20 Songs About Schizophrenia

Somebody’s Watching Me is a classic song about schizophrenia and paranoia. The song is by American singer, Rockwell.

Also featuring guest vocals by Michael Jackson in the chorus, the song was released on January 14, 1984. A number 2 hit on the Hot 100, not many people observe the lyrics, which is quite troubling.

The lyrics talk about the narrator feeling like someone is always watching him, and despite checking everywhere in his house, and finding no one, still not being able to shake that feeling. Schizophrenia often makes one feel like they are being watched, stalked, or persecuted.

The music video of the song also expertly showcases this aspect of the affliction and has gone on to become something of a classic among music videos of the time.

Papercut is an aggressive song about not feeling mentally well. The song is by the legendary nu-metal band, Linkin Park.

Released on June 18, 2001, the song is made up of rap and sung verses, each detailing the feelings of the narrator. The narrator not only feels like they have become a different person but also like there’s someone else inside of them.

The other person, or face behind their own, is someone who is actively wishing for the narrator’s downfall, and the realization that this person exists is making the narrator’s paranoia and anxiety even worse.

As with the previous entry on the list, there is a music video for Papercut too, which uses the metaphor of a stranger living within the walls of a house to denote the stranger that the narrator feels is inside them.

Men at Work’s Who Can It Be Now? is another classic song about feeling disturbed. The song was released on May 25, 1981.

Continuing the theme of feeling disturbed, the song details the experiences of a narrator who feels like there are people shuffling around outside his house, right outside the door.

Written by the lead singer, Colin Hay, about living next to substance dealers and clients confusing his house for theirs, the song has since taken on a new meaning. Not only does the song come across as a perfect metaphor for the anxiety and paranoia that schizophrenia brings, but the dancy and happy tune juxtaposition with the terrifying lyrics makes for an addictive song.

The music video for the song doesn’t add to the lyrics but instead works as a thematic representation of the unrest and unwellness that the singer feels.

King Crimson’s seminal 21st Century Schizoid Man is a thunderous song about schizophrenia.

The first track on their debut album, the song describes the modern man falling into the sort of disarray and mental disorientation that schizophrenia epitomizes through the ills of the world.

By juxtaposing the Vietnam war, Agent Orange, and the civil unrest of the 1960s, King Crimson manages to create a track that is both about suffering from schizophrenia, and also about how the world we live in makes it impossible to be anything else.

Musically, the song is a tour de force of rock mixed with jazz that takes the best of both genres and creates something entirely new. This new genre would then be called progressive rock, and King Crimson is one of the greatest bands in that genre.

The English band Radiohead is known for making songs about disorientation. Paranoid Android is the crown jewel in their discography.

A prog-rock-influenced track, the song details the narrator falling more and more into the hole of their schizophrenia, which they’ve dubbed unborn chicken voices in their head.

Through singer Thom Yorke’s hypnotic falsetto, and the rest of the band’s superb instrumentation, Paranoid Android takes the singer through a six-and-a-half-minute journey filled with images and soundscape straight out of a nightmare.

In order to emulate that feeling, the band released a cartoon video where the characters go through an urban hellscape full of debauchery, violence, and terror that only gets stranger and stranger as the video goes on.

The Pixies song Where Is My Mind is a mellower fare than the rest of the list. That mellowness onlies belies its subject matter.

As the song’s title suggests, it is about a person who has quite literally lost their mind, and that too in a physical sense. Released on March 21, 1988, the song is perhaps the best-known one in the band’s catalog.

Though most people have had an out-of-body experience, where they feel like they’re floating outside of their body, looking at it, the song describes an out-of-mind experience, where the narrator feels like their mind is floating away.

Schizophrenia is a severe and often violent mental disorder, but sometimes, it can also feel like being out of sorts with yourself, and this Pixies song is perhaps the best example of that feeling.

Paranoid by Black Sabbath is perhaps the first song with that name. The song was released on August 7, 1970, by Black Sabbath.

The song is a cry for help by someone who doesn’t know what they want to do with their life. The case here isn’t just that the narrator lacks direction, but they feel like their mind cannot be trusted.

Despite its dour subject matter, and the fate of the narrator, the song is a rare positive one on the list as the affected singer tells the listener and people in general that, since they are not like him, they ought to enjoy life.

The tragedy is that while the narrator wants the best for others, he is locked in an endless internal struggle, not knowing who he is exactly fighting, with the sad answer being: himself.

Basket Case is a rock song by the American band Green Day. The song was released on August 29, 1994.

One of the band’s most famous and iconic tracks, it is based on the singer’s personal struggles with anxiety and panic disorder. Billie Joe Armstrong, the singer, wrote the song in order to allay his worries that he might be losing his mind.

The worry is displayed well in both the lyrics and the music video for the song. The lyrics describe the narrator talking to a doctor and then strangely, a prostitute, trying to understand why he feels the way he does to no avail.

The music video also adds to the medical aspect of the song by showing the entire band performing the song in a mental asylum of sorts, clearly unwell.

Unwell is a country-tinged alternative rock song about mental illness. The song is by the American band Matchbox Twenty.

Unlike many songs on this list, this one is a bit more optimistic, with the narrator constantly hoping that tomorrow might be better than how bad he feels today. In his own words, he’s not crazy, but just a little bit unwell.

In direct contrast with his optimism are all the descriptions of the ways his life is going off the rails, and his inability to even keep track or make sense of those things. The juxtaposition of the optimistic sentiment of the song and the descriptions in the lyrics make it a heartbreaking listen.

The music video also adds to the sentiment expressed in the song by showcasing the singer constantly worried about the state of his mind regardless of where he is. 

Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger portrays the exasperation that derangement brings.

In this song, which is a bit schizophrenic itself, the singer details all the many ways he believes he is failing in this world. From losing his lover, being tricked by businesses, and failing to achieve his potential, the song portrays a man’s descent into mental illness in a very jarring way.

Perfectly encapsulating the ennui felt by many during the late 1990s, as most of the great and revolutionary bands were either selling out or winding down, Flagpole Sitta shows a narrator who doesn’t know what’s going wrong in his life.

The problem could be everything, or it could be nothing, but the main thing that the narrator is left with is a sense of disarray, dissatisfaction, and the apathy which has left him sadder, madder, and lost.

Paranoid by Kanye West is the first song on the list about someone rather than the singer.

In this synth-tinged New Wave song, West describes his relations with a woman who is slowly losing her mind due to the belief that he is being unfaithful. Though West clearly denies any infidelity, the woman simply does not believe her, which is hurting their relationship. 

Though the subject matter is sad, as it is happening to someone else, the beat is very upbeat, and West seems like he is not taking the woman too seriously. However, it’s clear to see that the woman might not be completely right in the head and even dangerous.

The music video further explores that aspect of the song by featuring Rihanna as the woman in the song, racing through the night to try and kill her lover. 

David Bowie’s foray into industrial music, I’m Afraid of Americans is an anxiety-laden track.

Released on October 14, 1997, the song features the king of industrial music himself, Trent Reznor. Through Reznor’s help, Bowie creates a song that outwardly is about feeling anxiety about America’s impact on the world,  but the anxiety runs much deeper.

In essence, the song is about a character named Johnny who tries to shift the symptoms of his schizophrenia into feeling terrified of America. Whether or not his terror is justified, it is clear that Johnny is unwell and deeply unsettled.

The music video for the song portrays Trent Reznor stalking and then pretty much chasing David Bowie through the streets of New York as a visual representation of Johnny’s slip into lunacy.

Taylor Swift’s 2022 hit song Anti-Hero is about a whole host of mental derangements.

From anxiety, and self-loathing to depersonalization, Swift details all the way that she has slipped into a schizophrenic state of mind where she doesn’t know up or down. 

Despite its dour and frankly frightening subject matter and the detail in which Swift sings about them, the song has gone on to become one of her biggest hits. Many people have found solace in their own similar feelings through Swift’s song.

Anti-Hero also has a popular music video where Swift ascribes each of her derangements to a particular version of herself, and in an optimistic turn, they all find comfort in each other.

In this slow acoustic song by the nu-metal band, Slipknot, schizophrenia becomes a person.

The song, which is a continuation of the song Vermillion, showcases the narrator becoming enraptured by their own neurosis, finding a sick sense of joy and even enlightenment in the terrible feelings they harbor. The music reflects that feeling as it is the usual jangly fare that Slipknot is famous for.

Part 2 on the other hand is a slow song with just two acoustic guitars, a cello, and a piano, which then shows the result of the narrator indulging in or readily engulfing themselves in their illness, and thus becoming trapped. 

Both the songs have music videos, with the first video showing a girl living in a crowded city, feeling tortured. The second music video shows the girl peacefully lying on a field, dead.

I’ve Seen Footage is a song by the experimental Hip-Hop band Death Grips. The song comes from their landmark debut album, The Money Store.

The song describes a narrator who has lost his mind due to all the violence they have seen while living on the street. Coming usually from police brutality and other aspects of street life, the “footage” as he calls it, has left him paranoid and disarrayed.

The footage and his experience seeing it has left him what he calls “noided.” Noided is a feeling of extreme discomfort, nervousness, and fear.

Unable to do anything, the narrator feels trapped. I’ve Seen Footage is another example of a song where the narrator loses their mind through outside influences.

Psycho Killer by perhaps the most famous song by the American band, Talking Heads. 

The song details the thoughts of the titular psycho killer who is clearly going through some sort of mental breakdown that is making them do unspeakable things. Though not every mentally ill person devolves to violence, the subject matter of the song clearly is.

Released around the same time the infamous Son of Sam was active, the song has gone on to become something of a theme song for a variety of strange figures both in real life and in fiction.

What most people seem to forget is that the person in the song is a tragic figure who has no control over how their life is going. The person clearly doesn’t want to do the things they do, but they just can’t seem to help it.

U is a pensive and melancholic track by the celebrated rapper Kendrick Lamar. The song is from his 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly.

In direct contrast with another song on the album called i, which is more joyful and optimistic, U shows Kendrick delving deep into the dark recesses of his mind and showcasing all the bad thoughts he can find.

The thoughts that Kendrick finds go from surface-level anxieties about his life, career, and faith to deeper insecurities like believing himself to be a failure and even more self-loathing. In that sense, U is an almost-perfect representation of how schizophrenic people often feel like nothing they do in life adds up, and so they fall deeper and deeper into the chasms of despair as Kendrick is in the song.

The rapper released a music video for the song called “God Is Gangsta,” where he further clarifies what he is feeling.

Sober is the debut song of the American rock band Tool. In it, the singer details a person falling into madness through alcohol.

A controversial song in the band’s oeuvre due to their belief that addiction is the fault of the addict rather than anything else, the song still manages to paint a vivid picture of someone who is slowly losing their mind through their additions.

The addictions this person suffers have left them feeling paranoid, anxious, and the victim of a whole host of maladies that makes them go deeper and deeper into a pit of despair. 

The music video for the song is iconic due to its use of stop-motion animation and depicts a person discovering and then losing themselves to an object which is a metaphor for miscellaneous drugs.

Fear of the Dark is the final track on the album of the same name by the heavy metal band Iron Maiden.

The malady described in the song is similar to many on this list except for one single fact: it is brought about by darkness. In this song, the narrator is intensely afraid of the dark because it increases their paranoia as they feel like someone is watching them or plotting at them in the shade.

The fear described on the track is eerily similar to those felt by people suffering from schizophrenia, so much so, that it has since taken a new meaning as a metaphor for paranoia and anxiety in general.

Iron Maiden’s bassist, Steve Harris wrote the song because of his own fear of the dark, and it has since gone on to become one of the band’s defining songs.

Oblivion is a paranoia-laced track by electronic artist Grimes. The song was released on August 2011.

In the song, Grimes adds a feminine dimension to the common feeling of being paranoid by talking about feeling unsafe when walking around at night. This feeling of unsafeness comes from the reality that any man could abduct, harm, or even assault her.

The song comes from personal experience as Grimes wrote it because she was assaulted herself. The artist has said that it is almost a mantra of self-strength in a way, to make her feel capable despite her frailty.

The music video for the song reflects that sense as it sees Grimes dancing and being herself in stereotypically masculine places like a sports game or the locker rooms within those stadiums.