Stumbled across this rather witty song, Harper Lee by Suzanne Vega, while exploring the Best of 2016.There cannot be many other pop songs that name check so many novelists.
It’s from a play called “Carson McCullers Talks About Love” about the Heart is a Lonely Hunter Hitmaker.
Are there any other songs that mention novelists or poets you can think of?
Paul Simon mentions Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost in the ennui-ridden Dangling Conversation. When I bought this album I’m sure I had no idea who either of them were.
I’m surprised we’ve got this far down without anybody mentioning this:
“She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance”
You posted at exactly the same time as KFD. Your joke would have worked better if you had managed to press Post Comment first.
Dammit, KFD!
More Lloyd
If you really want to get straight
Read Norman Mailer
Or get a new tailor
looking like a friend of Truman Capote…not to mention Speedboat (didn’t I already post these a few weeks ago?)
“I love the laconic. Clearly, I am not of their number.”
And, of course, David loves Emily:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrcBF0J6yxU
Bobbie D’s You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go. Presented here by Miley Cyrus, which I assume is the Afterword’s prefered version.
This was a Mondegreen for me- I couldnt tell if like Verlaine and Rimbaud was like the lanes and rambled. which also works, I think.
The Smiths “Cemetry Gates” a nod to some of Morrisseys heroes…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-8oikEkUzw
Sting showed he had read books, and was therefore a bit of a clever dicky when he wrote:
“He starts to shake, he starts to cough. Just like the old man in that famous book by Nabakov”
… Did the tea-time of your soul make you long for wilder days?
Did you never let Jack Kerouac wash over you in waves? …
Some say you can learn a lot from books,
Thrill ride to second-hand living.
Life is just as deadly as it looks
But fiction is more forgiving …
Richard Thompson – Sibella
Clifford T Ward had been reading Browning, Keats and William Wordsworth
They all seemed to be saying the same thing for him
He liked the words they use, and he liked the way they used them
You know, Home Thoughts From Abroad is such a beautiful poem
Some Sylvia Plath entries:
Ryan Adams’ Sylvia Plath.
The whole of Kathryn Williams’ Hypoxia album (inspired by Plath’s novel The Bell Jar).
Paul Westerberg’s Crackle and Drag (title taken from the last line of Plath’s last poem, Edge –
‘The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag’ )
When you’re in Matlock Bath you don’t need Sylvia Plath
Half Man Half Biscuit – The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train)
More HMHB literary referencing:
“Moorcock, Moorcock, Michael Moorcock you fervently moan”
(Dickie Davies Eyes)
The Pogues are good for this.
Hell’s Ditch mentions Jean Genet, the same album has the song Lorca’s Novena, and the earlier Peace And Love album has a song about Christie Brown. Thousands Are Sailing namechecks Brendan Behan, and I’m sure he pops up in another of their songs, but I can’t think what one now.
Don’t think they mention Yeats, but The Waterboys have that covered.
This is perhaps a stretch, but it’s also the only song I can ever recall that name-checks a music journalist. ‘Her Sylvie Simmons books is dog-eared….’
More on this side topic – Guns’n’Roses Get in the Ring reveals uncharitable sentiments towards Mick Wall among others:
And that goes for all of you punks in the press
That want to start shit by printin’ lies instead of the things we said
That means you andy secher at hit parader, circus magazine
Mick wall at kerrang, bob guccione jr. at spin
What you pissed off ’cause your dad gets more pussy than you?
Fuck you! suck my fuckin’ dick!
I guess what surprised me about the Sylvie Simmons reference was that there’s a songwriter out there who genuinely seems to admire good writers…
King Crimson’s ‘Beat’ is inspired by the – err – Beat poets and writers, their spouses, friends and lovers and places associated with them. It name checks Neal (Cassady) and Jack (Kerouac) in the first track on the album, as well as some of Kerouac’s works.
Jools & Jim from the Pete Townshend album Empty Glass is about then-NME scribes Julie Birchill and Tony Parsons, specifically the unflattering stuff they wrote/said when Keith Moon died
Afternoons and Coffee Spoons by The Crash Test Dummies mentions TS Eliot.
Linton Kwezi Johnson’s “If I Waz a top-Notch Poet” mentions, among others, the Guyanese poet Martin Carter, the St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott, and T.S. Eliot.
Couple mentioned here:
Oscar Wilde
Ernest Hemingway
George Orwell
William Butler Yeats
Lord Tennyson
Brendan Behan
Tennessee Williams
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Jack Kerouac
D. H. Lawrence
James Joyce
Dexys Midnight Runners – Dance Stance / Burn It Down
Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan,
Sean O’Casey, George Bernard Shaw.
Samuel Beckett, Eugene O’Neill, Edna O’Brien and Lawrence Stern
The printed lyrics on t’interweb do not include Hywell Bennett or Doris Stokes, which I was convinced were also namechecked
Kev’s retort to the prevalence of Irish jokes. All the authors mentioned are (rather were) Irish.
The first time I ever heard anyone say that anti-Irish jokes are not funny. For an Airdrie boy that was quite something.
I sang this song last night, probably for the last time. I’ve done my time with The Bootleg Runners.
There’s a second list of names on the second chorus – I’ve never gotten round to looking them up. Does anyone know
Jimmy Casey Sean O Fallen Sean Kavana Sean McCann
Benedict Keely Jimmy Hiney Frank O’Connor Cathrine Rine
without the help of Google?
The writers in the first group were Irish, but most were also emigrants (Wilde, Shaw, Beckett, O Neill, O Brien, Sterne …and Behan who came to England with a bomb and his most famous work tells that story). O Casey, like most of the other names was a Protestant. I think it’s more than a riposte to “thick Paddy” jokes, it’s observing the contribution of the Irish abroad and the fact that many Irish writers had to leave to get the freedom to express themselves, and also the degree of Anglo-Irish mix. Kev would go on to be one of those kids of emigrant families who kept banging on about his roots. Wilde, for instance, would insist on being called Irish but he would hate to actually live there.
In the second group, which I’ve never paid attention to before, Benedict Kiely and Frank O Connor are immediately familiar. Seán Ó Faoláin is likewise another renowned short story writer – but I don’t hear his name, it sounds more like “Donald Morley” to these ears. Seán Kavanagh might be intended as Patrick Kavanagh – I don’t think there’s a noted Seán. Best of all, Jimmy Hiney might be Seamus Heaney – Séamus is the Irish equivalent of James. The others I don’t know, but I would expect that “Catherine Rine”‘s surname is spelled “Ryan”.
Yes to Benedict Kiely and Frank O’Connor. i actually gave Kiely an assignment – an essay about Dublin – back in the mid-eighties, when I ran an airline magazine. He was delightful to speak with on the phone and I was glad to give him the money, but the story was not exactly usable. I would like to think it was because he figured a publication such as mine would gladly accept any arrangement of words on a page.
Some great suggestions, several of which give Ms Vega a run for her money.
Merlock Bath and Sylvia Plath is a wonderful rhyme!
The new Nobel Laureate certainly knows his French poetry..
“Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud,
But there’s no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go.”
Take it away Madeleine!
Sorry Paul Wright. I’ve just noticed you’d already posted this song above. But Ms Peyroux does it very well.
Bit of a comedy number, but this mentions
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, bell hooks, William S. Burroughs and Pierre Berton before you even get to the first chorus. Plenty of other authors follow:
My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors https://g.co/kgs/LYkr2S
Not every day Moxy Fruvous make an appearance here. Hannah! Comedy songs are more than welcome.
Dylan’s Thin Man may have read The Great Gatsby but it’s not going to help him in the world of sword-swallowers and one-eyed midgets. Even if he has contacts among the lumberjacks.
“Ah, you’ve been with the professors and they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well-read, it’s well-known
But something is happening here and you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?”
Mr Jones – love his poetry
This many posts without Sir Van The Man? There’s Rave On, John Donne of course, and in Summertime In England there are appearances by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, TS Eliot, Mahalia Jackson, WB Yeats and James Joyce.
Thats a good haul for one song (mind, it is a VERY long song!)
I think Van Morrison must be the most frequent doffer of his cap to other writers. It seems like every album from the 80s onwards namechecks an inspiration.- Cleaning Windows. Tore Down a la Rimbaud, Summertime in England etc.
Neil Hannon really packs them in here with his usual witty flair.
The Booklovers
Abba’s ‘The Day Before You Came’… “I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style…”
The version by Blancmange replaced Marilyn with “Barbara Cartland” … and The Real Tuesday Weld version went for “Declan Gunn”
This is the best one…
I don’t think I’ve seen that video before and am now gripped by a sense of failure. How come my morning commute never features lingering glances across the railway carriage with an Agnetha lookalike?
Jack Frost’ Angela Carter references, er, Angela Carter
Very good song. And I had never heard of Jack Frost. A side project between Grant McLennen and Steve Kilbey from the Church – interesting!
Two albums only, unfortunately. The second, “Snowjob” which this track is off is very definitely worth investigating.
Another shout out for TS Eliot, here seen duking it out with Ezra Pound in the captain’s tower in Desolation Row.
Seemingly half the Idlewild oeuvre.
Roseability – Gertrude Stein
In Remote Part – Edward Morgan
Idea Track – Hugh Miller.
Jack Kerouac must be just about the most name checked author in popular song. There’s another example on Van’s new album (‘In Tiburon”) but here’s 10,000 Maniacs. I’ll confess I’m posting this as any excuse for presenting Nathalie Merchant in best ‘sensuous schoolteacher’ (The Guardian) mode…
Just mentioned in the Universally Challenged final
You’re The Top Cole Porter incorporates
You’re an O’Neill drama
You’re Inferno’s Dante,
Shakespeare’s sonnet,
Thanks! I was convinced that Cole Porter had dropped a literary name or two somewhere.
Nanci Griffith is guilty of this, but in a smug self-satisfied, look at me I’ve got a book under my arm on my album cover kind of way.
Red Hot Chili Peppers prove with Mellowship Slinky in B Major that mentioning writers in lyrics doesn’t always make you sound smart…
Being that I’m the duke of my domain
My hat goes off to Mark Twain
Singing a song about what true men don’t do
Killing another creature that’s kind of blue
Writing about the world of the wild coyote
Good man Truman Capote
Talking about my throughts ’cause they must grow
Cock my brain to shoot my load
I’m on the porch ’cause I lost my housekey
Pick up my book I read Bukowski
Can I get another kiss from you?
Kiss me right here on my tattoo
19th century French symbolist poets, anyone?
Stéphane Mallarmé gets a mention in this little ditty by The Bonzo Dog Band.
“The odd boy lay down by the football field and couched a slim volume of Mallarmé.
The centre-forward called him an imbecile. It’s an odd boy who doesn’t like sport…”
There’s also this rebuttal by Lal Waterson (sung by her sister Norma) of a thoroughly nasty article written by journalist Joe Haines, just after Freddie Mercury’s death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYy9xAYamj0
(Reply To Joe Haines)
Finally, here’s my favourite of many, many mentions of Marcus Garvey in the wonderful world of reggae.
(Burning Spear – Marcus Garvey)
Well and of course there’s this…
Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud….
Joni Mitchell references “Willy The Shake” in the lyrics to Talk To Me, from Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter:
That mind picks up all these pictures
It still gets my feet up to dance
Even though it’s covered with keloids
From the “slings and arrows of outrageous romance”
I stole that from Willy the Shake
You know – “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”
Romeo Romeo talk to me
John Cale has a cuppa with the Brighton Rock Hitmaker.
And here from the other side of La Manche is another atmospheric song about Monsieur Greene,
Guy Clark sings about Ernest’s favourite tipple.
I suppose Andrew doesn’t count in Poetry in Motion? Remarkably prescient if so.
Rod Stewart’s song Every Picture Tells A Story contains the line:
“I couldn’t quote you no Dickens, Shelley or Keats…”
Nice one JC. References to writers that haven’t been read or are poorly remembered certainly belong here.
I always like to be esoteric, KFD
Noel Coward was a charmer
As a writer he was Brahma
Velvet jackets and pyjamas
had a gay divorce and other dramas.
Excellent! I was actually wondering whether Sir Noel himself hadn’t dropped a few literary names, but couldn’t find any examples. Also drew a blank with Lucinda Williams who grew up in a very literary Southern household and has a great story-telling ability but drops no names.
The great Texan singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen namechecks poet Langston Hughes in his song, Going Nowhere Blues.
Lou goes literary. Not sure about this, it’s a bit po-faced for my liking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pohYpxBhOoU&list=PLEC7CADB10965AA80
I prefer Mr Reed when he’s out hustling on the street.
“I’m waiting for my raven
At my window and i got a cravin’.
Always late, always a bore
First thing you learn is it is Nevermore.
I feel like Kojak sitting in a Cadillac
I gotta eat, I gotta eat a flapjack
A stack, a rack, a six-pack Jack
Just call me Jack Kerouac
-Godley and Creme’s Snack Attack
Keats and Robert Browning get mentioned in “Illusions In G Major” on ELO’s Eldorado LP
Of course there’s that well-known tribute to a certain sci-fi author…
I’m lost for words, Sniffity, I’ve heard that literary groupies can be rather forward and good to go but Ms Bloom leaves them all at the starting line. Not a girl to beat around the bush, is she?
I think I need to go and lie down.
Before you do that, you should examine her magnum opus “You can touch my boobies”
Cyril Connelly?
No, semi-carnally!
Oh….(whistles)
Iiiiiiiiiiiimmmanuel Kant
Heidegger
David Hume
Schopenhauer
Hegel
Schegel
Nietzsche
Socrates (himself)
John Stuart Mill
Plato
Hobbes
Descartes
Socrates (himself, again. A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed)
Oh alright they’re not novelists or poets. But they could’ve been.
How about Jackie Wilson’s Heyer And Heyer?
Or The Kane Gang’s Respect Your Self…?
And let us not forget Edwin Starr’s masterful Waugh.
You’re getting silly now, Sniff! I blame that Rachel Bloom. That girl is a disruptive influence. Flaunting her cleavage on a serious literary thread indeed.
Let’s restore a little decorum with this rather fine song by Larry Robinson: Steinbeck’s Ghost.
Hey, I forgot Fleetwood Mac’s Or Well
I’m baishing to you to 1984, Sniff!
Graham does mention George O.
Mr Orwell also makes an appearance in this Robert Wyatt song.
Jean Genie? The Life on Mars Hitmaker’s pun on Jean Genet.
One of my favourite Clash songs. Federico Lorca.
Nick Cave mentions Sappho and WH Auden in “Hiding All Away”. Then in “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” we get John Willmot, Vladimir Nabokov, St John of The Cross, Karl Marx, Philip Larkin and Dylan Thomas. Finally, in “Nature Boy” we get Sappho once again.
Nabakov also being of course in the Police’s Don’t Stand…
The wonderfully witty Cole Porter managed to get quite a few names dropped in Brush up your Shakespeare from Kiss me Kate.
“The girls today in society go for classical poetry
So to win their hearts one must quote with ease
Aeschylus and Euripides
One must know Homer, and believe me, Beau
Sophocles, also Sappho-ho
Unless you know Shelley and Keats and Pope
Dainty Debbies will call you a dope.
But the poet of them all
Who will start ’em simply ravin’
Is the poet people call
The Bard of Stratford on Avon
Not surprising that that rather bookish band, The Decembrists, should write a song in honour of novelist Myla Goldberg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP6xV_c45rQ
But Prince name checking Dorothy Parker was not quite so expected.
One of the most striking things about this thread (which has had far longer legs than I ever imagined) is the many references by to the great novelists and poets of Ireland. Damn right too!
Van pays even broader hommage to the giants that gone before him. A rock song about John Donne! Impressive.
That’s a brilliantly random and eclectic playlist KFD. More of this kinda thing!
Thanks Blue Boy. The hive mind really pushed the boat out on this topic.
Not often you find Ella Fitzgerald, The Clash, 10,000 Maniacs. Burning Spear, the Bonzos, Suzanne Vega, HMHB, the Police, John Cale, Cole Porter etc etc gathered together on a thematically coherent playlist. The kind of Peelian eclecticism that Salwarpe and I take great joy in.
Blur’s “Country House” : ‘He’s reading Balzac, knocking back Prozac’
Suede mention Albert Camus and Bret Easton Ellis in Obsessions.
No songs, however Tolkein Heads surely deserve a mention.
Just stumbled across this one by East River Pipe, an artist who should be far better known, The Gasoline Age is a wonderful record,