I'm interested in finding songs that are inspired by or heavily reference books. Whether the lyrics are based on a story, a character, or a theme from a literary work, I'd love to see what musical pieces draw from the world of literature. If you know any tracks that fit this description, please share them here and let us know a bit about the book they're connected to.
To clarify: The song should do more than just simply reference a character. The book should be the main subject of the songs. : )
by spelledWright
14 Comments
I’ll make a start!
[For Whom The Bell Tolls – Metallica](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_HSa1dEL9s)
>The song was inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel of the same name about the process of death in modern warfare and the bloody Spanish Civil War. Specific allusions are made to the scene described in Chapter 27 of the book, in which five soldiers are obliterated during an airstrike after taking a defensive position on a hill. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls_(Metallica_song)#Composition)
Especially the outro of the song, it reminds me of the airstrike at he end of the chapter.
Devo’s Whip It was inspired by Gravity’s Rainbow. Mothersbaugh tried to write the kind of stupid kitschy lyrics that Pynchon inserts all over his books.
Tom Sawyer – Rush.
Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights
the songs of distant earth by mike oldfield, album based on arthur c. clarke’s novel (and came with his liner notes) and nightfall in middle-earth by blind guardian, based on the first half of tolkien’s the silmarillion.
there are also a ton of stephen king-inspired songs, some metal, some not, some only with a quick reference, some retelling the story or whatever.
The song “Black Blade” by Blue Oyster Cult was co-written by Moorcock and is about Stormbringer, the sword in the Elric series. It’s also a great song.
Charlotte Sometimes – The Cure (Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer)
Killing an Arab – The Cure (The Stranger by Alber Camus)
And my favorite
Annabelle Lee – South of no North (Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F2IfJPon69I
The Waterboys have a song called “Beverly Penn” that is based on Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale”
Mastodon – Leviethan which is a concept album based on Moby Dick
Deep in the Woods by Tennis is inspired by We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.
It’s a bit more intertwined and probably cheating since he wrote both but Nick Cave’s And The Ass Saw The Angel heavily inspired the first few Bad Seeds records and there are references stretching back to The Birthday Party songs and forward to Murder Ballads and beyond. I can’t think of another situation like it outside of like Coheed and Cambria. Mark Danielewski’s sister has a band called Poe that wrote a companion album to House of Leaves too.
Violent Femmes’ debut and goth-country banger Hallowed Ground must have been inspired by Catcher In The Rye. They’re so closely related thematically, or they were just angry teenage males.
Joy Division’s Atrocity Exhibition is about Kafka’s Hunger Artist. Colony is about The Penal Colony. Their earlier incarnation has No Love Lost, which has references to 1984 and A Scanner Darkly with references to transmitters hidden in the walls and such. Joy Division’s literary inspirations run deep actually, well worth checking out this great [reading list](https://www.reddit.com/r/JoyDivision/comments/1871hfd/ian_curtis_reading_list/) a fan assembled.
Harry Style’s Watermelon Sugar High was NOT inspired by Richard Brautigan’s acid washed novella but it was a fun hobby of mine to haunt goodreads around the time the song came out and watch One Direction fans trashing an experimental borderline plotless book.
The Cure’s Killing an Arab is inspired by Camus’s The Stranger. They changed it to Kissing an Arab later on which is kind of interesting to think about.
Scentless Apprentice by Nirvana is inspired by Patrick Suskind’s Perfume.
White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane and Alice in Wonderland.
Mastodon’s Leviathan is a loose Moby Dick concept album.
Man I could go on about this for hours but I’m just writing a listicle at this point
Hozier’s album Unreal Unearth is almost entirely based on Dante’s Inferno and the 9 layers of hell
Canterbury Tales Remixed by Baba Brinkman
It’s an entire album. It’s nerd rap. It’s a masterpiece in my opinion, I need to go listen to it again.
Well … there is of course the classic White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane. And for good reason.
My favorites are pretty pointless to talk about in this forum, as they are both german. But ASP (Melodic Gothic Novel Rock) has an entire album dedicated to Krabat, a YA Novel with Horror undertones from the 70s. Its outstanding.
And Coppelius (german wood metal (as in, they don’t use guitars but instead cellos, a contrabass and clarinets, but are still very clearly metal) who have several songs based in the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann, to the point they collaborated with a local theater to create a modern metal opera of one of his works (Klein Zaches, Genannt Zinnober) which ran to great acclaim for about a year. (trailer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SULa0udRC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SULa0udRC8) )