It never fails: Every Bloomsday, someone reminds us that Kate Bush’s “The Sensual World” is based on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Not that we mind — it’s always nice to have an excuse to listen to the song again. But this year, it inspired a lit-geek challenge: Could we compile an entire mixtape of songs inspired by modernist masters? While who qualifies as a modernist is a question for literary scholars to debate, we’re pretty satisfied with the 12 songs we’ve chosen. Tell us what you’d include in the comments.
1. Kate Bush — “The Sensual World” (James Joyce’s Ulysses)
ytaudio(AJc64xncBt4)
2. Joy Division — “Colony” (Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony”)
ytaudio(gCRWsFV4-sU)
3. Leonard Cohen — “Take This Waltz” (Federico Garcia Lorca, “The Waltz”)
ytaudio(UUtgjjj75_Q)
4. The Cure — “Killing an Arab” (Albert Camus, The Stranger)
ytaudio(BD1uGPkxQfA)
5. Crash Test Dummies — “Afternoons and Coffee Spoons” (T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)
ytaudio(j53VGZnW4fU)
6. Iron Maiden — “Brave New World” (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World)
ytaudio(4_FDjDwNygM)
7. Rufus Wainwright — “Grey Gardens” (Thomas Mann, Death in Venice)
ytaudio(Cdvne96nrzs)
8. The Zombies — “A Rose for Emily” (William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”)
ytaudio(elbJ4hy5C7A)
9. Nickel Creek — “Eveline” (James Joyce, “Eveline”)
ytaudio(bKizkUlgob8)
10. Idlewild — “Roseability” (Gertrude Stein, “Sacred Emily”)
ytaudio(Sq9ja554eLg)
11. Bloc Party — “Ion Square” (e.e. cummings, “i carry your heart with me”)
ytaudio(9ln4ajmGiqY)
12. Patrick Wolf — “To the Lighthouse” (Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse)
ytaudio(Xph2gTfs0pw)
Comments (23)
Blur’s “Parklife” song and album are based on Martin Amis’ “London Fields.”
[...] seduction, the culture gods) In celebration of Bloomsday, Flavorwire offers a mixtape of songs inspired by modernist literature. Colour me [...]
Syd Barrett set Joyce’s “Golden Hair” to music.
How about a triple play? “Dktr Faustus” (the T. Mann) off the album “Bend Sinister” (dear old Nabby) by “The Fall” (Bert Camus).
“A Rose for Emily” is one of my favorite songs and short stories that no one knows about! Thanks for putting it on this list!
It may be a bit obvious, but Bjork’s “Sonnets/Unrealities XI” is the poem “It may not always be so” by ee cummings.
[...] The page not only has the song titles and what literature is referenced, but audio clips of them as … My only critique is that it’s only modern literature. Where’s the Shakespeare references? The Ancient Greeks? My list cheats a bit by including songs with allusions, not just ones solely based on the stories or characters themselves: [...]
Don’t you think Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” would’ve been a bit more obvious?
Kate Bush also wrote “The Infant Kiss” which was inspired by “The turn of the screw” by Henry James and the whole “A sky of Honey” (conceptual second disc on “Aerial”) definitely reminds what’s described in “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf allthough she never said it was influenced by it.
“Cloudbusting” was also inspired by a book (“A book of Dreams” by Peter Reich, Wilhelm Reich’s son).
“Wuthering Heights” isn’t a work of modern literature. It’s gothic, and it came out in 1847.
I like Joni Mitchell’s adaptation of Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”
Great list! I never knew anyone wrote a song inspired by To the Lighthouse – one of my favorite novels.
What about The Wateboys’ magnificent setting W B Yeats The Stolen Child’?
Saw it live in ’07 – goosebumps on goosebumps!
[...] Flavorwire lists songs inspired by modernist literature. [...]
[...] compiled a “nerdy mixtape” of songs inspired by modern literature. No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this [...]
David Bowie’s “1984″ – based on “1984″ by George Orwell… The Gravamen’s “Apocalypse Pat” based on Francis Ford Coppola/John Milius/Michael Herr’s “Apocalypse Now”…
Great mix! One suggested addition: “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” by The Divine Comedy (based on the Fitzgerald short story).
John Cale’s version of Dylan Thomas classic “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is a must-add.
There’s a snippet of Gravity’s Rainbow that is supposed to have inspired “Smells Like Teen Spirit”,yeah?
Poe, “A Rose is a Rose”
“Killing AND Arab”? The song is “Killing An Arab.” Maybe this is a post-911 Freudian slip?
Thanks Janon; it’s fixed now.
[...] finding this sooner is surpassed only by our joy in having discovered it now: Flavorwire’s Mixtape of Songs Inspired by Modernist Literature. Not just literature in general—that would be too easy!—but specifically Modernism, including [...]
[...] modernist masters make great mixtapes? They do here apparently. Being of a certain age I didn’t realise that the links are YouTube codes you can [...]
Post a new comment