So I've been thinking about making an iTunes playlist of songs with literary tie-ins. I'll need your help in making my list because it's pretty short so far (and, yes, I do have an eighties bias, but don't limit yourself to that era):
"Wuthering Heights" (from Emily Bronte's novel) Kate Bush
"Calypso" (from Homer's Odyssey) Suzanne Vega
"Killing an Arab" (from Camus' The Stranger) The Cure
"The Highwayman" (from Alvert Noyes' poem) Loreena McKennitt
"Lady of Shallott" (from the Tennyson poem) Loreena McKennitt
8 comments:
Funny, I once received a "B" on a one-page paper/test I wrote as a Senior in High School about The Stranger (a book we were supposed to have read) based solely on the lyrics from Killing an Arab.
"Tereza and Thomas" from Bright Eyes is based on "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera.
"The Ghost of Tom Joad" from Bruce Springsteen, based on Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath".
"Don't Stand So Close To Me" from The Police has a reference to "Lolita" by Nabakov.
Green Day has a song called "Who Wrote Holden Caufield" based somewhat on Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye".
Bruce Hornsby apparently has a song called "Sneaking Up on Boo Radley", obviously a reference to Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
"Tom Sawyer" by Rush is supposedly loosely based on "Tom Sawyer" by Twain.
"Moon Over Bourbon Street" by Sting was inspired by Anne Rice's "Interview with a Vampire".
"Tea in the Sarhara" by The Police is based on "The Sheltering Sky"
by Paul Bowles.
"Cemetary Gates" by The Smiths has references to Keats, Yeates, and Oscar Wilde.
I'm sure there are thousands...
I love Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights"! There has to be other literary references in Kate's music, but I can't think of any at the moment.
"Virginia Woolf" by the Indigo Girls
what about opera? "Butterfly" by Weezer
Thanks for all the songs--if you think of more, please let me know! :)
John: Maybe others too, but you're probably thinking of Tori's "Tear in Your Hand" ("If you need me, me and Neil'll be hanging out with the Dream King. Neil says hi, by the way."
The Cure's "Charlotte Sometimes," "Empty World," and "Splintered in Her Head" are all based on Penelope Farmer's Charlotte Sometimes, and I've heard Radiohead's Paranoid Android is based on the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" has tons of literary references, and I hear "All Along the Watchtower" is supposed to be from Frankenstein (I've never read it).
One of my favorites is actually U2's "The Ground Beneath Her Feet," based on Rushdie's book of the same name, and Dire Strait's (and Edwin McCain's cover of) "Romeo and Juliet" is beautiful.
There are so many!
"Lolita" by Suzanne Vega
even brief references? "Morning Song" by Jewel ("You can be Henry Miller and I'll be Anais Nin")
I have heard the same thing about "Paranoid Android."
Oh, Indigo Girls covered that "Romeo and Juliet" song too.
modest mouse has a song called "bukowski" about the playwrite, bukowski.
Simon & Garfunkel's "I am a rock," with its line, "I am a rock, I am an island," is a clear reference to John Donne's essay that no man is an island.
Blues Traveler starts the song "Hook" (or is it "Runaround"?)with the line, "Once upon a midnight, dearie," which is a clear reference to the opening line of Poe's poem The Raven.
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