dreamier remake of a song originally built on distorted urgency, and the shift in tempo changes its meaning:…

self-destruction reframed as escape transformation through death or disappearance oceanic myth-making

Identity

X‐Ray Spex

A short, hammering punk track that treats the idea of self-image as a literal wound. Poly Styrene repeats the word "identity"…

media saturation self-image and alienation consumer culture

Don't Follow

Alice in Chains

A stripped-down acoustic confession from a narrator who insists on leaving while quietly begging to be brought back. The song…

addiction and self-destruction isolation vs. longing for home guilt and self-recrimination