Literary Lyrical

The bands I tend to fall in love with are bands that have lyrics that tell stories through their lyrics. That's why I really admire songwriters like Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, and Roger Waters; their lyrics open up the imagination and create vivid imagery in my mind every time I play one of their albums. Perhaps that's why I'm also attracted to concept albums and the like.

But I also appreciate the songwriter who acknowledges the power of storytelling, not just in music, but in actual literary history. In college, I majored in Literature, and being a music lover, I was prone to making literary connections to the music I listened to.

Here are some of my favorite "literary" songs, that either reference or acknowledge literature:

• "Paperback Writer" by The Beatles -- Okay, this first one is just a song about being an author and writing novels. How can you not love the narrator's desperation to get his work published? This is a classic, people.
• "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police -- For the line "He starts to shake and cough / Just like the old man in / That book by Nabokov." This is a reference to Lolita, in case you haven't bothered to look that up by now.
• "Misty Mountain Hop" by Led Zeppelin -- I'm not afraid to admit that I'm a bit of a Tolkien nerd. I love this trippy interpretation of The Hobbit. Of course, Zeppelin fans will know that this is not the only time Robert Plant has referenced Tolkien's work in song. "Ramble On" is the next obvious choice, and there is still debate on whether or not "Stairway to Heaven" contains any allusions.
• "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones -- This is another contested literary allusion, but many people believe the subject for this bass-driven tune were inspired by The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, which is an amazing novel along the lines of Goethe's Faust. Care for a little philosophical debate on the motives of Satan?
• Black Magic: All Mysteries Revealed by Year Long Disaster -- I had to follow that last song with this album by a still relatively unknown, but great contemporary band. This second album is also loosely based on Bulgakov's novel. "Sparrow Hill" is my favorite track off this album, and I think captures the mood of the novel best.
• "Where Are They Now?" by The Kinks -- This song is especially close to my heart because the literary references made in this song were partly the subject of my senior thesis in college. Here Ray Davies references the great authors of the "Angry Young Man" genre, popular in the 1950s and immortalized in film adaptations in the early '60s. "Where are all the angry young men now? / Barstow and Osborne, Waterhouse and Sillitoe / Where on earth did they all go?". Think of these authors as early rockers who couldn't afford a guitar. Recommended reading: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe.
• Animals by Pink Floyd -- Here's another album with a popular literary influence. Roger Waters takes the animal metaphors of George Orwell's Animal Farm and updates them with his concerns for politics, capitalism, and a lack of empathy in society. This album was released just before the Thatcher years in England.
• "Tales of Brave Ulysses" by Cream -- Cream's music is always a bit of an Odyssey, but this song transforms Homer's epic poem into a psychedelic hit. Want to trip out without taking dropping acid and listening to Cream? Try reading James Joyce's Ulysses sober; this Homeric tale will mess your head up just as much. (It's been two years since I read it in college and my brain still hurts.)
• "Empty Glass" by Pete Townshend -- In a 1980 Rolling Stone interview, Townshend explains that his spiritual song was based on the work of Hafiz, a Persian Sufi poet who "used to talk about God's love being wine, and that we learn to be intoxicated and that the heart is like an empty cup." Interested in Sufi poetry? Rumi is another popular poet.

Now go listen to those songs, but don't forget to pick up a book once in a while too.