After listening to “Saul Bellow” by Sufjan Stevens, a friend and I talked about how many songs we knew based on books and authors. I came up with a short playlist, but as always, the internet provided many more ideas than I could manage alone. If you’re curious, check out ArtistsForLiteracy.org. You can search by artist or author.
Also useful is this list of songs about libraries and librarians.
Some of my favorite songs about literature:
The Dangling Conversation – Simon & Garfunkel (Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost)
My Ride’s Here – Warren Zevon covered, by Bruce Springsteen (Emily Dickinson)
Afternoons & Coffee Spoons – Crash Test Dummies (T.S. Eliot)
Wasteland – Dan Bern (T.S. Eliot)
Sylvia Plath – Ryan Adams
Bukowski – Modest Mouse
Ulysses – Mason Jennings (James Joyce)
Wuthering Heights – Kate Bush (Emily Bronte)
Grey Gardens – Rufus Wainwright (Thomas Mann)
Frankenstein – Aimee Mann (Mary Shelley)
Virginia Woolf – the Indigo Girls
Paris – Regina Spektor (Margaret Atwood, Virginia Woolf)
Saul Bellow – Sufjan Stevens
Put A Penny in the Slot – Fionn Regan (Saul Bellow)
Both Sides Now – Joni Mitchell (Saul Bellow)
Rain King – the Counting Crows (Saul Bellow)
On the Road – Tom Waits (Jack Kerouac)
Black Diamond Bay – Bob Dylan (Joseph Conrad)
Sleep to Dream – Fiona Apple (Shakespeare, Hamlet)
Sister Moon – Sting (Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXV)
I Am the Walrus – the Beatles (Lewis Carroll)
White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane (Lewis Carroll)
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Elton John (L. Frank Baum)
Halley Came to Jackson – Mary Chapin Carpenter (Zora Neale Hurston)
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Metallica (Ernest Hemingway)
I Should Be Allowed to Think – They Might Be Giants (Allen Ginsberg)
Sailing to Philadelphia – Mark Knopfler (Thomas Pynchon)
The Crying of Lot G – Yo La Tengo (Thomas Pynchon)
Rave On, John Donne – Van Morrison
I Am A Rock – Simon & Garfunkel (John Donne)
Songs about each author sound completely different by each artist; for example, every song about Romeo and Juliet, from the Dire Straits to Lou Reed to Radiohead, takes a different tone. If that sort of variety isn’t a testament to literature, I don’t know what is.