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
The Kinks
A naive young man recounts his disorienting, thrilling encounter with Lola, a nightclub companion whose gender identity…
gender fluidity and identity sexual awakening innocence versus experience
The Doors
A driving, insistent rock song built almost entirely around one imperative: push past the limits of ordinary perception and…
transcendence and liminality desire and intoxication confinement versus freedom
Curtis Mayfield
A eulogy that refuses to sentimentalize its subject, using the death of a small-time hustler named Freddie as a blunt instrument…
addiction and exploitation urban poverty complicity and blame
Solange
Solange catalogs a long list of failed coping mechanisms for an unnamed sorrow, building an inventory of avoidance that…
avoidance and denial depression/emotional exhaustion consumerism as false comfort
Aretha Franklin
This is a driving-metaphor party song: sex and romance recast as a joyride down an open highway in a pink Cadillac. It's…
romantic/sexual liberation escape and momentum playfulness and flirtation