Results for “trust versus doubt”

Songs

It's All Right

Sam Cooke

A deceptively simple reassurance song built almost entirely on a single repeated phrase, in which the narrator talks himself…

romantic insecurity self-persuasion trust versus doubt

Show Me Love

Robyn

A teenage Robyn's breakout single is a straightforward Eurodance declaration of romantic surrender, built around a repeated plea…

romantic vulnerability independence versus surrender demand for reciprocity

How Can I Be Sure of You (Previously unreleased)

Harry Nilsson

A small argument about the color of the sun spirals into a meditation on epistemic vertigo -- how do you trust anything,…

epistemological doubt trust and betrayal perception vs. reality

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

Because the Night

Patti Smith

A co-write between Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen, this song turns nighttime into a sanctuary where desire overrides doubt…

desire as sustenance night as refuge doubt versus surrender

Be Sweet

Japanese Breakfast

A synth-pop breakup plea dressed up as a demand rather than a lament: the narrator wants proof of good faith from an unreliable…

conditional love self-deception desire versus doubt

Archangel

Burial

Built almost entirely from pitch-shifted vocal samples looping a handful of phrases, this track uses repetition and vocal…

isolation longing for belonging fragile intimacy

Africa

Weezer

This is Weezer's note-for-note cover of Toto's 1982 hit, so the words themselves are unchanged; what shifts is the frame. Sung…

longing and distance exoticized landscape as metaphor devotion versus escape

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

I Found a Reason

Cat Power

This is Cat Power's slowed, hushed reinterpretation of a Velvet Underground song, stripping away the original's arrangement in…

faith and doubt devotion persuasion versus surrender

Thunderbuck Ram

Mott the Hoople

An instrumental-heavy Mott the Hoople track built around a sparse, questioning lyric that reads almost as a fragment or an…

existential doubt hope for change fatalism versus agency

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Death Cab for Cutie

A quiet, acoustic vow of companionship extended past death, stripped of religious comfort. The narrator promises to follow a…

mortality secular love versus religious afterlife doubt and disillusionment with organized religion

Still D.R.E.

Dr. Dre

A comeback statement dressed as a boast, in which Dr. Dre answers years of speculation about his relevance by cataloguing…

reputation and legacy authenticity versus commercialism loyalty to origin/streets

Sexy Boy

Air

A woozy, vocoder-warped taunt built almost entirely out of one phrase, "Sexy Boy" pokes at masculine vanity and celebrity…

vanity and self-image celebrity and consumerism irony versus seduction

Taking Chances

Sharon Van Etten

A quiet, unresolved meditation on staying in a relationship out of habit and old attraction rather than certainty. The song…

ambivalence in love risk and self-doubt inertia versus escape

Change Gonna Come

Otis Redding

Otis Redding's cover of Sam Cooke's civil-rights-era anthem strips the original's orchestral polish into raw, gospel-inflected…

racial oppression and hope endurance and exhaustion fear of mortality

Shut Up Kiss Me

Angel Olsen

A driving, garage-pop declaration of romantic persistence, in which the narrator refuses to let a faltering relationship end…

romantic persistence refusal to quit desire versus communication

oh baby

LCD Soundsystem

An opener built as a slow, hushed invocation—half lullaby, half plea—where James Murphy addresses a lover (or a version of…

vulnerability and reassurance doubt within intimacy addiction and self-forgiveness

All That You Have Is Your Soul

Emmylou Harris

A mother's warning becomes a hard-won personal confession, as the narrator traces her own failures to heed advice about…

inherited wisdom moral compromise self-possession versus loss of self

He Got Game

Public Enemy

This is a live-show excerpt built around crowd participation rather than a fully worked-through song, using the…

media saturation and control spiritual doubt and moral collapse authenticity versus empty spectacle

Are You Even Real?

James Blake

A hazy meditation on romantic infatuation so intense it blurs into hallucination, James Blake's song treats intimacy as…

infatuation and disbelief dissolution of time psychedelic imagery of love

Say Yes

Elliott Smith

A short, quiet song built around the phrase "morning after," which Smith turns from a hangover cliché into a metaphor for…

fragile hope fatalism vs. change romantic uncertainty

Academy Fight Song

Mission of Burma

A defiant refusal-of-conformity anthem that curdles into self-doubt by its final lines. The song sets up an adversarial…

conformity vs individuality institutional control self-doubt

Unbelievers

Vampire Weekend

A song about living without religious certainty while still wanting the comforts faith supposedly offers. It frames doubt not as…

religious doubt mortality secular loneliness

Northern Sky

Nick Drake

A quiet love song built almost entirely from negation and plea, in which the speaker describes a lifetime of numbness suddenly…

awakening through love isolation and wandering doubt and vulnerability

Crosseyed and Painless

Talking Heads

A jittery, funk-driven interrogation of what it means to trust information at all, framed through a narrator who feels…

epistemological doubt information overload identity dissolution

For Your Precious Love

Otis Redding

Otis Redding takes the Impressions' original devotional ballad and turns it into a raw, almost pleading testimony of gratitude…

devotion gratitude doubt from outsiders

The Cutter

Echo & the Bunnymen

A dense, incantatory piece of post-punk imagery in which the speaker pleads for mercy from some undefined judging or cutting…

self-doubt judgment and punishment survival

Red Eyes

The War on Drugs

Red Eyes is a rush of ecstatic, half-legible sentiment stitched to a driving, anthemic rock arrangement, where the lyric's…

devotion under strain spiritual/emotional darkness self-doubt

Kathy's Song

Simon Jäger

A quiet, confessional love song built around the sound of rain, in which the narrator, separated from his beloved, uses the…

distance and longing artistic self-doubt loss of faith/belief

Eden

Talk Talk

"Eden" opens Spirit of Eden with a fragmentary, hymn-like meditation on loss and belief, using biblical imagery of Eden and…

loss of innocence religious doubt and faith death and rebirth

You and I

Betty Davis

A slow, confessional ballad in which Betty Davis strips away the funk-rock swagger of her usual persona to admit vulnerability…

emotional vulnerability the gap between maturity and desire dependency versus independence

Foolish Heart

Alison Krauss

A young narrator rehearses her own exit from a doomed relationship, arguing herself into leaving before she can be hurt again.…

self-protection versus vulnerability romantic disillusionment pride as armor

Love Will Find a Way

Yes

A commercial-rock love song built on hesitation rather than certainty, in which the narrator wavers between wanting closeness…

romantic ambivalence reassurance through repetition emotional confusion

I Gotta Find Peace of Mind

Lauryn Hill

A raw, semi-improvised confessional performed live, in which Hill wrestles aloud with an internal voice of doubt and control…

psychological bondage vs. freedom spiritual surrender toxic control in relationships

Beautiful

Carole King

A gentle self-help anthem disguised as a pop song, in which the narrator talks herself (and the listener) into projecting warmth…

self-affirmation urban alienation emotional resilience

I Don't Want to Know

Fleetwood Mac

A folk-rock kiss-off built on willful avoidance: the narrator insists they won't ask why a relationship is ending, framing that…

denial as self-protection romantic exhaustion emotional withholding

#9 Dream

R.E.M.

A hazy recollection of a dream that blurs into music itself, built almost entirely from sensory fragments and a nonsense chant…

dream logic memory and doubt transcendence through sound

A Change Is Gonna Come

Sam Cooke

A first-person testimony of endurance under racial oppression, built around a single hope that refuses to die even as evidence…

racial injustice endurance faith and doubt

I'm the Man Who Loves You

Wilco

A song about the gap between feeling and articulation, built around a narrator trying to write a love letter he can't finish.…

failure of language romantic devotion self-doubt