List of songs that retell a work of literature

This is a list of songs that retell, in whole or in part, a work of literature. Albums listed here consist entirely of songs retelling a work of literature.

Albums

Songs

0–9

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B

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D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

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Y

Z

Songs that retell literature-based films
Main article: List of songs based on a film

This is a list of songs that retell, in whole or in part, a film that was based on a work of literature.

See also

References
  1. Dahlstrom, Tyrell (March 11, 2019). "Virgin Steele: A Retrospective (Part 2)". Death Metal Underground. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  2. Inglis, Sam. "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds". Sound on Sound. Retrieved May 3, 2020. …It turned out there was an agent who represented the estate of HG Wells, and we convinced the estate that we wanted to be true to the story in creating this musical interpretation, and we did a deal. That was 1975, and the whole writing, orchestration, scriptwriting, paintings, recording sessions, everything to do with it, took the better part of two and a half years, between early '75 and June '78. "I still have the original book with all my underlinings and scribbles about things that motivated me to compose something or to chat to the guys that were the lyricists, or our scriptwriter. The truth of it was that I somehow thought I was going to do an instrumental album, no guest artists, no roles being played, virtually all instrumental, no paintings, no script, and a budget that was in one ballpark. And it turned out to be quite the opposite."
  3. Houle, Zachary (3 December 2013). "The Alan Parsons Project: I Robot (Legacy Edition)". PopMatters. Retrieved May 1, 2020. The group's 1976 debut Tales of Mystery and Imagination was focused on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and, for a follow-up, the duo turned their attention to science-fiction author Isaac Asimov's 1950 book of short stories, I, Robot. Although Asimov was encouraging of the project, the book was already optioned to a film and television company, so Woolfson had to fudge the concept a little by making a set of songs that was more generally about the relationship between man and machine, and, though the group used the title of Asimov's book, they had to drop the comma for copyright reasons. And, thus, I Robot was born.
  4. Marshall, Colin (February 27, 2018). "Hear Rick Wakeman's Musical Adaptation of Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, "One of Prog Rock's Crowning Achievements"". Open Culture. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
  5. Paul, Andrew (February 23, 2016). "With Leviathan, Mastodon helped usher in a golden age of heavy metal". AV Club. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  6. Chaplinsky, Joshua (May 4, 2012). "White Whale, Holy Grail: Moby Dick and Mastodon's Leviathan". LitReactor. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  7. Pementel, Michael; Kaufman, Spencer (August 31, 2019). "15 Years Ago, Mastodon's Leviathan Took Fans on a High Seas Metal Adventure". Consequence of Sound. Retrieved May 5, 2020. Speaking to the Leviathan’s concept, Dailor shared, “We had the big idea about the Moby Dick thing, which we all we excited about for the aesthetics, and the ability to do our own concept album that was based off this amazing piece of literature.”
  8. Bennett, J. (December 1, 2013). "Mastodon's 'Leviathan': The Story Behind the Cover Art". Revolver. Retrieved May 5, 2020. At one fateful point during the time when Atlanta's Mastodon were gathering ideas for what would become their 2004 breakthrough album, Leviathan, drummer Brann Dailor found himself on a hellish 30-hour plane trip with nothing to pass the time except a copy of Moby-Dick. He already had a water motif in mind for the disc—Mastodon's previous record, Remission, was fire-themed—but before he read Herman Melville's 1851 maritime classic about Captain Ahab's hunt for the "salt-sea mastodon," Dailor admits that his ideas for what eventually became Leviathan were "pretty fucking vague."
  9. Stavans, Ilan (July 29, 2014). Latin Music: Musicians, Genres, and Themes. ABC-CLIO. p. 233. ISBN 9780313343964. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
  10. Marshall, Colin (April 21, 2015). "Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Classic Album by The Alan Parsons Project". Open Culture. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  11. Little, Michael H. (April 1, 2015). "Graded on a Curve: The Alan Parsons Project, Tales of Mystery and Imagination—Edgar Allen Poe". The Vinyl District. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  12. Grimm, Beca (June 23, 2017). "Flashback: David Bowie's Failed Attempt to Adapt George Orwell's '1984'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved April 15, 2020. Bowie wanted a televised musical – or so he told William S. Burroughs in a 1974 Rolling Stone interview. His album Diamond Dogs, which dropped that same year, featured the straight-forward "1984," with lines like, "They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air/ And tell that you're 80, but brother, you won't care," highlighting the novel's revisionism themes and totalitarian government. Other tracks like "Big Brother" and "We Are The Dead" double down on the artist's fascination not just with Orwell's futuristic society, but Surrealism and Dada (which makes his timely interview with the post-modern author all the more fascinating).
  13. Bulger, Adam (January 24, 2020). "Struggling With Rush's Ayn Rand Influence". BTRtoday. Retrieved April 15, 2020. The 20-minute epic “2112” relates a dystopian science fiction story so similar to Rand’s novella Anthem Peart felt obligated to acknowledge the influence.
  14. Martens, John W. (July 19, 2016). "Out of the Mire". America: The Jesuit Review. Retrieved April 15, 2020. It is a psalm that inspired Bono and the other members of U2 to write the song "40," a meditation on Psalm 40, for their 1983 album, "War."... ...Bono had said earlier in the conversation with [Eugene] Peterson: "Why do we need art? Why do we need the lyric poetry of the Psalms? Why do we need them? Because the only way we can approach God is if we're honest through metaphor, through symbol. Art becomes essential, not decorative."
  15. Daly, Joe (September 24, 2014). "Chris Motionless on writing Reincarnate". Metal Hammer. Retrieved April 15, 2020. Lyrically, Chris prefers writing songs through the eyes of characters from movies and literature, as on the song Abigail, a single from their 2010 debut, that he wrote about the Salem witch trials from the perspective of the John Proctor character in The Crucible.
  16. Brouwers, Josho (1 October 2015). "Heavy metal Iliad". Ancient World Magazine. Retrieved 16 April 2020. The song, as befitting a musical rendition of Homer's epic, is nearly 29 minutes in length and, as indicated in the title, consists of eight distinct parts (though this doesn't include the prelude and part VII consists of two parts in itself, so it's actually ten parts). The song focuses on the confrontation between Achilles, the Greek champion, and Hector, the Trojan leader, and follows the story in Iliad books 12 through 22.
  17. McPadden, Mike (April 7, 2015). "'Toys in the Attic' Turns 40: Ranking The Songs On Aerosmith's Classic Album". VH1. Retrieved April 16, 2020. It’s certainly one of the most “Aerosmith” of all Aerosmith anthems: a peacocking take on the Biblical creation myth that recreates the fall of humanity as the inevitable byproduct of just how tempting a certain “sweet and bitter fruit” is by its nature, and how just one taste ignites a particular form enlightenment to the point of madness.
  18. Dolen, John (May 1, 1994). "CELEBRATING THE NEW CROP OF GREAT MUSIC-MAKERS". South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Retrieved April 16, 2020. Not too many other rock bands mention Jean-Paul Sartre or go head-to-head with T.S. Eliot. (Compare Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and their Afternoons and Coffeespoons. Eliot: I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Dummies: Someday I'll have a disappearing hairline/Someday I'll wear 'jamas in the daytime.)
  19. McCracken, Edd (March 9, 2015). "A Simple Tale About Man Who Hates An Animal: MOBY-DICK in Pop Culture". Book Riot. Retrieved April 16, 2020. MC Lars uses the power of hip-hop to pry open Ahab’s inner monologue. For a man who skilfully leapt between narrative styles, if rap had been around in the 1850s, Melville would probably have used it. Choice couplets include: “Call me Ahab, what, monomaniac /Obsessed with success unlike Steve Wozniak”; and “The first one to stop him gets this gold doubloon/Now excuse me while I go be melancholy in my room!”
  20. Rosenthal, Elizabeth J. (2001). His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John. Billboard Books. p. 217. ISBN 9780823088935. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
  21. "Green Carnation: The Acoustic Verses". Sputnik Music. March 15, 2010. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  22. Daly, Joe (February 25, 2019). "Anthrax's Scott Ian takes us inside his insanely rare Stephen King collection". Metal Hammer. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
  23. Adler, Sam (March 7, 2014). "Music and Literature: Books that inspired rap and hip-hop". USA Today. Retrieved April 17, 2020. Through a straight retelling of George Orwell's Animal Farm, Dead Prez lays the classic story bare, setting the scene with lines like "Under the leadership of Hannibal, the fattest pig in the pack." But rather than just use the story, Dead Prez embodies the book's spirit. Their chorus "This is the animal in man, this is the animal in you" reveals how fine the line between man and beast is.
  24. Matthews, Dylan (February 27, 2015). "Remember Leonard Nimoy with "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins," his greatest musical moment". Vox. Retrieved April 18, 2020. The song — essentially a musical recapitulation of the plot of The Hobbit, but with much better choreography — was originally released as a single in 1967, and it grew into an internet phenomenon long before streaming video became ubiquitous.
  25. Greene, Andy (December 13, 2012). "Ramble On: Rockers Who Love 'The Lord of the Rings'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  26. Nyren, Neil (January 30, 2020). "Carl Hiaasen: A Crime Reader's Guide to the Classics". www.crimereads.com. CrimeReads. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  27. Kuba Shand-Baptiste. "10 songs you didn't know were inspired by literature". The Guardian.
  28. Carter, Caitlin (April 18, 2014). "10 Musical Compositions Inspired by Gabriel García Márquez: Radiohead, Shakira and more". Music Times. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
  29. Cocking, Lauren (21 February 2018). "Our Top 11 Book Recommendations Featuring Mexico City". culture trip. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  30. Ramirez, AJ (31 October 2011). "All That Glitters: Led Zeppelin - "The Battle of Evermore"". PopMatters. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  31. Dome, Malcolm (August 21, 2014). "Ten Songs Inspired By H.P. Lovecraft". www.loudersound.com. Louder. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  32. Wagner, Wendy N. "When Wizards Rock". Fantasy Magazine. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
  33. Schaefer, Julia. "Album Review: The Divine Comedy - Office Politics". www.thecorefm.com. 90.3 RLC-WVPH FM Piscataway. Retrieved April 18, 2020. Irish chamber pop outfit the Divine Comedy have always been something of an English major's band in my eyes. Never mind the name they cribbed from Dante's epic - their 1993 debut album Promenade featured songs inspired by Fitzgerald short stories ("Bernice Bobs Her Hair"), Wordsworth poems ("Lucy"), and Chekhov’s plays ("Three Sisters").
  34. Allen, Jim (March 12, 2012). "Hive Five: Literary Songs Not Written by the Decemberists". MTV News. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  35. Heller, Jason (November 8, 2012). "Blue Öyster Cult's "Veteran Of The Psychic Wars" is even bigger than the movie that inspired it". AV Club. Retrieved April 18, 2020. BÖC had previously worked with Moorcock on the 1980 song "Black Blade"—a reference to Elric's soul-drinking sword, Stormbringer.
  36. "Hawkwind". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. March 3, 2020. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  37. Freeman, Phil (December 22, 2010). "Michael Moorcock, Epic Science Fiction Master and Hard Rocker". Gizmodo. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  38. "Brave New World". The Iron Maiden Commentary. 30 May 2000. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
  39. Harlitz-Kern, Erika (April 3, 2016). "Songs by Metallica Inspired by Literature". Book Riot. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  40. Dillon, Cathy (March 8, 2014). "Word for Word: How a classic crosses over into song". The Irish Times. Retrieved April 18, 2020. Vega, a former English major, has often been inspired by literature, not least in her song Calypso, which she included in her set at the Olympia. The song is an airy ballad with a mournful guitar line, written from the point of view of the sea nymph who helps Odysseus after he is shipwrecked in Homer's epic poem The Odyssey: "A long time ago / I watched him struggle with the sea / I knew that he was drowning / And I brought him into me."
  41. Vedantam, Shankar (September 17, 2018). "The Cassandra Curse: Why We Heed Some Warnings, And Ignore Others". Hidden Brain. National Public Radio. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  42. Hilton, Robin (October 4, 2016). "Watch The Dandy Warhols' Take On 'Catcher In The Rye'". All Songs TV. National Public Radio. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  43. Dadamo, Giovanni (10 July 1974). "The Madcap Speaks". The Syd Barrett Archives. Terrapin. Retrieved 19 April 2020. Q: Some of your songs seem rather obscure, like Chapter 24 on Piper. Syd: 'Chapter 24'... that was from the 'I Ching', there was someone around who was very into that, most of the words came straight off that.
  44. Long, Siobhán Dowling; Sawyer, John F. A. (2015). The Bible in Music: A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 44. ISBN 9780810884526. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  45. Spooner, Catherine (2004). Fashioning Gothic Bodies. Manchester University Press. p. 176. ISBN 9780719064012. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  46. Fairweather, Andrew (February 3, 2016). "Charlotte Sometimes: The Redoubled Subject". New York Public Library. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  47. Gersen, Hannah (August 31, 2015). "How the Brain Forgets: On Penelope Farmer's 'Charlotte Sometimes'". The Millions. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  48. Farmer, Penelope (June 9, 2007). "The Cure(d)". rockpool in the kitchen. Retrieved April 19, 2020. The lyric to the song was on the record sleeve. Not only was it about confused identity, much of it consisted of quotes from the book. The title of the instrumental track on the B side, what's more, was another quote from the book.
  49. Farmer, Penelope (June 12, 2007). "The Cure(d): Robert Smith for ever..." rockpool in the kitchen. Retrieved April 19, 2020. Then he told me the story of how he'd come across the book in the first place. 'My elder brother used to read to us at bedtime,' he said, 'I was about twelve or so and he was still reading books to us. Your book was one of them, it never got out of my head. Once I got into music I wanted to make a song about it. That's how it happened.'
  50. Daniels, Neil (2014). Killers: The Origins Of Iron Maiden 1975-1983. Soundcheck Books. pp. 106–107. ISBN 9780957570023. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  51. "Iron Maiden". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. June 18, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  52. Prince, Jeff (May 19, 2015). "Robert Earl Keen Ponders Your Questions, Prepares For Billy Bob's". Fort Worth Weekly. Retrieved April 20, 2020. Keen has read many of the English romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats, and Byron. “I wrote this song sort of based on the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem,” he said. “He was one of the more fantastic rock stars. You have to think of those poets as rock stars, and they did rock star stuff back then. Coleridge was like the Jim Morrison of the bunch. You could not contain the guy.”
  53. Toland, Michael (March 28, 2019). "Q&A: Michael Moorcock Plays Hawkwind". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  54. McGinnis, Ray (April 27, 2019). "#906: Courage by The Tragically Hip". Vancouver Pop Music Signature Sounds. Retrieved April 20, 2020. It was MacLennan’s final award winning novel that earned his place in the song title “Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)”. The song included lines from The Watch That Ends The Night, where MacLennan states “There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.” The Tragically Hip stated MacLennan’s thought this way: “There’s no simple explanation for anything important any of us do. And, yeah, the human tragedy consists in the necessity of living with the consequences under pressure.”
  55. Sutherland, Steve (March 5, 2019). "Jefferson Airplane: Crown Of Creation". Hi-Fi News & Record Review. Retrieved April 20, 2020. The album's title is taken directly from The Chrysalids. 'Your work is to survive. Neither his kind, nor his kind of thinking will survive long. They are the crown of creation, they are ambition fulfilled – they have nowhere more to go. But life is change, that is how it differs from rocks. Change is its very nature.' And the title track quotes liberally from its text. The book has 'In loyalty to their kind they cannot tolerate our rise – in loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction'. The song goes: 'In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our minds...'. It's strident, punchy, fist-in-the-air Airplane in all their righteous indignant fury and sets the tone for the rest of the album.
  56. Korn, Mike. "Interview with Mike Scalzi of Slough Feg From 2005". Music Street Journal. Retrieved April 20, 2020. [Scalzi:] I'd rather talk about real history and mythology. MSJ: That segues pretty neatly into two more songs I had questions about. "Eumaeus the Swineherd" and "Curse of Athena". Are those songs strictly about Homer's Odyssey? [Scalzi:] Absolutely, yeah. One of the newest infatuations I have is The Odyssey. Anybody who wants to read where the songs come from, open up the Odyssey and turn to the chapter about Eumaeus the Swineherd. Odysseus returns to Ithaca after being gone for 20 years and he returns disguised as a slave. Athena puts a curse on him because the suitors are trying to marry his wife Penelope and he has to win her back. Odysseus is welcomed into the humble home of Eumaeus the Swineherd who has no idea who he really is.
  57. Döing, Laura (16 August 2019). "Rammstein: Just what's in those lyrics?". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 22 April 2020. Not all of the horror comes from Lindemann's pen. Some of the frontman's lyrics are inspired by classical German literature, exemplified by the most prominent poet in the language, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe's famous ballad Erlkönig, for example, translated: Who rides so late through the night and the wind? It is the father with his child. He holds the boy safely in his arms; he holds him tight, he keeps him warm. The mood, rhythm and content of Goethe's poem are echoed in Rammstein's "Dalai Lama": An airplane lies in the evening wind / On board is a man with a child / They sit safely, sit warm / And are lulled into falling asleep. In Goethe's poem, a ghostly apparition, the King of the Elves, whispers seductively to the child and seeks to abduct him into his realm. At the end of the ballad, the son dies in the arms of his father on horseback. In the Rammstein song, the "King of the Winds" endeavors to claim the boy, who finally dies in his father's arms, held too tightly in anticipation of an airplane crash.
  58. Irizarry, Katy (August 15, 2018). "11 Metal Songs Inspired by Dante's 'Inferno'". Loudwire. Retrieved April 23, 2020. There is perhaps no song that portrays such a detailed and comprehensive retelling of Dante’s 'Inferno' as this one. Not only does it follow the epic format with 16-and-a-half minutes of music, but it takes the listener on a musical journey to each layer of hell, just as Dante did for his readers.
  59. Cotterell, Joel (April 9, 2013). "This Is Armageddon: The Dawn Motif and Black Metal's Anti-Christian Project". Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory. punctum books (1): 98. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
  60. Koenig, Sara M. (November 15, 2018). Bathsheba Survives. University of South Carolina Press. pp. 108–110. ISBN 9781611179149. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
  61. Stam, Robert (February 18, 2019). World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media: Towards a Transartistic Commons. Routledge. p. 143. ISBN 9780429767395. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
  62. Johnson, Dan (13 September 2009). "Thrice: Beggars". PopMatters. Retrieved 24 April 2020. From humble musings on human nature, Thrice licks into the next track “Doublespeak”, an obvious homage to Orwellian realities where insidious totalitarian hegemony controls consciousness.
  63. "The Cure: Beyond The Hits". The Quietus. June 12, 2019. Retrieved April 24, 2020. ‘The Drowning Man’ is a perfect example. Drawing lyrically from Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books, specifically the fraught mental state and accidental death of the character Fuschia and the reaction of her devastated brother Titus, Robert Smith's anguished vocal rises and fades into distances like air bubbles in murky water, his skittering guitar and the spare rhythm section work of Simon Gallup and Lol Tolhurst an audio portrait of utter desolation.
  64. Åkerlund, Pauliina (March 30, 2015). "Nightwish – Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Album Review)". Cryptic Rock: Your Entertainment Odyssey. Retrieved April 24, 2020. The beautiful and melancholic “Edema Ruh” was inspired by fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss’ group of strolling musicians and actors from his books Kingkiller Chronicle, called the Edema Ruh.
  65. Encabo, Enrique (January 29, 2019). Sound in Motion: Cinema, Videogames, Technology and Audiences. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 121. ISBN 9781527527294. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  66. Unterberger, Richie. ""The Doors"—The Doors (1967)" (PDF). www.loc.gov. National Recording Preservation Board. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  67. Matteoli, Alessia (23 November 2010). "Absynthe Minded – Envoi". AAA Music. Retrieved 25 April 2020. Inspired by a Hugo Claus poem, Envoi surprises the listener with its upbeat sound choruses and violin; its magical atmospheres and the ability to set you dreaming of your summer crush.
  68. House, Silas (September 1, 2005). "Nickel Creek – It's about the music". No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music. Retrieved April 25, 2020. ...And they’re performing songs that sound more like poetry than money, especially the one about Joyce’s heartrending character. “Eveline” is one of fourteen tracks on their new album, Why Should The Fire Die?
  69. Flory, Tyler (April 23, 2013). "Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)" as a Romeo and Juliet teaching tool". City Pages. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  70. Smith, Eric (March 18, 2013). "Gatsby's American Dream: The Most Literary Band You've Never Heard Of". Book Riot. Retrieved April 25, 2020. The song fifth song on Volcano, Fable, is one of the catchiest on the record, and retells the story of Lord of the Flies. “We came here on a plane, Just a bunch of little boys. Dance around the fire, then we strike him down. We’ll burn the island down. Kill the pig pig, kill the pig pig…”
  71. Max, D.T. (April 10, 2011). "Kate Bush's Rewrite: Reason to ReJoyce?". The New Yorker. Retrieved April 15, 2020. Kate Bush... ...has gotten permission to quote some part of Molly’s famous soliloquy in the reissue of a song first released in 1989 as "The Sensual World" and now appropriately renamed "Flower of the Mountain." "Flower of the Mountain" is a phrase in the soliloquy, the most famous part of which goes: “And first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
  72. ""A Man of Genius Makes No Mistakes": A Joycean Playlist Just in Time for Bloomsday 2015". Flood Magazine. June 16, 2015. Retrieved June 23, 2020. Kate Bush’s musical homage to James Joyce and Ulysses’s Molly Bloom was a twenty-two-year journey in the making. Originally planned as a musical interpretation of Bloom’s last speech in the novel, Bush had to alter the lyrics after Joyce’s estate wouldn’t allow her to use his words. That track became 1989’s “The Sensual World,” but in 2011 (after the Joyce estate finally realized how amazing the singer-songwriter is) she was granted a license and rereleased the track in its true form as “Flower of the Mountain.” It is more than worth the wait... ...True to its name, the entirety of “Rejoyce” is Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic four-minute retelling of the story of Ulysses. Grace Slick sets scenes from the novel against one of the world’s grooviest bass lines.
  73. Lines, C.J. (January 6, 2018). "Celebrating 200 Years of Frankenstein… with Metal!". Medium. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  74. Gotrich, Lars (April 1, 2015). "Viking's Choice: Sharpless, 'Franz Kafka (Home Movies Cover)'". All Songs Considered. National Public Radio. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  75. Rooksby, Rikky (2001). Inside Classic Rock Tracks: Songwriting and Recording Secrets of 100 Great Songs from 1960 to the Present Day. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 43. ISBN 9780879306540. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  76. "Older, wiser, angrier Offspring". San Francisco Examiner. September 26, 2012. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  77. Conradt, Stacey (August 13, 2012). "11 Songs Inspired by Literature". Mental Floss. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  78. "Thyfring". Voices from the Darkside. Retrieved April 25, 2020. ‘The Giant’s Laughter’ is pretty much Patrik’s English interpretation of Swedish Poet Esaias Tegner’s brilliant poem “Jätten” (the giant). The words paint a fairly depressive view of nationalism and a “lost struggle”… ah, read it damn it
  79. Romano, Will (September 1, 2010). Mountains Come Out of the Sky: The Illustrated History of Prog Rock. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781617133763. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  80. Simpson, Dave (17 August 2001). "Haunted house music". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 April 2020. And now comes Haunted, a rock album from Mark's sister, Poe (real name Annie), started long before the book was published. Just as disturbing as House of Leaves, Haunted uses tape recordings of her father's voice, discovered after his death in 1993, to exorcise memories of their difficult relationship.
  81. Biancotti, Deborah (April 2, 2012). "The Weirdness in House of Leaves". Weird Fiction Review. Retrieved April 27, 2020. House of Leaves (Pantheon Books, 2000) is a cluster of stories told more in their metatext than text, a book that took ten years to write and has given rise to another book (The Whalestoe Letters), an album (Haunted, by Danielewski’s sister, Anne – known as Poe), and an author with a reputation for being so ‘experimental’ his next book, Only Revolutions, was shortlisted for the US National Book Prize despite being practically incomprehensible to any but the most dedicated reader. House of Leaves is a cult classic, reviled by some and adored – fiercely – by others.
  82. Bierman, Bryan. "Hidden Gems: John Cale's "Animal Justice" And "Sabotage/Live"". MAGNET. Retrieved April 27, 2020. ...the EP closes with strikingly beautiful ballad “Hedda Gabler.” Loosely based on the Henrik Ibsen play of the same name, the song features Cale’s voice in fine form, and the slow meditation is a welcome resolution to the previous madness...
  83. Barkan, Jonathan (June 10, 2016). "Go Behind-the-Scenes in Ice Nine Kill's 'Carrie'-Inspired "Hell in the Hallways" Music Video (Exclusive)". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved April 28, 2020. The video is a reimagined version of Carrie, the now infamous story from author Stephen King.
  84. Endeacott, Robert (July 1, 2014). Peaches: A Chronicle Of The Stranglers 1974-1990. Soundcheck Books. p. 53. ISBN 9780957570047. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  85. Hunter-Tilney, Ludovic (October 22, 2010). "Elton John and Leon Russell: The Union". Financial Times. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  86. Zemler, Emily (February 17, 2009). "Rapper MC Lars Shares His Favorite Book". Spin. Retrieved April 28, 2020. But one of my favorite [pieces of literature] is Hamlet, and I have that song about Hamlet on the new record, “Hey There, Ophelia,”... ...so I have to give props to that as well.
  87. Huler, Scott (March 11, 2008). No-Man's Lands: One Man's Odyssey Through The Odyssey. Crown. p. 259. ISBN 9780307409782. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  88. Adler, Sam (April 12, 2014). "Books that inspired punk". USA Today. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  89. Paulson, Dave (September 7, 2014). "Kenny Loggins talks 'Winnie the Pooh'". The Tennessean. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  90. "Lenny Sasso Goes Rogue for Circa Survive on Rockstar Disrupt Festival Tour". Chauvet Professional. August 14, 2019. Retrieved May 1, 2020. It’s altogether fitting that Circa Survive drew inspiration for their breakthrough debut album “Juturna” from the novel House of Leaves. Like the powerful Mark Z. Danielewski story, which breaks down literary barriers with its wildly unusual layout (some pages have only one or two words) and multiple storylines, the progressive five-piece band from the Philadelphia area has set its own course weaving in and out of musical lanes to create a unique sound.
  91. Rivkin, Julie; Ryan, Michael, eds. (January 23, 2017). Literary Theory: An Anthology (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118718384. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  92. "CDs: Country, jazz, rock albums in offerings". Saskatoon StarPhoenix. 14 December 2007. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  93. Courrier, Kevin (December 30, 2008). Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of the Beatles' Utopian Dream. ABC-CLIO. p. 197. ISBN 9780313345876. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  94. "MONKS OF DOOM". Trouser Press. Retrieved May 2, 2020. Seattle's C/Z Records got the consolation prize in the Monks' post-Rough Trade sweepstakes, a five-song EP entitled The Insect God. Although it draws direct inspiration from Edward Gorey's book of the same title ("an admonitory tale of temptation, hapless greed, abduction and unspeakable ritualistic practices"), The Insect God is in many ways a lighter, not to mention more concise, outing.
  95. Caffery, Adrian (11 May 2014). "Tori Amos to play Birmingham's Symphony Hall". Birmingham Mail. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
  96. Cummings, Tony (30 March 2008). "Edison Glass: Long Island music graduates become thinking man's rockers". Cross Rhythms. Retrieved May 3, 2020. On 'Time Is Fiction' the band display their characteristically poetic lyrics by making use of Victor Hugo's triumphant fictional character Jean Valjean from the Les Miserables classic to ask "Will good overcome religion? It's a battle between grace and pride. . . Will grace overcome what was done."
  97. Bradshaw, Calum (20 July 2018). "Killing an Arab: The Cure try to reclaim their most controversial single". New Statesman. Retrieved April 15, 2020. The song draws its inspiration from the central action of Albert Camus's novel L'Étranger (The Stranger), which follows a protagonist who murders an Algerian man on a beach after a love dispute involving the victim's sister.
  98. Silverman, Ed (April 11, 2019). "The Strawbs will celebrate 50-year history in New Jersey". NJArts.net. Retrieved May 3, 2020. And the band’s biggest hit — the infectious and ultra-radio-friendly “Lay Down” — has a clear spiritual vibe derived from the 23rd Psalm.
  99. Ollison, Rashod D. (May 11, 2006). "The Elefant evolution". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved May 5, 2020. The danceable lead single, "Lolita," is part homage to Vladimir Nabokov's infamous character and part autobiographical.
  100. Wagner, Jeff (2010). Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal. Bazillion Points Books. pp. 35–36. ISBN 9780979616334. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  101. "The Top Iron Maiden Songs With A Military Theme". www.forces.net. British Forces Broadcasting Service. 8 January 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  102. Presley, Nicola (30 June 2013). "William Golding's legacy: His enduring influence on popular culture". www.william-golding.co.uk. Retrieved May 6, 2020. Lord of the Flies has provided inspiration for music by a wide range of artists. Most notable, perhaps, is Iron Maiden’s song, ‘Lord of the Flies’, released in 1996 on their album ‘The X Factor’... ...The ‘I’ of the song is most likely to be Jack with lines such as ‘Who cares what’s right or wrong/it’s reality/killing so we survive’. The chorus alludes to the division between the boys: ‘Saints and sinners/ Something within us/ To be lord of the flies’. Here, the dichotomy of good against evil in the novel is divided as ‘saints and sinners’, although just like the book, the writer acknowledges that there is the potential for evil within all of us: ‘we don’t need a code of morality’.
  103. Ceron, Ella (May 9, 2016). "Watch the Dreamy New Music Video For Ruth B's "Lost Boy"". Teen Vogue. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
  104. Catlin, Roger (August 4, 1993). "HE THAT SINGS A LASTING SONG ... MAY HAVE YEATS TO THANK". Hartford Courant. Retrieved May 10, 2020. Yeats is the hottest new name among pop music publishers, yet precious little is known in those circles about him. Still, there is some indication his work has been surfacing in rock albums during the past few years. "I've put Yeats to music before," Mike Scott says in press materials accompanying the Waterboys' new album, "Dream Harder," which includes a Yeats lyric called "Love and Death." "Van Morrison and Bono have done it, too, among others. Wouldn't it be great to do an album of different artists interpreting Yeats?" Scott enthuses. "I love his poetry, and if a poem jumps up at me and I feel the music, I just do it; I don't argue. I grew up in a home full of books and poetry, and it doesn't seem strange to me."
  105. Schaefer, John (September 18, 2012). "The Master And Margarita, And Music". New Sounds. WNYC. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  106. Jackson, MD (May 3, 2013). "Vinyl Albums, KLAATU and the Warrior at the Edge of Time". Amazing Stories. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
  107. Weingarten, Christopher R. (August 2003). "Thrice". CMJ New Music Monthly. p. 39. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  108. "Moon Over Bourbon Street, 12"". www.sting.com. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  109. "Hip-Hop 101 With MC Edgar Allan Poe". Wired. June 19, 2012. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  110. Gillan, Ian. "Questions & Answers". Retrieved 23 November 2015.
  111. Irizarry, Katy (July 23, 2018). "10 Macabre Rock + Metal Songs Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe". Loudwire. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  112. Howard, Tom (23 July 2019). "Every Libertines song ranked in order of greatness". NME. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  113. Hackett, Steve. "The world behind the wardrobe". www.hackettsongs.com. Retrieved May 23, 2020. I've read many books by CS Lewis... and I've often wondered about the man behind the work and the world around the man. I wrote my song Narnia because of the impact he had on me...
  114. "Ice Nine Kills film a twisted take on 'Animal Farm' in "Nature Of The Beast"—watch". AltPress. March 28, 2017. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  115. Smith, Rosa Inocencio (September 9, 2016). "Track of the Day: 'Nice, Nice, Very Nice' by Ambrosia". The Atlantic. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  116. Fox-Bevilacqua, Marisa (January 14, 2015). "An Unlikely Tribute: How Cult U.K. Band Joy Division Found Inspiration in Auschwitz". Haaretz. Retrieved May 24, 2020. ...Joy Division’s greatest enigma may have been its name — a reference to the brothel at Auschwitz as depicted in the book “House of Dolls” by Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur)... ...it was Curtis’ sense of compassion that enabled him to come up with the relentless lyrics of “No Love Lost,” about a sex slave’s forced sterilization or abortion: “In the hand of one of the assistants, she saw the same instrument which they had that morning inserted deep into her body, She shuddered instinctively. No life at all in the house of dolls. No love lost. No love lost.” The song also contains a spoken-word part entirely lifted from “House of Dolls.” In “So This Is Permanence,” Curtis’ handwritten notes for the song begin with the heading “House of Dolls.”
  117. Draper, Jason (February 18, 2020). "How 'November Rain' Became One Of Rock's Greatest Ballads". Rolling Stone. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
  118. Dombal, Ryan (April 15, 2016). "Revisiting the Magnificent Excess of Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion Video Trilogy". Pitchfork. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
  119. Brouwers, Josho (6 May 2017). "Symphony X's Odyssey". Ancient World Magazine. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
  120. Hogan, Marc (December 20, 2011). "Lana Del Rey Plays a 'Hood Lolita in 'Off to the Races'". Spin. Retrieved May 26, 2020. “Lolita gets lost in the ‘hood.”... ...this self-description she gave to a Guardian reporter remains a pretty good way of approaching her music as Lana Del Rey. Especially if you keep in mind that, as critic Nitsuh Abebe pointed out in a Pitchfork column, Del Rey appears to be talking about the actual literary Lolita, from Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel, rather than the term’s much broader common usage. “Off to the Races,” the latest track to emerge from Del Rey’s upcoming full-length debut, interprets the ‘hood-Lolita angle fairly literally, with results that are intriguing if unlikely to end many arguments... ...the studio version of a song Del Rey has been performing live cleverly combines tropes straight out of Nabokov with those straight outta gangsta rap, though its reach may outstretch its grasp. “Light of your life, fire of your loins,” Del Rey purrs, just like Lolita’s Humbert Humbert, mixing the old-school Hollywood glamor of her vocal with mixtape-ready nods to cocaine and Riker’s Island…
  121. Watson, Elijah (October 23, 2017). "I listened to all of Insane Clown Posse's albums, and now I understand". Daily Dot. Retrieved May 26, 2020.
  122. Duncan, Lesley (23 March 2016). "Poem of the Day: Oor Hamlet by Adam McNaughtan". The Herald. Retrieved May 26, 2020.
  123. Caffrey, Dan (November 21, 2008). "Instant Indie Classic: Lagwagon – Let's Talk About Feelings". Consequence of Sound. Retrieved May 26, 2020. The album's standout track is "Owen Meaney", the closer that describes the fall of John Irving's title character from A Prayer For Owen Meaney... ...Like the novel, the song is told from the viewpoint of protagonist John Wheelwright as the death of his pint-sized friend causes him to question his faith.
  124. Armstrong, Sam (November 23, 2015). "Acquiring The Taste Of Prog Icons Gentle Giant". udiscovermusic. Retrieved May 27, 2020. Indeed, the only thing blatant about Acquiring The Taste was the group’s refusal to compromise... ...choosing to open the record with ‘Pantagruel’s Nativity’, a seven-minute excursion built around primitive Moog and Gregorian chants, and taking for its inspiration series of 16th-century French novels written by François Rabelais, was hardly a moderate start. (In fact, the song seems to have been so perplexing to some that it’s mis-spelt as ‘Pentagruel’s Nativity’ on the original A-aide label.)
  125. Power, Martin (April 5, 2018). Nailed to History: The Story of Manic Street Preachers. Omnibus Press. p. 149. ISBN 9780857127761. Retrieved June 5, 2020.
  126. Smith, Rod (October 9, 2006). "Infinite Variety". Seattle Weekly. Retrieved June 5, 2020. At first, album-opening rocker and undeclared diptych “Pattern Recognition” reads like more of the same new thing. Sneaky guitars wriggle around bassist-turned-guitarist/singer Kim Gordon’s anxious vocal like electric snakes as she coos and yelps through a skeletal synopsis of William Gibson’s latest novel.
  127. Horning, Nicole (December 15, 2018). Metal Music: A History for Headbangers. Greenhaven Publishing. p. 35. ISBN 9781534565272. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  128. Davis, Allison P. (March 8, 2016). "Teens Have So Much to Learn From This One-Hit Wonder". The Cut. The New Yorker. Retrieved June 6, 2020. “Popular,” a ’96 sprechgesang/alt-rock hit, stands out because the video, by Girls director Jesse Peretz, is particularly good. The plot: A high-school cheerleader two-times some quarterbacks at the advice of her nerdy, manic teacher, who appears to teach only one subject, Inappropriate Advice for Teenage Girls 101. The teacher is played by Nada Surf’s lead singer, Matthew Caws, who recites actual text from Penny’s Guide to Teen-Age Charm and Popularity, a 1964 teen advice book by Gloria Winters.
  129. Thompson, Dave (August 18, 2015). Go Phish. St. Martin's Publishing Group. p. 62. ISBN 9781250094971.
  130. Zaleski, Erin (December 6, 2017). "Johnny Hallyday, We Hardly Knew You!". The Daily Beast. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  131. Ollison, Rashod D. (February 7, 2008). "The 'Real' deal". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  132. Donaldson, Scott (2007). Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life. Columbia University Press. p. 137. ISBN 9780231138420. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  133. Smith, Rosa Inocencio (September 17, 2016). "Track of the Day: 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Iron Maiden". The Atlantic. Retrieved June 23, 2020. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 626-line tale of a cursed sailor’s sin and redemption is a lot to take in... ...Luckily, bass player Steve Harris’s lyrics provide a pretty straightforward summary, and the music—shifting from shouted lyrics and frantic guitars as Death descends on the mariner’s ship, to a spooky, atmospheric section that recalls a glassy sea—helps to dramatize the mariner’s story.
  134. Burdge, Anthony; Burke, Jessica (2007). Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. Taylor & Francis. p. 540. ISBN 9780415969420. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  135. "Greatest Hits: The 23 best PJ Harvey songs". Treble. October 10, 2019. Retrieved June 23, 2020. “The River,” in contrast to “50 Ft. Queenie,” is a song that’s best shared a little once newcomers dive a little deeper into Harvey’s catalog. It’s not an outlier per se, but it feels like a genuine haunting in a way that few of her other songs do. That’s in part because it’s based on a story by Flannery O’Connor, famed for her own uniquely macabre storytelling, and part of it is due to the very sound of the song.
  136. Butler, Andrew M. (October 16, 2012). Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s. Liverpool University Press. p. 36. ISBN 9781781389225. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  137. Harrington, Richard (April 20, 2001). "Knopfler's Soundtracks and Stories". Washington Post. Retrieved June 24, 2020. But on the title track of his recent album, "Sailing to Philadelphia," Knopfler's done a dramatic turnaround, in essence condensing Thomas Pynchon's 773-page novel, "Mason & Dixon," into a pop song in which Knopfler plays astronomer Jeremiah Mason to James Taylor's surveyor, Charles Dixon… …"It's a massive book [reduced to] four verses of a song, a two-minute take on a two-ton book," says Knopfler, who first read Pynchon's 1997 novel on one of his many transatlantic flights between London and Nashville. Knopfler's song -- which actually clocks in at 5 1/2 minutes -- addresses the more personal elements of the Mason-Dixon line while underscoring one of Knopfler's ongoing obsessions. " 'Mason & Dixon' is about America, which is one of the most fantastic stories of the last millennium and one that continues," he says. "When Mason and Dixon were in America, it was a turning point because there was the beginning of the rumbles of independence, a very exciting and interesting time. . . . America was a colony of England at the time and then it turned around and colonized the world with its music and films and a great many other things…
  138. Semon, Craig (October 1, 2009). "UK's Muse puts up a spirited 'Resistance'". Telegram. Retrieved April 15, 2020. The album's most Orwellian moments come with the audacious arena rock anthem "United States of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage)." For this "Bohemian Rhapsody" for the new millennium (and potential national anthem for any new militant world power), Bellamy is at his army boot-stomping best, pledging his undying allegiance to the new authoritarian superpower, before shifting to Chopin's "Nocturne No. 2 in E Flat," which seals the deal.
  139. Cubarrubia, RJ (June 20, 2012). "EP Premiere: Deadmau5, 'The Veldt'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
  140. Howe, Brian (October 30, 2006). "The Decemberists". Pitchfork. Retrieved May 9, 2020. Pitchfork: You've said that "When the War Came" was inspired by Elise Blackwell's book Hunger. Were you thinking about our current global-political situation as well? Is wartime ambiance so pervasive that it automatically filters into all creative endeavors right now? [Colin Meloy]: I think it was unconscious. After reading the book and starting to work on the song, it didn't even occur to me that "When the War Came" could mean anything other than what it was, the inner monologue of a botanist at an institute in Leningrad. But then immediately when the record came out and we started doing interviews, people assumed it was some scathing criticism of the Iraq war.
  141. Saunders, Luke. "LSD and 24-hour jazz: the story of Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit'". Happy Mag. Retrieved May 9, 2020. Unsurprisingly, Slick took open inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s dreamscape masterpiece Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. The fluid surrealism and perceptive alterations imbued Carroll’s work with a notoriety for being acid-laced. With character reference’s to a spacey Alice, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the White Knight, Red Queen, the Dormouse, and of course the White Rabbit, the influence is clear.
  142. Luerssen, John D. (2015). The Smiths FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Most Important British Band of the 1980s. Backbeat Books. p. 201. ISBN 9781480394490. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
  143. Rogan, Johnny (June 26, 2012). Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance. Omnibus Press. p. 440. ISBN 9780857121288. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
  144. Greene, Andy (March 4, 2015). "Readers' Poll: The 10 Best Rush Songs". Rolling Stone. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  145. Rule, Doug (September 11, 2002). "Getting "Naked" with Amber". Metro Weekly. Retrieved April 15, 2020. The first hit from Naked, "Yes," was inspired by and quotes from James Joyce's Ulysses as Amber rapturously talks of being alone with a man touching her breasts — not surprisingly, a stumbling block to getting radio play.
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