50 Best Rock Songs About Guilt and Shame
Rock Songs That Carry the Weight of Regret
There’s a heaviness that hangs around guilt. It shows up at night when the noise dies down or in the middle of a drive when a line from some old track hits too close. It’s that quiet pulse under the skin when something feels unsettled, and rock has always had a way of catching that static. The guitars grind a little dirtier, the vocals scrape raw, and suddenly a chorus feels like a confession no one planned to make out loud. These songs pull that uneasy feeling into focus without trying to make sense of it.
Sometimes the story’s clear, someone hurt someone else and the song cracks open around it. Other times it’s not spelled out at all, but you can hear it hiding under the riffs or the drawl of a verse that sounds half-swallowed. The weight sits there in the space between chords, like a thought you can’t quite name. Some of these tracks come from pop, rock, country, and R&B songs that were never meant to be self-portraits, but the tone, the phrasing, the slip in the delivery still drag something familiar to the surface. They’re not tidy, and that’s what makes them work.
There’s no clean redemption arc here. The mess lingers, shifts, sometimes flares up again in the bridge. That’s where the good stuff lives—the parts no one’s ready to say out loud, wrapped in distortion or a soft hook pretending to move on. A few of these songs might not literally explore guilt or shame, but they hold that mood like a mirror you’d rather not look at too long. Here are the best rock songs that live in that space.
Top 10 Guilt-Focused Rock Songs
1. 'Hurt' by Nine Inch Nails
2. 'Shame In You' by Alice in Chains
3. 'My Own Worst Enemy' by Lit
4. 'Shame Shame' by Foo Fighters
5. 'It's a Plain Shame' by Peter Frampton
6. 'Sober' by Tool
7. 'The Day I Tried To Live' by Soundgarden
8. 'Guilty' by Matthew Ryan
9. 'Adam's Song' by Blink-182
10. 'The River' by Good Charlotte
Regret and Remorse Rock Music #11 to 20
11. 'I Was Only Joking' by Rod Stewart
12. 'Black' by Pearl Jam
13. 'Story of My Life' by Social Distortion
14. 'Take the Long Way Home' by Supertramp
15. 'The Man Who Sold the World' by David Bowie
16. 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' by Led Zeppelin
17. 'Liar' by Rollins Band
18. 'Confessions' by The Used
19. 'Creep' by Radiohead
20. 'Cryin' Shame' by Gregg Allman
Feeling of Shame in Rock Songs #21 to 30
21. 'Shame' by PJ Harvey
22. 'Jaded' by Aerosmith
23. 'Criminal' by Fiona Apple
24. 'Karma Police' by Radiohead
25. 'Breaking the Habit' by Linkin Park
26. 'I Don't Care Anymore' by Phil Collins
27. 'Dirt' by Alice in Chains
28. 'A Case for Shame' by Moby featuring Cold Specks
29. 'I Can't Tell You Why' by Eagles
30. 'Shame on the Night' by Dio
Rock Songs About Personal Missteps #31 to 40
31. 'You Oughta Know' by Alanis Morissette
32. 'Down in a Hole' by Alice in Chains
33. 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night' by Nirvana
34. 'The Unforgiven' by Metallica
35. 'Last Kiss' by Pearl Jam
36. 'Simple Man' by Lynyrd Skynyrd
37. 'Walk of Shame' by The Shins
38. 'The Bed's Too Big Without You' by The Police
39. 'Just' by Radiohead
40. 'My Heart Is Broken' by Evanescence
Modern and Classic Shame Rock Tracks #41 to 50
41. 'Miss Misery' by Elliott Smith
42. 'The Great Pretender' by The Platters
43. 'Behind Blue Eyes' by The Who
44. 'Shame' by The Motels
45. 'A Little Piece of Heaven' by Avenged Sevenfold
46. 'In My Darkest Hour' by Megadeth
47. 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by Joy Division
48. 'The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You' by Bryan Adams
49. 'Ashamed Of Myself' by The Blasters
50. 'Helter Skelter' by The Beatles
© 2025 Carson McQueen
