Results for “tradition as inertia”

Songs

Everything's Got 'Em

Harry Nilsson

A short, incantatory nursery-rhyme of a song from Nilsson's children's fable The Point!, establishing the conformist village…

conformity belonging vs. exclusion social conditioning

Crayon

Caribou

A brief, repetitive lyric about restless boredom and the vague urge to escape it, set inside what is otherwise an instrumentally…

boredom restlessness escapism

Frittering

Mercury Rev

A woozy, repetitive lament built on a single glacial image, this early Mercury Rev track circles a corrosive relationship…

erosion of self codependency escapism through intoxication

Easy to Slip

Little Feat

A short, melancholic meditation on emotional numbness after a breakup, where drifting into forgetfulness feels dangerously…

emotional numbness memory and forgetting romantic loss

Early In the Morning

Harry Nilsson

A traditional-blues lament about the aftermath of a lovers' quarrel, delivered as a loose, almost improvisational vamp built…

heartbreak and regret isolation blues tradition

Red House

Jimi Hendrix

A twelve-bar blues in the most traditional sense: a man walks to his lover's house only to find himself locked out, suspects…

romantic abandonment resilience through humor the blues tradition itself

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

La Mañanitas

Nat King Cole

This is Nat King Cole's rendition of "Las Mañanitas," the traditional Mexican birthday and saint's-day serenade, sung not as a…

birth and renewal communal celebration dawn as symbol

Courting Blues

Bert Jansch

A hushed, traditional-sounding love lyric built around a single reassurance repeated to a young woman: come lie beside me, no…

clandestine love youthful courtship reassurance and persuasion

C.C. Rider

Lead Belly

Lead Belly's take on the traditional "C.C. Rider" blues strips the song down to its call-and-response bones: a rolling…

betrayal and desire itinerant love (the "rider" figure) sexual boasting and fantasy

Rollin' and Tumblin'

Cream

Cream's version of this Delta blues standard strips the song down to a churning, harmonica-driven groove built on repetition and…

loss and abandonment restlessness travel as escape or fate

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

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

Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend

Thin Lizzy

This is Thin Lizzy's most explicitly Irish statement, a medley that stitches together fragments of traditional ballads with a…

Irish identity and heritage oral tradition and storytelling myth and heroism

Voodoo Chile Blues

Jimi Hendrix

This is the slow, extended blues incantation that Hendrix later compressed into 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return),' built around a…

self-mythology supernatural power cosmic/psychedelic imagery

Catfish Blues

Jimi Hendrix

This is Hendrix inhabiting the Delta blues tradition wholesale, taking a floating verse form passed down from Muddy Waters and…

desire and transformation infidelity and temptation restlessness/travel

Wayside / Back In Time

Gillian Welch

A ramshackle travelogue through drink, drift, and old-time Nashville nostalgia, stitched to a chorus that keeps yearning to…

wandering and dissipation nostalgia for a vanishing Nashville romantic loss

Gallis Pole

Lead Belly

Lead Belly's take on this ancient ballad (widely known as "The Maid Freed from the Gallows" in the folk tradition) turns a…

mortality and reprieve family loyalty versus self-interest folk justice and bribery

Pony Blues

Son House

A loose, half-spoken reworking of a traditional blues frame in which a horse becomes a vehicle for restlessness, desire, and…

restlessness and wandering the search for a lover freedom through motion

Once I Had a Woman

Jimi Hendrix

This is a raw, improvisatory blues lament built almost entirely on vamped repetition rather than a finished lyric. Hendrix works…

loss and longing obsessive devotion the blues tradition of the departed woman

Acuff-Rose

Uncle Tupelo

A short, plainspoken tribute to country music's staying power, built around the songwriting publishing house Acuff-Rose as…

musical heritage comfort and companionship everyday transcendence

Whole Lotta Love

Led Zeppelin

A blues-rock boast built almost entirely on sexual innuendo and repetition, where the lyric functions less as narrative than as…

sexual conquest desire and excess masculine bravado

Lawdy Mama

Cream

A straight twelve-bar blues built on stock lyric formulas about romantic suspicion and departure, delivered by Cream as a…

infidelity suspicion masculine detachment blues tradition

What'll I Do

Harry Nilsson

This is Nilsson's reading of Irving Berlin's 1924 standard, delivered as part of his second collection of pre-rock pop songs.…

heartbreak loneliness memory and photographs

Clyde

Waylon Jennings

A loose, novelty-style country blues number about a laid-back dog named Clyde who supposedly plays bass and sings the blues on a…

rural leisure comic anthropomorphism stubbornness/inertia

Car

Built to Spill

A hazy meditation on wanting revelation secondhand, "Car" pairs a plainspoken opening about borrowing a vehicle with a spiraling…

passive longing vicarious experience escape and inertia

Bleeding Heart

Jimi Hendrix

This is a slow blues lament built almost entirely from stock idioms of the genre -- loneliness, a woman's betrayal, weeping…

loneliness romantic betrayal emotional isolation

White Christmas

Otis Redding

Otis Redding takes the Irving Berlin standard and rebuilds it as soul testimony, stretching its plain, nostalgic lines into…

nostalgia longing devotion

Born Under a Bad Sign

Jimi Hendrix

This is Hendrix's take on a blues standard about fatalism and hard luck, stripped down to a single circling complaint. The song…

fatalism poverty and hardship isolation

Stormy Weather

Etta James

Etta James takes the 1933 Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler standard and strips it down to raw, aching testimony, using weather as an…

heartbreak and abandonment weather as emotional metaphor spiritual longing

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Kacey Musgraves

This is a cover of the 1953 novelty Christmas standard, performed straight rather than reinvented, letting a child's absurd,…

childhood wish-fulfillment comic absurdity holiday tradition

Crocodile Rock

Elton John

A pastiche of early rock and roll nostalgia, built around an invented dance craze and a lost teenage romance. The song uses…

nostalgia lost youth first love

Must Be Santa

Bob Dylan

Dylan's version of the polka novelty song plays it almost entirely straight as a call-and-response Christmas romp, building…

holiday tradition Americana kitsch absurdist humor

Little Motel

Modest Mouse

A relationship curdles into a war of small cruelties, narrated with the strange calm of someone who has already decided the…

romantic disintegration passive-aggression mutual resentment

Caring Is Creepy

The Shins

A woozy, image-dense monologue about self-protection and emotional avoidance dressed up in surreal, almost dreamlike language.…

emotional avoidance self-deception aging and inertia

I'll Fly Away

Mississippi John Hurt

This is less a full performance than a fragment captured on tape: Mississippi John Hurt sings the familiar gospel chorus of the…

incompleteness oral tradition humility

Silent Night

The Temptations

This is a Motown vocal group's reworking of the classic carol, wrapped in a spoken-word frame borrowed from 'Twas the Night…

communal peace holiday tradition spiritual reverence

Country Christmas

Loretta Lynn

A nostalgic, plainspoken carol that recreates a rural Appalachian childhood Christmas through small domestic details rather than…

nostalgia family and home rural tradition

A.M. 180

Grandaddy

A slight, hazy love song built almost entirely out of anti-events: no plot, no conflict, just a wish to be near someone and do…

companionship over accomplishment fear of losing someone through neglect romanticizing inertia

Bushes and Briars

Sandy Denny

A meditation on empty churches and forgotten faith, framed as a solitary walker's observation of a Sunday service she stands…

religious doubt rural isolation decay of tradition