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Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians

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So you’re laid up in bed with the flu like everyone else, with nothing to do but chug Emergen-C, ride the NyQuil train, and gaze glassy-eyed at hours of DVRed shows that you’d usually let languish. It’s time for a new playlist! When even keeping your eyes open starts to hurt, queue up this nerdy mixtape and zonk out to the best in library-inspired jams. Thanks to @flavorpill follower Lauren for the smart (and challenging!) idea.

View the full tracklist after the jump.

1. “At the Library” by Green Day
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A tale of unrequited library lust. Unfortunately the object of Billie Joe’s affection has no idea why he’s staring at her. She also happens to read too quickly for his taste (or at least his taste back in 1991) and she already has a boyfriend.

2. “In the Army Kid” – Of Montreal

Our innocent protagonist is “riding to the station on the bus” because he wants to pick out some library books. Jen, a librarian who’s not his type and sounds like a bit of a cougar, always hunts his “butt.” He can’t ditch the situation because there are bills to pay — whatever that means.

3. “Swinging London” – The Magnetic Fields

The epitome of geek love? “I read your manifestos and your strange religious tracts/You took me to your library and kissed me in the stacks.” Unfortunately this nerdy fling doesn’t last: “You went off swinging London and forgot to come back.”

4. “Young Adult Friction” by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The definitive song about getting laid in the library: “Between the stacks in the library/Not like anyone stopped to see/We came they went our bodies spent/Among the dust and the microfiche.”

5. “Lost in the Library” – Saint Etienne
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This one is an instrumental, but feels decidedly bookish.

6. “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

This song runs through a gamut of writers and the difficulties that they overcame in their careers — including Philip Larkin “sticking it out” in a library in Hull.

7. “Library Card” by Frank Zappa

Pianist Hermann Kretzschmar begins Zappa’s experimental album Everything Is Healing Nicely (a posthumous work culled from The Yellow Shark sessions) by reading the information from his library card. Unfortunately, we don’t have the audio.

8. “Fun Fun Fun” by The Beach Boys
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True story: Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote this song about a rich girl who Dennis Wilson was dating. She’d tell her father that she needed to borrow his T-bird to get to the library when really she was hanging out with Dennis at his apartment. Until daddy took the car away.

9. “Librarian” by My Morning Jacket

This is like the “Let’s Get It On” of the library world: “It’s not like you’re not trying, with a pencil in your hair/To defy the beauty the good lord put in there/Simple little bookworm — buried underneath/Is the sexiest librarian/take off those glasses and let down your hair for me.”

10. “Library Rap” by MC Poindexter & The Study Crew
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Because we had to include one rap song in the mix; it comes from an episode of the ’90s sci-fi TV series Sliders. Our favorite lyric? “And I give you one warnin’/There will be no repeats:/Get out of my face/While I’m readin’ my Keats.”

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Comments (98)

what about re:stacks by bon iver? a stretch, maybe, but still.

There’s a very cute song called “Library Page” by the Barmitzvah Brothers. And yes, it is about being a library page.

Love the My Morning Jacket song. Think it should be higher . . . :)

What about “The Library Song” by Cursor Minor?

How about “Spiritual Librarian” by Jason Morphew?

I’m a librarian, and I’ve always identified with “Bloodbook On The Halfshell” by Danielson. I think it’s the lyric “dewey dusty decimalizing” that really got me.

The Smittens-Gumdrops
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyoR7Pch6Uo

I was introduced to this band/song by Linda Braun, head of the Young Adult Library Services Association at a conference. I don’t think it gets more Librarian than that.

I agree with you, Jeremy. It’s one of my favorite songs of all time and certainly the best on this list.

What about French Navy by Camera Obscura? “I was sitting in a dusty library” or something like that.

[...] Check out the rest of the list @ Flavorwire [...]

“dewey dusty decimalizing” Daisy! great song! great band!!

Come on! The best song about librarians ever — Railroad Jerk, “Sweet Librarian”!!

Wha?! No MJ’s “Librarian Girl”?!! ;P

Velocity Girl – Lisa Librarian (particularly cuz my wife Lisa is a librarian!)

Love in the Library — Jimmy Buffet!

[...] Tea x Time List: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians. [...]

Ooh you missed an awesome one by a really intelligent singer songwriter Librarian by Jonathan Rundman from his album Public Library
Here is a link to a free acoustic version mp3: http://www.jonathanrundman.com/audio.html

Best Lyric:
and when the day is over I go home at 5:03
and I give thanks to God and then to Andrew Carnegie
and the U.S. Constitution and Orwell, Poe, and Twain
and I’ll return at 8AM to open up again

What about ‘Marion,the Librarian’,from the Music Man ?

[...] a librarian. To help literary types cope with these feelings, Flavorwire compiled a list of “10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians” The list contains some great tunes, from “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” by [...]

How about Ludacris, “What’s Your Fantasy”?

“We can do it in the library, on top of books, but you can’t be too loud!”

Fiction/Romance by the Buzzcocks.

Read a book, by Crooklyn

“Faster Pussycat, to the Library” by Sam Phillips

Um, that should be “…about a rich girl WHOM Dennis Wilson was dating.” Come on, if you’re going to write an article like this, you should expect the grammar nerds are going to appear.

[...] January 26, 2010 · Leave a Comment Flavorwire.com has posted a Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians. [...]

Books about UFOS by Husker Du, anyone?

[...] Flavorwire compiles the 10 best songs about libraries and librarians, including a rap song proclaiming, “The silence is golden, to books I am beholden, I know I’m bad cause of the knowledge that I’m ho…!” [...]

[...] ’bout librarians Jump to Comments Found this great link to Flavorwire on Quill and Quire — a compilation of odes to the magic of libraries and the bun-wearing, [...]

Noga Vilozny does an amazing bluesy-jazzy cover version of my song “Shut Up In the Library”.
She also does a cover of “All I Want is You” –my song that was used in JUNO.

Both songs are on the new Tribute album and you can listen to the songs for free here: http://www.barrylou.com/tributeAlbum.html Noga’s version of “Library” is about 24 songs down
Barry Louis Polisar

[...] Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians [...]

Here’s another one for you: John Common, “In a Bookstore.” “Let’s go to the library / Where we can hide away / Find a secret place, you and me / Oh, just like a romance novel.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PscnRTj38FU

“Karen” by the Go-Betweens is a *must*!

[...] leave a comment » 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians [...]

[...] Hot for librarian: ten songs about love in the stacks. [...]

‘young adult friction’. i knew it! ;>

I work in a library, and my favorite library video is Tears for Fears- Head Over Heels. An oldie but goodie!

How can anyone leave out “Marian, the Librarian”? Isn’t that the first song to come to mind?

[...] a list of the 10 best songs about libraries and librarians. If only archivists had songs written about [...]

[...] A Flavorwire oldalán Caroline Stanley összegyűjtötte a 10 legjobb dalt a könyvtárakról és könyvtárosokról, meg lehet hallgatni a számokat, kivéve egyet, bánatomra Frank Zappa: Library Card c. nagybecsűjét sajna nem. Érdemes olvasgatni a kommenteket, rengeteg jó dalt belinkeltek, köztük a nagy klasszikust a druszámról, Mariannáról a könyvtárosról, van könyvtár rap, szól egy szám a Dewey-féle tizedes osztályozásról, van fiúzenekaros cukiság, aztán a kissé idegesítő Cursor Miner’s Library. Nekem a legjobban a My Morning Jacket: Librarian c. száma tetszik. A toplistáért katt: ide [...]

Let’s examine this a little more closely (just a little…): the ten best songs about libraries and librarians almost all deal with sex in the library or with the librarian? Hmmmmm – I must have missed something in all the years I have worked in a library. Occasionally, I might have thought or fantasized about this hot topic in the context of libraries (not much) and librarians (a bit more..), but really my daydreams on this subject did not appear in this context very much. So why, one might ask, do songs written about libraries and librarians obsess on sex? It’s because the public view of libraries and librarians is that of marginalization — is that a word? You have to write about sex because a song about libraries and librarian stereotypes (horn-rimmed glasses and hair buns) is b-o-r-i-n-g. So, you turn the topic upside down and find sexual adventure and fantasy in a secular monastery. Songs about firemen and women, policemen and women, teachers of all genders, doctors, lawyers, diplomats, and whatever don’t fixate on sex because their jobs are “sexy” and “important”. The ten songs included here reflect the negative public image of librarians and libraries as shown by their focus on exactly the opposite of what people think about when they conjure up a library or librarian. End of rant and beginning of fantasy…..

You missed one. Love in the Library by Jimmy Buffett

How about ‘The Librarian’ by Hefner, a tender tale of unrequited love.

Great list! Adding Daniel Johnston’s classic “Grievances”
And the librarian said
‘You can’t buy no respect’
I said, ‘Hey, lady, what can you expect
When I’m lying on the floor?’

Not quite “library”, but I’d add “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors”, bu Moxy Fruvous.

@ jack forman: I am a public librarian and we have caught teenagers having sex by the romance novels.

[...] 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librar­i­ans Who thought that there were even 10 songs about libraries and librarians? [...]

How about songs by the group “Dewey Decimal and the Librarians?” Macalester College 1964.

[...] a lighter note, libraries are all the rage this week: Flavorwire has a list up of their favorite library-referencing tracks and over in Britain, some citizens [...]

[...] up your speakers for 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians. I think my favorite one is “Library Rap” by MC Poindexter & The Study Crew. [...]

[...] hee! Someone has “created” a mixtape of songs about libraries and [...]

[...] Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians [...]

“Love in the Library” by Jimmy Buffett!!!!!

[...] As I was writing this post, I saw that this week’s ALA Direct linked to Flavorwire’s 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians. So now you can continue to enjoy the sweet library [...]

[...] recently came across the “10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians” (thanks to MINITEX’s Reference Blog) and felt compelled to share it. Not only do you [...]

[...] 10 best songs about libraries and librarians. Major [...]

[...] You know I’m a mixtape freak AND a librarian, so imagine how much I LOVE this list:  Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians. [...]

[...] Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians [...]

I second Railroad Jerk’s “Sweet Librarian”. As a librarian, I thing you should check it out.

oops! typo. I THINK you should check it out. It’s pretty great.

[...] Also speaking of books – sort of, at least. Celebrate the awesomeness of libraries and librarians through song with this Flavourwire mixtape/playlist. (I am so glad to see My Morning Jacket’s [...]

[...] website or blog.  You can quickly share music with others.  Take a look at this list of the 10 best songs about libraries and librarians to see the lala player in [...]

[...] av Flavorwires topplista på de 10 bästa poplåtarna om bibliotek och bibliotekarier, gjorde jag en egen Spotify-spellista [...]

[...] hee! Someone has “created” a mixtape of songs about libraries and [...]

[...] it was first posted in January, someone recently pointed me to Flavorwire’s mixtape “10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians”. Lots of the songs feature the librarian (a woman, of course) as an object of desire, often unaware [...]

Keep working, nice job! This was the thing I had to know.

Quite a beautiful website. I built mine and i was looking for some design ideas and your website gave me some. The website was developed by you?

Thank you

Extraordinary this post is totaly unrelated to what I used to be looking out google for, but it used to be indexed at the first page. I guess your doing something right if Google likes you adequate to put you at the first page of a non related search.

[...] song lyrics, and librarians, perhaps a little surprisingly, feature prominently in many of these. Flavorwire have a great mixtape of the best 10 songs about librarians, including Green Day’s ‘At [...]

thanks for that nice mix list, keep the good work.

[...] Flavorwire » Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians [...]

“Wrapped up in books” by Belle and Sebastian!

I seriously enjoy your posts. Thanks

[...] have a thing for libraries here at Flavorpill. We like to sing about them, gawk at the most beautiful ones, and tour the personal libraries of our favorite writers. But even [...]

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