Y'all, I love books. That should be pretty obvious. I love music, too, because I'm a human. So naturally when books and music come together, I lovelove it.
I love when songs are about books. Or short stories or plays or poems. You get the idea. There are a million more than these, I'm sure. These are just the obvious ones/ones I like.
Radiohead - Exit Music (For A Film) - My favorite songs that are about literature are the ones told from the perspective of one of the characters. This one is particularly good because it's not in your face about Romeo and Juliet. But it is . . . Thom Yorke wrote is specifically to play at the end credits of Romeo + Juliet (hence the song title). But what I really love about this song is that it could be sung from the perspective of either Romeo or Juliet. I think we assume Romeo because Thom Yorke is a man, but there isn't anything in the lyrics that define sex. Both Romeo and Juliet had shitty parents, so it can be about either of them.
Peter Gabriel - Family Snapshot - This is based on An Assassin's Diary by Arthur Bremmer. It's sort of easy to write a song about a love story. Peter Gabriel wrote a song about someone who wanted to assassinate a a racist politician.
Taylor Swift - Love Story - This is a stretch. I admit it. BUT I LOVE TAYLOR SWIFT. Don't try to understand it. Just go with it. About Romeo and Juliet, this is written from the perspective of Juliet . . . that is, if Romeo had "talked to [her] dad" before their marriage and they grew old and happy together. I also like the addition of The Scarlet Letter ("You were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter"), which in the context of the song doesn't really make sense. BUT I DON'T CARE, I LOVE IT ANYWAY.
Aimee Mann - Ghost World - Pretty sweet song about a pretty sweet graphic novel. I'm not sure how many songs there are about graphic novels. I'm not talking about comic book series, though, and I am ESPECIALLY not talking about any of the terrible terrible terrible songs written about Superman.
Fear Before the March of Flames - The Lisbon Girls, Oh The Lisbon Girls - I probably shouldn't count this because I hate this band and I hate this song. But I love the lyrics! And it's about The Virgin Suicides, my favorite novel. If only this song were in the hands of an artist that isn't absolutely awful.
Steve Forbert - Romeo's Tune - Another fairly upbeat Romeo and Juliet-based song. It doesn't explicitly change the story to happy ending like "Love Story," but you'd never know Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy based on this song.
David Bowie - 1984 - An appropriately dark song for 1984. The lyrics don't really explicitly describe specific events or characters in the book, but it does give a decent view of a dystopia/shitty world. "They'll split your pretty cranium and fill it full of air." Sort of wish there was a lyric like "They'll strap a caged rat to your face."
Fleetwood Mac - Rhiannon - This isn't quite based on Mary Leader's Triad, but it's not originally based on the Welsh goddess Rhiannon, either. Stevie Nicks wrote the song after she read Triad but really only used the name Rhiannon from the book, not much else. BUT the song is amazing, so who cares.
R.E.M. - Falls to Climb - The real benefit of having a singer like Michael Stipe sing about a short story like "The Lottery" is that he totally stays true to the nature of the story. If a scary or intimidating sounding guy sang the song it would really betray the subtlety of the story. And Michael Stipe has such a nice voice that really lends itself to the naivety of the main character. Also "The Lottery" is one of my favorite short stories, so there.
Bright Eyes - Tereza and Tomas - This doesn't have specific elements to the song that scream I'M ABOUT THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, but would that even be possible? If you aren't familiar with novel, the song would really just seem like a love song, presumably about two people named Tereza and Tomas. And really, you could argue that The Unbearable Lightness of Being is just a love story about Tereza and Tomas, too.
Simon & Garfunkel - Richard Cory - My high school English teacher in my senior year didn't believe me when, while reading the poem for class, I told her that there was a Simon & Garfunkel song based on it. "Who would write a song about a poem about suicide?" Well, I don't know, Paul Simon I guess. It's a great poem and a great song, which is not told from the perspective of Richard Cory (or even the second person, like the poem). My English teacher had never read Lord of the Flies, though, so she was really in no position to talk.
Panda Bear - Bonfire of the Vanities - So the only lyrics to this song are "Don't you think that I cannot be sorry/It's always such a stupid thing that I can't deal with," which are obviously too vague to really pinpoint it as being about Bonfire of the Vanities. Especially since it could actually be about that other bonfire of the vanities. Noah Lennox's lyrics are usually pretty literal, so I would guess that they're at least inspired by one (or both?) of the two.
Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights - AS IF I would ever forget to include this. This is one of my favorite songs of all time. What I like the most about it is that it sounds like a love song . . . a character begging for her lover to come home. Except in Wuthering Heights, Catherine is dead and her ghost calls to Heathcliff from the window. So in the song when she says "come home" and "let me grab your soul away," it's a little creepier when you put it in the context of the novel. Also the first lyric is "Out on the wiley, windy moors." PERFECT.
Bonus video: THE MAGICAL KATE BUSH
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