Pop Fiction: Stories Inspired by Songs

There are no words in this song beyond the title, slowly spelled out and the aleatoric outro , which actually makes it excellent background music for reading. What I mean is: I listen it once and then I have to listen to it obsessively for many days before I get over it and forget about it until I accidentally listen to it again and get sucked back into Wonderland.

Alice follows him wherever he goes. In Peter Pan , sparkle dust lets you fly. In the Wizard of Oz , they awaken in a poppy field to see the beautiful Emerald City. Our parents read us stories about chemicals that make it possible to have a good time. Not just the title track but the entire album is inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank.

In a interview in a issue of Puncture Magazine , Jeff Mangum admitted the following:. And I was walking around wondering, would everything make sense to me if I knew the history of the world, or would I just lose my mind? Then I spent two days reading it and completely flipped out. It stuck with me for a long, long time.

While I was reading the book, she was completely alive to me. I pretty much knew what was going to happen. And then at the end, she gets disposed of like a piece of trash. I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine, having the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Anne Frank.

In an interview , he said:. Not strong Only aggressive Not free We only licensed Not compassionate, only polite Now who the nicest? Not good but well behaved Chasing after death, so we can call ourselves brave? Still living like mental slaves Hiding like thieves in the night from life Illusions of oasis making you look twice Hiding like thieves in the night from life Illusions of oasis making you look twice. And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good but well-behaved.

We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life.

I think it is especially true in the world of hip hop, because we get blinded by these illusions. This is the kind of thing all teenage bookworms secretly dream about—and some college kids, although definitely not any I knew, actually act on:.

List of songs that retell a work of literature

If you've listened to S-Town, the podcast from the makers of Serial and This American Life , this year, the refrain "the summer is here at last This song, from the album Odessey and Oracle , is a retelling of the William Faulkner short story, first published in April McLemore, the podcast's focus, gave a copy of the story to the show's producer during the first days of their initial meeting after recognising parallels between his life and that of Emily. Pop girl band The Bangles turned to Sylvia Plath for their song, which was released on their third album, Everything.

The bouncy melody stands starkly at odds with the sobering story of a young woman whom everyone wants to be, secretly suffocating in her own misery and loneliness. Frankenstein was originally written on the shores of Lake Geneva in and was first published a couple of years later. Initial reviews were mixed, even calling it a "disgusting absurdity". However the novel has never been out of print and lauded by some as the start of science fiction.

Perry has said that the song was inspired by the book and her wish to be shot across the sky as a firework when she dies. My boyfriend showed me a paragraph out of Jack Kerouac's book On the Road , about people that are buzzing and fizzing and full of life and never say a commonplace thing. They shoot across the sky like a firework and make people go, 'Ahhh. Sound like a certain young lady from Kansas? Novels bought in airports can affect our lives in unexpected ways.

When Stevie Nicks bought Triad by Mary Leader she thought the name Rhiannon was pretty enough to have a song in its honour. She did so in Malibu in a few months before joining Fleetwood Mac. John Lennon discovered the book during a trip to a book shop to buy some works of Nietzsche. Instead of settling down to some nihilist philosophy, Lennon found himself on the shop's couch with The Psychedelic Experience , copying out the line, "Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.

Pop Fiction: Stories Inspired By Songs by Various Artists' |

That album concerns itself with attitudes and towards the benefits and perils of modern technology. Band member Trevor Horn says this stand out track from the album is inspired by J. The boy comes upon an opera singer living destitute now her professions is no longer needed. Ultrasonic music killed the opera star, as it were.

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Wuthering Heights was Kate Bush's debut single, released in The song is sung from the point of view of Cathy Earnshaw, and uses several quotations from the book, using Cathy's famous quote "Let me in your window - I'm so cold! It came to popular attention again in the late s when obscure music guru Quentin Tarantino used it as the title track for his Blaxploitation homage Jackie Brown. In the song, which Chance describes as being the hardest track on the album to write, drugs are used as a metaphor for the changes he's experienced throughout his life, with the song referencing the book very literally with the lyrics "When did you change?

In the album's liner notes, Kweli talks about a paragraph from the book that "struck me as one of the truest critiques of our society, and I read that in high school when I was 15 years old. I think it is especially true in the world of hip hop, because we get blinded by these illusions.

Willie Burke Sherwood, named after Killer Mike's grandfather, is an autobiographical track that uses Lord of the Flies , William Golding's novel, to demonstrate how Mike had to channel his harder side to survive growing up. The book's character of Jack, the school's former head boy, represents the darker side of human nature: Hinton wrote some amazing books about gang culture, violence and teen alienation in mid-century America.

The song has a connection to another literary work: Of Burns, Tull felt Scotland's bard was, "a complete drunken lech, putting his heart into it. Radiohead's memorable second track from their OK Computer is a four-part, six-minute Radiohead-does-Bohemian-Rhapsody masterpiece. Apparently, the band had been listening to an audiobook of the novel on their bus during a tour post-The Bends.

Thom Yorke felt Marvin's 'I'm so depressed' attitude was exactly how people would like him to be, prompting him to choose the song's title as a joke. Curly, hobbit-like locks aside, the connection between iconic rock band Led Zeppelin and J. The title appears in the second book of Paradise Lost where it references an undefined threat.

The song describes atrocities committed throughout history, including the trial and death of Jesus, Robert F. Written in the first person from the perspective of the Devil himself, the song led some to label the Stones as devil-worshippers, something Jagger later reflected on, stating: Glasgow's Alex Harvey's career spanned three decades, but his most famous body of work came as the frontman of the aptly named glam rockers The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. The rocking tune gaily plunders from Stevenson's tale for characters and lyrics, taking us on a pirating journey with one unexpected character in the form of the Tomahawk Kid - described on All Music as, "an ebullient cross between Dennis the Menace and Christopher Robin, the Kid sees even the romantic thrust of a pirate's life as an intrusion on the true spirit of playtime - "let's be bold, my Captain, and I'll hold your hairy hand," pleads the Kid.

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