The Top 20 Pop/Rock Songs About or Inspired by Literature (Pt. II)
As judged by moi
In part I, I discussed songs number 20 through 8 on our list of best “Literary” pop/rock songs and explained my criteria for the list. In this post, we complete the list, unveiling the top song as well as some honorable mentions—plus one special song in its own category. Cheers! -Darrick
7. Led Zeppelin, The Battle of Evermore (1971)
Led Zeppelin returns, this time with a song from Led Zeppelin IV, the five minute plus epic “The Battle of Evermore.” It depicts a conflict between a “Queen of Light” and the “dark Lord,” the battle to defend “the apples of the valley” and the ground which “is rich from tender care.” The symbolism of the lyrics suggests an epic medieval battle, replete with a Queen, a Prince (of Peace), a dark Lord, castles, runes, and, of course, a dragon:
The Queen of Light took her bow
And then she turned to go
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom
And walked the night alone
Oh, dance in the dark of night
Sing to the morning light
The dark Lord rides in force tonight
And time will tell us all
“The Battle of Evermore” could be the anthem for the game Dungeons and Dragons, which premiered three years after the release of the song. But it finds its way onto this list because of its association with Lord of the Rings. The song mentions “ringwraiths” and though it is slight, it does evoke the tenor of Tolkien’s creation, creating a wonderful, mythical, almost bardic sound world which makes it one of the best “literary” songs in popular music.
6. Steely Dan, Home at Last (1977)
Steely Dan topped the list of greatest historical songs of all time, and they come in at number six here with “Home at Last,” off their 1977 album Aja. That album saw this highly erudite outfit turn toward a more jazz influenced style of music which has long made it one of the most acclaimed of their career. “Home at Last” is another riff on the story of Odysseus, the best one that I came across when compiling this list. The lyrics portray Odysseus still on his way home, trying to avoid falling prey to the allure of the Sirens:
I know this super highway
This bright familiar sun
I guess that I'm the lucky one
Who wrote that tired sea song
Set on this peaceful shore
You think you've heard this one before
Well the danger on the rocks is surely past
Still I remain tied to the mast
Could it be that I have found my home at last
Home at last
The song, with its mellow beat, horn section, and Donald Fagen’s vocals (he hated his voice, I know, but he is great on this track), is typically amazing. As for the lyrics, I am not aware of another song that uses the word “retsina” in it. Retsina is a Greek wine made with pine resin that has been made in Greece for the last 2,000 years. Only Steely Dan could have produced a song this erudite and literary.
5. David Bowie, 1984
The best of the songs he wrote for a planned adaption of Orwell’s novel, “1984” is an amazing track—groovy and upbeat, the opening and the strings remind me of Isaac Hayes’ “Shaft.” The lyrics only allude to Orwell’s novel, but do so in such a way as you cannot miss what they are about:
Someday they won't let you, now you must agree
The times they are a-telling and the changing isn't free
You've read it in the tea leaves, and the tracks are on TV
Beware the savage jaw of 1984
They'll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air
And tell that you're eighty, but brother, you won't care
You'll be shooting up on anything, tomorrow's never there
Beware the savage jaw of 1984
Part of the song’s genius is that it sounds very much of its time in the 1970s, but Bowie recorded it ten years prior to the actual year of 1984. Even more than this, the lyrics suggest the dissolution of a sort of 1960s freedom that seems more prescient now than ever:
I'm looking for a vehicle, I'm looking for a ride
I'm looking for a party, I'm looking for a side
I'm looking for the treason that I knew in '65
Beware the savage jaw of 1984
Like Steely Dan, there is only one artist who could have made a dynamic, even prophetic but also catchy rock song out of a dystopian novel. Here’s to David Bowie, who hopefully is singing about more joyful things on the other side of Jordan.
4. The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
I feel a bit embarrassed to admit that this song, which I have heard endlessly throughout my life on the radio, is one inspired by literature. The Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” is a long soliloquy in which a character teases the listener with his identity (“pleased to meet you/Hope you guessed my name”), listing a series of historical crimes he claims to have authored. The speaker seems to revel in the game but reveals himself toward the end of the song:
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me, have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politeness
Or I'll lay your soul to waste
Jagger later claimed in interviews that the figure was inspired the writings of Charles Baudelaire, the nineteenth century poet, whose writings, like many figures of the Romantic era (think Goethe’s Faust), played with a more refined, gentlemanly version of Old Scratch. He also said that it was inspired by reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, which the singer Marianne Faithful gave him. Bulgakov’s novel depicts the devil coming to the atheist Soviet Union in the 1930s, and in the guise of a professors, who then tries to convince the Soviets of the existence of God and the devil. Part of the plot involves Professor Woland (the devil) writing a novel about Pontius Pilate and “Yeshua,” Jesus.
Jagger originally wrote the song in imitation of Bob Dylan but guitarist Keith Richards suggested changing the tempo and using more percussion, turning it into a samba rhythm, which gives raw, primitive quality. We don’t normally associate the Stones with great lyrical craftsmanship, but this one deserves its high ranking.
3. Gordon Lightfoot, Don Quixote (1972)
What could top the eerie primitivism of the Stones? One of the odd things about my research was that so few songs seemed to be inspired by the kind of troubadour music that should be a natural thing for pop song writers to imitate. I’ve already mentioned Jimmy Buffett, but there is one writer (was, God rest his soul) who excelled at this sort of thing, and it turns out he produced one of the best songs inspired by literature that I came across:
Reaching for his saddlebag, he takes a tarnished cross into his hand
Standing like a preacher now, he shouts across the ocean to the shore
Then in a blaze of tangled hooves, he gallops off across the dusty plain
In vain to search again
Where no one will hear
Through the woodland, through the valley, comes a horseman wild and free
Tilting at the windmills passing, who can the brave young horseman be?
He is wild, but he is mellow, he is strong, but he is weak
He is cruel, but he is gentle, he is wise, but he is meek
It is amazing that Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote has become over the centuries one of the few pieces of European literature that is genuinely universally known. It would not seem to be a great subject for pop songs—an idealist who goes mad through reading too many chivalric romances—but it course has been made into a very successful Broadway production. But Gordon Lightfoot’s tribute to the Man of la Mancha is about as perfect of a modern troubadour song as you will find, and its genuine folksiness (if that is possible) combined with Lightfoot’s gentle, admiring lyrics, make this song a cut above. And like “The Ballad of Jimmy Buffett,” is a welcome respite from the consistent darkness I found in many of these songs.
2. Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights (1978)
Never in my life have I read a single novel by any of the Bronte sisters. Nevertheless, Wuthering Heights remains a beloved story of romance to this day, a classic of the Gothic novel genre. Kate Bush wrote and recorded her song of the same name when she was eighteen (!) years old, after having saw film version of the novel before reading it. (She also discovered that she shared the same birthday with Emily Bronte, the novel’s author.) The lyrics take on the voice of Catherine Earnshaw, the wife of the main character Heathcliff, who dies in the course of the novel but continues to haunt him as a ghost:
How could you leave me
When I needed to possess you?
I hated you, I loved you, too
Bad dreams in the night
They told me I was going to lose the fight
Leave behind my Wuthering, Wuthering
Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy
I've come home, I'm so cold
Let me in your window
Bush actually quotes some of Catherine’s dialogue from the novel in the song, and paired with the music is almost perfectly haunting—it really feels like someone’s dead ex is singing the song! Key changes between the verses and the chorus give a sense of Cathy’s disconnect from the world of the living, and Bush’s falsetto vocals make it almost sound like a doll is singing the song. Her vocals struck me as kind of artificial at first but listening to the song several times I came to find them hypnotic and alluring. I particular love her phrasing in the chorus (“Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy/I’ve come home, I’m so cold”).
Bush has gained some new fans with the use of her song Running up That Hill in the TV show Stranger Things. In doing research for this article, I read that she has had her critics, but the only two songs I have ever listened to of hers are Wuthering Heights and Running up That Hill, and I thought both were fantastic. (That’s not quite accurate. Bush recorded a song about James Joyce that I listened to while researching, and it didn’t land for me.) But perhaps I should listen to more of her work, because this song, which almost sounds like it came from Broadway musical, would be my number one, if it weren’t for one particular song that excelled all the others.
Before I unveil the top song, I thought I would briefly mention a few other songs that might be worthy of your attention. Here goes!
Honorable Mentions
Led Zeppelin, Misty Mountain Hop (1971)
This is a great, fun song that was the B-side of “Black Dog,” but only makes a passing reference to J.R.R. Tolkiens’s Lord of the Rings; the “so I’m packing my bags for the misty mountains” is apparently a reference to the “Misty Mountains” where Gollum lives. It’s a light reference to the book, and the lyrics aren’t special or anything, so that’s why it didn’t make the cut.
Emmylou Harris and Dave Matthews, My Antonia (2000)
Harris’s song is based on Willa Cather’s novel of the same name. The lyrics portray the lost opportunity of love between the title character and Jim Burden, the narrator of the story, sung by Harris and Dave Matthews respectively. Cather was one of the great American novelists, and though the song is good, it sounds like a pretty conventional love song, and didn’t rise musically or poetically to the level of the other songs I listened to, for my money at least.
Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More (2009)
From their debut album of the same name, the song takes several lines from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and spins them into a well crafted love lyric. However, I didn’t find the music as compelling, but perhaps you will feel differently?
Alan Parsons Project, The Tell-Tale Heart (1976)
Another song from APP’s debut album, this time relaying in lyric Poe’s short story The Tell-Tale Heart. It delivers the murder-narrator’s perspective to what is a pretty good 1970s rock song, and it was almost good enough to include on the list. However, I thought The Cask of Amontillado was a bit more dramatic and unique, and so it took its place.
A Special Honorable Mention—The Decembrists, The Tain (2004)
There was one honorable mention that stood out to me which deserves some special attention—so much so that it almost deserves consideration for the #1 spot. But the nature of this work is so different I couldn’t really classify it as a song, which is why I am mentioning it here.
I have always liked The Decembrists’ music, if not their politics (which are typically liberal) but their 2004 offering The Tain is something else. If you aren’t familiar, it is a shortened version of Táin Bó Cúailnge, an eighth century AD Irish epic poem, about a war between a Queen and King over cattle. (If you can’t pronounce any of these Gaelic names, don’t worry, neither can I. Just go with it.) The poem tells the story of how the Queen attacks Ulster and its defenders are stricken with a curse, and Ulster is defended by one lone figure, Cú Chulainn. The piece by The Decemberists is divided into five parts and tells the story more less as it is presented in the poem, though shortened (even though it is almost twenty minutes long!).
The room that you lie in is dusty and hard
Sleeping soft babies on piles of yards
Of gingham, taffeta, cotton, and silk
Your dry hungry mouths cry for your mother's milk
When the dawn comes to greet you, you'll rise with clothes on
And advance with the others, singing old songs
Of cattle and maidens and withered old queens
Let the music carry you on
The lyrics are kind of dream like at times and not necessarily straightforward story-telling. I thought on first hearing that perhaps the work wasn’t worth my time, but then I discovered the band created a twenty minute, paper stop animation film to go along with it, and it is AMAZING.
The reason I didn’t put The Tain at #1 or on the list is that is so different and unique I am not sure it qualifies. To paraphrase Voltaire, it is really neither pop nor rock nor a song. It is more like several songs combined into one grand entertainment, and the fact that it is even better when paired with the short film confirms that for me. I know this is only a dumb list but I did want to adhere to my standards as much as possible. But I also wanted to highlight what I thought was a really ambitious work and a great achievement in my opinion. I urge you to give it a listen if you have time on your hands. It is well worth your time.
Okay, now for the grand finale. The absolutely, incontrovertibly, indubitably, best literature pop/rock song of all time is…
1. Rush, Xanadu (1977)
I am not a big Rush fan, to be honest. Despite boasting one of the great rock drummers of all time in Neil Peart, I have just never warmed to lead singer Geddy Lee’s voice, or the Ayn Rand inspired philosophy that permeates many of their songs. But this is as grand as it gets, a perfect marriage of epic lyricism with an epic rock song over eleven minutes long. It begins with a two minute instrumental section with bells, synthesizers and other instruments that don’t really belong in rock song but which are kind of awe-inspiring. Then a three minute guitar solo intros the actual song, which spins Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan into a myth of someone searching for immortality, only to find it and regret not being able to die.
A thousand years have come and gone
But time has passed me by
Stars stopped in the sky
Frozen in an everlasting view
Waiting for the world to end
Weary of the night
Praying for the light
Prison of the lost — XanaduXanadu — Held within The Pleasure Dome
Decreed by Kubla Khan
To taste my bitter triumph
As a mad immortal man
Nevermore shall I return
Escape these caves of ice
For I have dined on honey dew
And drunk the milk of Paradise
It is a neat twist, since it (sort of) combines the plot of the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” with what sounds like the epic of Gilgamesh, with “Kubla Khan.” Maybe it is just the epic scale of it, but Lee’s voice is perfect for a song like this, and the pairing of a really big rock sound with a really big poetic idea is just too perfect to put anything else at the top of the list.
And so there you have it. What do you think? Did I miss any songs you think should be on the list? What ones would you have had higher on the list that I didn’t? Leave a comment and let me know.
Until next time friends.