Results for “youthful pleasure-seeking”

Songs

California Sun

Ramones

This is the Ramones' cover of a 1964 surf-pop nugget, stripped down and sped up into a blast of bubblegum escapism. It's not a…

escapism idealized geography youthful pleasure-seeking

In the City

The Jam

A brisk punk-era manifesto that frames the city as both battleground and stage for youthful self-assertion. The narrator speaks…

generational conflict youthful defiance urban alienation

Denis

Blondie

"Denis" is a girl-group pastiche dressed up in new wave attitude: a breathless, repetitive crush song built almost entirely…

infatuation teenage devotion nostalgia/pastiche

Back Up Train

Al Green

A young man addresses a train conductor directly, pleading for the impossible: reverse the train's direction so he can return to…

regret and reversal longing/separation loneliness

Thunder Road

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

409

The Beach Boys

"409" is an early Beach Boys car song that treats a Chevrolet muscle car like a lover and a racehorse at once, celebrating…

car culture youthful aspiration/consumerism masculinity and status

Rock & Roll

The Velvet Underground

A simple origin myth for a solitary listener, Jenny, whose bored suburban childhood is transformed the moment she finds a radio…

salvation through music suburban alienation adolescence

All the Young Dudes (David Bowie & Ian Hunter Vocal)

Mott the Hoople

A glam-rock anthem that assembles a cast of disaffected, gender-bending teenagers and hands them a vague, urgent 'news' to…

generational rupture glam identity and androgyny disaffection with 60s idealism

Changes

David Bowie

A song about self-reinvention that treats identity as something perpetually in motion rather than a fixed achievement. Bowie…

self-reinvention generational conflict identity instability

Disorder

Joy Division

Disorder opens Unknown Pleasures with a portrait of dissociation, a speaker who registers the world's speed and violence but…

emotional numbness dissociation longing for normalcy

In the Street

Big Star

A teenage hangout anthem reduced to its essential ingredients: boredom, minor mischief, and the pleasure of doing nothing with…

adolescent boredom small-town restlessness friendship/companionship

In My Life

The Beatles

A meditation on memory that moves from cataloguing remembered places and people to a declaration of present love, arguing that…

memory and nostalgia mortality the persistence of the past

Fight the Power

Public Enemy

A protest anthem built as a dance record: Chuck D argues that political consciousness and Black pride are things you build in…

Black pride and self-definition institutional racism who gets to be a national hero