I Only Want to Drown: Songs About the Ocean

We’re approaching the ocean from fourteen different directions on this week’s A Symposium of Popular Songs, featuring, for whatever reason, some very long songs (as well as a few short ones). Send…

Michial Farmer

June 1, 2026

We’re approaching the ocean from fourteen different directions on this week’s A Symposium of Popular Songs, featuring, for whatever reason, some very long songs (as well as a few short ones). Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com!

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0:00
The Beach Boys, “Catch a Wave” (Surfer Girl, 1963)
3:33
The Bad Plus, “Grid / Ocean” (Complex Emotions, 2024)
9:16
Reading: Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
10:44
Julia Holter, “Sea Calls Me Home” (Have You in My Wilderness, 2015)
13:48
The War on Drugs, “An Ocean in Between the Waves” (Lost in the Dream, 2014)
20:15
Iron and Wine, “In Your Ocean” (Hen’s Teeth, 2026)
24:45
Reading: Edgar Allan Poe, “MS. Found in a Bottle”
29:00
L.S.U., “Down” (Dogfish Jones, 1997)
35:59
The Decemberists, “From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)” (Picaresque, 2005)
39:21
Reading: Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
41:02
The Lassie Foundation, “Crown of the Sea” (Pacifico, 1999)
44:51
Carpenters, “Maybe It’s You” (Close to You, 1970)
47:52
Billy Bragg and Wilco, “Secret of the Sea” (Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II, 2000)
51:07
Smashing Pumpkins, “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, 1995)

Michial Farmer

Michial Farmer is a poet, essayist, and history teacher. He is the author of Imagination and Idealism in John Updike’s Fiction (Camden House, 2017) and the translator of Gabriel Marcel’s Thirst (Cluny, 2021). He lives in Atlanta.