"Waiting on the World to Change" by John Mayer

The song "Waiting on the World to Change" features some of the themes talked by Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Self Reliance". The song starts off by saying this: 

Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There's no way we ever could 

This is very similar to what Emerson expresses in "Self Reliance". In it Emerson says "Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?" and later, "To be great is to be misunderstood." He talks about how many of the great minds in the history of the world have been misunderstood time and time again. 

Later in the song Mayer talks again about an idea that can relate to transcendentalism, change. He talks about how they are waiting on the world to change, they are able to change, but society isn't. The transcendentalists felt this same thing as they introduced new ideas to their society. The world wasn't ready to change, and even now over a hundred years later, some of their ideas still have not been adopted by society.