Bowers Begs Of You: Wholly "Literary" Songs?

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For an article: What are some totally lit-based songs? (pop, I reckon, so no one says Mendelsohn's incidental music for "Midsummer Night's Dream" etc)

To start:
*Sufjan Stevens "Good Man Is Hard To Find"
*Mountain Goats "Grendel's Mother"
*Cure "Killing An Arab"
*all the Will Oldham and Ned Olham poetry-based stuff, and the new Decemberists

― WS Bowers, Thursday, 11 March 2004 16:36 (twenty-two years ago)

There was a VERY similar thread to this which I think you'd find useful. I will try and find it.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Thursday, 11 March 2004 16:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Syd Barrett - Golden Hair
Scott Walker - The Plague

― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), Thursday, 11 March 2004 16:46 (twenty-two years ago)

opinion: Does "Jacques Derrida" by Scritti Politti count?

― WS Bowers, Thursday, 11 March 2004 16:49 (twenty-two years ago)

davis axelrod - songs of innocence & songs of experience

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 11 March 2004 16:50 (twenty-two years ago)

'Haunted Island' by Agitation Free has lyrics by Poe.
Then there's 'The Raven' by Lou Reed but that course is ill-advised.

― sexyDancer, Thursday, 11 March 2004 16:50 (twenty-two years ago)

songs about books!

some useful stuff in that.

Music Adaptions of literature

that's more like it.

what crazy Kate Bush songs are based on literature??

good post from Stripey here.

literary influences on pop - classic or dud?

Great joke in first answer.

Allusions to LITERATURE in Music

More of the same.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Thursday, 11 March 2004 16:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Phil Ochs' "The Bells"- I'm totally blanking, I think it's an arrangement of a Poe poem. Maybe.

― Donna Brown (Donna Brown), Thursday, 11 March 2004 17:04 (twenty-two years ago)

boeing duveen and the beautiful soup - "jabberwock"

― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 11 March 2004 17:15 (twenty-two years ago)

800 psychedelic songs based on the I Ching

― dleone (dleone), Thursday, 11 March 2004 17:20 (twenty-two years ago)

lots of decemberists stuff is write with literary and authorial references.

― devon powers (popmatters devon), Thursday, 11 March 2004 19:07 (twenty-two years ago)

The Decemberists seem out to create their own genre, a sort of musical equivalent to very very boring midlist litfic novels. Their singer's sister actually writes and publishes midlist litfic, though I certainly can't call it boring without having first read it, something I don't anticipate happening any time soon. On the other hand, they do have that song about Myla Goldberg, whose first novel was reasonably decent.

Onward the course of Midlist Indie makes its way.

― nabiscothingy, Thursday, 11 March 2004 19:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Mekons - Hey! Susan = apparently a condensed version of Jude the Obscure, and If They Hang You = words taken from the intro by Lillian Hellman to a book of stories by Dashiell Hammett.

― pauls00, Thursday, 11 March 2004 19:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Paul Burch's Last of My Kind

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Thursday, 11 March 2004 19:35 (twenty-two years ago)

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