Buzz
For generations, creators have drawn inspiration from one another, and musicians are no exception. Explore a selection of songs across genres, from hip hop to classic rock, that pay homage to literature.
1. “100% Dundee” // The Roots
The Roots titled their fourth studio album after Things Fall Apart, the renowned novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The track “100% Dundee” explicitly references both the book and Achebe. The band’s late manager, Rich Nichols, introduced them to the novel, drawing parallels between Tariq Trotter (Black Thought) and one of its characters. Questlove recalled in 2019, “I picked up the book after Rich pointed out how Tariq resembled a skilled warrior adrift in his own land.”
2. “Happiness” // Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift, known for weaving literary allusions into her music, appears to draw inspiration from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in her song “happiness” from evermore. The lyrics, “I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool / Who takes my spot next to you,” mirror Daisy Buchanan’s wish for her daughter Pammy in The Great Gatsby: “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
In “happiness,” Swift also alludes to a “green light,” reminiscent of the iconic green light at Daisy and Tom’s dock in Gatsby. This isn’t her first nod to the novel; she previously referenced it in Reputation’s “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” with the line, “Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year.”
3. “How Soon Is Now” // The Smiths
The Smiths are renowned for their literary influences, and their 1984 B-side “How Soon Is Now” features one of their most direct tributes. The opening lines—“I am the son / And the heir / Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar / I am the son and heir / Of nothing in particular”—are a reimagining of a passage from George Eliot’s Middlemarch: “To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular.”
The song’s title also draws from literature, borrowing a line from Marjorie Rosen’s feminist film history book, Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies & the American Dream, where she poses the question, “How immediately can we be gratified? How soon is now?”
4. “Killing An Arab” // The Cure
“Killing an Arab,” a song that has sparked controversy due to its misunderstood title, is a condensed retelling of the plot from Albert Camus’ L’Étranger (The Stranger), where the protagonist commits a murder on a beach. Robert Smith, The Cure’s frontman, has lamented the song’s title, explaining in a 2001 interview with Chart Attack that “The song’s core message is about the universality of human existence—everyone lives, everyone dies. It’s the opposite of a racist song. Yet, people can’t move past the title, which is deeply frustrating. The story is set in France and addresses Algerian struggles, so the reference to an Arab is purely geographical.”
5. “L.A. Woman” // The Doors
John Rechy’s 1963 novel City of Night, a seminal work in both gay and Chicano literature, has inspired numerous artists, including Gus van Sant, who credited it with influencing his film My Own Private Idaho, and David Bowie, who penned a blurb for its 50th anniversary edition. The Doors, whose name originates from Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (itself inspired by William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell), paid homage to Rechy’s book in their 1971 hit “L.A. Woman.” Drummer John Densmore even participated in a UCLA panel in 2013, celebrating the novel’s 50th anniversary and its enduring impact.
6. “Make Love Stay” // Dan Fogelberg
In the liner notes for “Make Love Stay,” Fogelberg described the song as “a musical question that, to this day, remains unanswered.” This theme resonates with Tom Robbins’s 1980 novel Still Life With Woodpecker, which explores the love story between an anarchist and a princess and repeatedly poses the same question throughout its narrative.
7. “Off to the Races” // Lana Del Rey
While numerous artists, from The Police to The Veronicas, have referenced Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial 1955 novel Lolita, Lana Del Rey stands out for her deep fascination with the book. Rolling Stone highlighted that her 2012 album Born to Die is filled with “numerous Lolita references,” including the tracks “Lolita” and “Off to the Races,” which incorporates the novel’s iconic lines, “Light of my life / Fire of my loins,” into its chorus.
8. “Testify” // Rage Against the Machine
George Orwell’s iconic dystopian novel 1984 has inspired countless musicians, from Stevie Wonder to the Dead Kennedys. Rage Against the Machine’s 1999 track “Testify,” from their album The Battle of Los Angeles, directly references one of the party slogans from 1984: “Who controls the past now controls the future / Who controls the present now controls the past.” This line, both in the book and the song, underscores how those in power manipulate history and media to shape public perception.
9. “Venus In Furs” // The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground, named after journalist Michael Leigh’s nonfiction book, drew inspiration for “Venus in Furs” from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s seminal novel on sadomasochism. The song’s title reflects the book’s opening tale, where a man recounts a dream of encountering the goddess Venus adorned in fur.
10. “Wuthering Heights” // Kate Bush
Kate Bush’s hit song “Wuthering Heights” reimagines Emily Brontë’s classic novel from Cathy’s perspective, capturing her plea at Heathcliff’s window, begging to be let in. Bush even incorporates Cathy’s dialogue from the book. Reflecting on the song’s origin, Bush once shared, “What sparked it was a TV adaptation I saw as a child. The spirit of Cathy stayed with me—partly because I was called Cathy as a child before it changed to Kate. I exaggerated my own flaws to channel her headstrong, passionate, and almost mad nature.”
Wuthering Heights has inspired more than just one song: Jim Steinman penned his legendary track “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”—first recorded by Pandora’s Box in 1989 and later by Celine Dion in 1996, whose rendition peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and achieved double platinum status—while deeply immersed in the world of Wuthering Heights, a book he adores, as he mentioned on his website. He aimed to encapsulate the novel’s themes of consuming passion, describing the final product as “an erotic motorcycle.”
11. “Blood Sweat & Tears” // BTS
BTS’s “Blood Sweat & Tears” music video draws direct inspiration from Hermann Hesse’s 1919 novel Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth. Mirroring the book, the video is rich with surreal visuals and explores themes of duality. It includes a moment where RM, a BTS member, reads an excerpt from the novel (“He, too, was a tempter. He, too, was a link to the second. The evil world with which I no longer wanted to have anything to do”). In an interview, RM explained, “We saw parallels between ‘Demian’ and the messages we wanted to convey, so we incorporated many elements from the book into our jacket photos and music video.”
