I read a lot, and I listen to a lot of music. I’m pretty much always listening to music, since my mind plays music if there isn’t any external music source. While I’m reading, a theme song for the book will frequently show up in my head. For example, the couple in Courtney Milan’s Unraveled, Miranda and Smite's song is Snow Patrol's Set Down Your Glass: “When you eyes meet mine I lose simple skills, like to tell you all I want is now”. It’s just the song that my head played when I read about them, they keep not communicating. Smite’s mother nearly killed him with her religious mania, and did kill his sister. He lives a life of rigid control, and he can’t imagine having love in that life. Miranda is poor. A poor single woman in Victorian England, so her life has always been hard and she can’t imagine someone who she thinks has a lush life being interested in her. They have serious trouble communicating, even though they are attracted.
And then there are literary songs. There are so many. I remember seeing Nightline, about a million years ago. Sam Donaldson was substituting for Ted Koppel, and the guest was Sting. I was looking forward to hearing this erudite, well-read man talk about his activism, and sure about music, too. It was obvious that Donaldson had stopped listening to popular music in 1955, and hadn’t read any of his prep material. It would be easier to name a song of Sting’s without literary references than to cite them. During this interview, I was shouting “Lolita” at my TV. And then there’s Moon Over Bourbon Street, inspired by Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire; and Wrapped Around your Finger, where he drops a mythological reference. And of course, lots of Shakespeare.
U2 have a lot of literature in their music. Biblical references are so numerous there’s actually a blog devoted to just that: Bono’s Bible, so I’ll talk about other stuff here. Breathe opens with reference to Joyce:
16th of June, nine 0 five, door bell rings
Man at the door says if I want to stay alive a bit longer
There's a few things I need you to know.
More Joyce, in The Ocean, just a passing reference to Dorian Gray. And then, there’s the song they wrote with Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet. I can’t really tell what lines were written by who, maybe someone more familiar with Rushdie’s writing can spot his contribution. And U2’s two most recent album titles: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, refer to William Blake’s poems. (and have fans hoping they are working on an album to be called Songs of Ascendance or Transcendence, or something similar). One of my favorite U2 songs, A Sort Of Homecoming, takes its title from poet Paul Celan, who wrote: "Poetry is a sort of homecoming.".
Snow Patrol — Gary Lightbody refers to Irish history and authors frequently, especially Seamus Heaney. Lightbody’s blog post talks about the songs he wrote for the tribute concert after Heaney’s death — the 2nd entry at the link. The August 2013 one tells the story of how reading one of Heaney’s poems in school changed his life, I thought how he expressed gratitude was really sweet.
I Think of Home is probably the most clearly influenced by Heaney. I almost think that if he’d written pop songs, this would have been one.
I remember trips to Belfast
On a train that hugs the coast
The fields turn quickly into golf course
The golf course just as fast to fields
It was a callow boast, I'll grant you
To know it all when we knew none
Those days we walked the streets of Belfast
Like our kingdom come had come
Then there are musical books, like Year Zero. I loved that book. Human music is unique in the universe, aliens love it — it is actually addictive to them, and they all owe humanity…. all the money there is, because of copyright violations. An interstellar law firm plucks an Earth lawyer who knows something about music law, but isn’t an important person or expert… and hilarity ensues. It is a great, great book. And Cat Valente’s Space Opera is another fun, musical book. A washed-up pop star is chosen to be humanity’s representative for an interstellar version of Eurovision, but with much, much higher stakes. Her thank yous to Douglas Adams and David Bowie in the acknowledgements made me cry. I did skip the stream-of-consciousness chapters from the alien, don’t feel like I missed out on a lot. It is supposedly going to be adapted into a movie, hope it is, it would be a really fun one.
Then there’s Love Is The Higher Law, by David Levithan. It’s about three teens’ experiences on 9/11. I normally wouldn’t go near a 9/11 book, I want happy books. But a friend convinced me to read it & I’m glad she did. It talks about the events of that day, but mostly about how people felt and acted in the aftermath. Music is one of the things that gets our characters through, and they all attend a U2 concert that had already been scheduled and wasn’t canceled — people needed to come together and heal. People frequently speak of U2 concerts having a spiritual feel to them, and that one has definitely been called one.
There’s a list of Rock&Roll books at GoodReads, it’s a mix of memoirs, biographies, and fiction.
Douglas Adams talks about Paul McCartney very frequently in his books. Like, really a lot. Here is a link to a very Adams-ish tribute to the Beatles. Put any drinks you have down before you read, because Douglas Adams. This line, from Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, made me laugh every single time: "From somewhere at the back of the crowd a single voice started to sing a tune which would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world.". Several more quotes from the book are here. When I discovered Adams, I was a big Beatles fan, and his love for them definitely made me love him more.
Do you hear music in your head when you read? Any of your favorite musicians have literary references in their work? Any favorite books involving music?
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