Music and literature have long been intertwined. Jack Kerouac's beat classic On The Road inspired a whole generation of rockers from John Lennon to Bob Dylan, while David Bowie claimed to read four books a week. Other famously bookish musicians include Patti Smith, Morrissey, Nick Cave, The Decemberists, Iron Maiden, and Kate Bush. It's unsurprising, then, that there are a wealth of fantastic literature-inspired songs out there. Here are just fifteen of my favourites.
Exit Music (For a Film) - Radiohead
Endless Art - A House
The lyrics to Irish band A House's song name checks a variety of dead writers and artists, starting with Oscar Wilde and going through to Walt Disney, passing by Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Joseph Conrad and Jack Kerouac along the way, amongst others. The song takes the form of a list, making the case that even though these artists are dead, they live on in their art.
Ramble On - Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin have many songs inspired by Tolkien, including Misty Mountain Hop and The Battle of Evermore. I prefer both of these songs, but there's debate over how heavily Tolkien-inspired they really are. No such confusion over Ramble On, which is quite direct in referencing The Lord of the Rings: 'Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor/ I met a girl so fair/ but Gollum and the evil one crept up/ and slipped away with her.'
4. Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac
I was hoping I could slip Fleetwood Mac in somewhere. I love Fleetwood Mac. Rhiannon is one of their most famous songs, of course, and it's played its part in the forming of Stevie Nicks' witchy persona. Nicks was inspired by a book called Triad by Mary Leader, about a woman who believes she's being possessed by a spirit called Rhiannon. It's been said that she may have simply got the name from the book, but I can see the potential of an otherworldly being evoked in lyrics like 'she's like a cat in the dark/ and then she is the darkness.'
5. Timshel - Mumford & Sons
This song was inspired by one of my favourite books, East of Eden by John Steinbeck (also a fantastic movie starring James Dean). The unusual title refers to something Lee, the philosophical housekeeper, says in the book. Explaining 'timshel' from the King James Bible means 'thou mayest' in Hebrew, he claims it is the most important word in the world. Why? Because other translations use 'thou shalt' - timshel gives man the choice between good and evil, and this is what makes us great (referenced in the song as 'you have your choices/ and these are what makes man great/ his ladder to the stars'). Relatively fun fact: for longest time, I wanted to get a timshel tattoo.
6. Rejoyce - Jefferson Airplane
This is probably my favourite Airplane song. A weird track on a weirder album, I can't decide whether this is nightmarish or dreamy. Inspired by Ulysses, it's a strange and intense hybrid of jazz and heady late Sixties rock. Grace Slick is an incredible vocalist.
7. Reluctant Readers Make Reluctant Lovers - Library Voices
Canadian pop band Library Voices, as you may have guessed from the name, have several songs inspired by books. Another favourite is If Raymond Carver Were Born in the 90s. Reluctant Readers references Yates, Hemingway, Joyce and Heller. The title reminds me of something the filmmaker John Waters said when he came to my university in 2014 - "If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them."
8. Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
Everyone knows this song. You don't need me to explain that it's about Cathy and Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's classic novel, Wuthering Heights.
9. Soma - The Strokes
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is one of the most iconic books ever written, so it makes sense for it to have inspired a great song or two over the years. Notable ones include Soma by the Smashing Pumpkins and Brave New World by Iron Maiden, both of which are brilliant and could have easily made this list. Also called Soma is this one from The Strokes debut album, Is This It. In Huxley's dystopian novel, soma is a drug used by the government to control and sedate the population.
10. Money Power Glory - Lana Del Rey
Del Rey's body of work is peppered with literary references throughout, from Walt Whitman to (most famously) Nabokov. She even dedicated a track on her 2015 album, Honeymoon, to a reading of T.S. Eliot's poem Burnt Norton. The track I've chosen as my top literary Lana song is Money Power Glory, written by Del Rey for my favourite album of 2014, Ultraviolence. The song references Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
11. I Am The Walrus - The Beatles
The titular walrus is from Lewis Carroll's poem The Walrus and The Carpenter, which appeared in Through the Looking Glass. John Lennon was a huge fan of Carroll's anarchic, nonsensical work, and its influence can be seen in Lennon's own writing (In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works) and in other songs like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. The lyrics of this song reflect the nonsense of the book, but Lennon realised later that the story was an allegory for capitalism and that the song should have been called, less catchily, I Am The Carpenter. Bonus literature points: An excerpt from a radio adaptation of King Lear fades in and out towards the end of the song.
12. The River - PJ Harvey
I've got really into PJ Harvey recently. The River takes its inspiration from a short story of the same name by one of my literary heroes, Flannery O'Connor. The story appears in her iconic collection, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, and is about a neglected boy who is taken to a Christian meeting by a river. He is encouraged to let the river wash away his pain ('throw your pain in the river/ leave your pain in the river/ to be washed away slow').
13. Narcissist - The Libertines
An underrated song in the Libs' catalogue, this track sneeringly asks the listener 'wouldn't it be great to be Dorian Gray?' Just for a day, mind.
14. Rocket Man - Elton John
Rocket Man is one my favourite Elton John tunes. It's so incredibly well-crafted, and I think it really exemplifies Elton's genius. It was inspired by Ray Bradbury's short science-fiction story, The Rocket Man and was released three years after Bowie's Space Oddity, which explores a similar theme. I guess songs about men feeling lonely whilst travelling through time and space were in back then.
15. We're All Mad Here - Tom Waits
There are so many good songs inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. From the aforementioned Beatles track to Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, there are enough songs to start a whole sub-genre, like wrock music (songs inspired by Harry Potter). Tom Waits' bizarre, brilliant album Alice consists of songs written for the play of the same name, exploring the relationship between Lewis Caroll and Alice Liddell. My favourite track of the lot is the slightly terrifying We're All Mad Here.
Honorary mentions:
Scentless Apprentice - Nirvana
The Dangling Conversation - Simon & Garfunkel
Venus in Furs - The Velvet Underground
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