Talking Heads
A preacher-like voice addresses an unnamed "you," cataloguing the accidental furniture of a middle-class life and then asking…
mid-life disorientation the unearned life time as drift
Otis Redding
A man who has moved across the country sits by the water in San Francisco, watching ships come and go, admitting he is doing…
idleness and drift migration and displacement loneliness
Bruce Springsteen
A young man stands in a driveway trying to talk a woman named Mary into getting in his car and leaving town with him. Over five…
escape and flight the limits of romantic promise small-town decay
David Bowie
A radio drama in miniature: a space agency counts an astronaut into orbit, celebrates him as a media sensation, then loses him.…
alienation celebrity and spectacle technological failure
Fleetwood Mac
A breakup song delivered as calm prophecy rather than complaint. The singer grants her departing partner the freedom he asked…
romantic separation loneliness as consequence foresight and prophecy
Leonard Cohen
A three-part meditation in waltz time that moves from a woman by a river, to Christ walking on water, and back to the woman…
erotic love as spiritual apprehension faith and doubt surrender to a guide