The relationship between literature and music is very close. Not in vain, songs continue to be, to a greater or lesser extent, stories set to music, whether they are novels, poems or even philosophical essays and political manifestos. Everything fits in a song, in the same way that everything fits in literature. And, as creators, musicians can find inspiration to compose anytime, anywhere, as well as in any other artistic work of any kind. This is how that comes moment of transformation in which a book becomes a song in the most unexpected way and acquires a new life never before imagined. This is how culture remains forever interconnected. And let’s check it out.
Arde Bogotá is the band of the moment in our country and has a clear literary intention. It can be seen in his lyrics and was seen when his singer, Antonio Garciarecited some verses from Luis García Montero at a concert in Granada. He thus pointed out the poet as one of his literary references, among whom also stands out Roberto Bolaño in general and very particularly The wild detectives. “It is the novel that has had the greatest impact on me to date, probably because I read it when I was twenty years old. I have realized when rereading it that for me, as a lyricist, there are things about him that I humbly like to imitate and internalize,” the vocalist explained in the program Read to tellwhere he added: “Bolaño always writes with a lot of humor and humility. I consciously tried to learn from that and there are songs by the band that have a bit of that imprint, like I want to marry you, where the next verse says ‘but you I like not learning my name better.’ I humbly thought that this could be said by a character in this novel, which for me is a very initiatory moment.”
Loquillo is one of the most revered icons of Spanish rock and has just published Transgressions. Poetry anthology 1994-2024, an album that brings together the best of the poetic repertoire that he began to develop in the nineties in parallel to his role as a rocker. Since then, he has sung poems by Octavio Paz, Bernardo Atxaga, Pedro Salinas, César Pavese, Antonio Gamoneda, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Carlos Zanón, Mario Benedetti, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán either Julio Martínez Mesanzaamong other authors.
Beyond rock, Rosalía was inspired to compose The evil will in an anonymous medieval text, forgotten for centuries. With the original title of The Roman of Flamenco, tells the story of a woman who lives imprisoned in a tower because of her husband’s jealousy, despite which a knight who answers to the name of Guillem de Nevers disguises himself as a clergyman and seduces and frees the lady. A convenient medieval plot accurately updated to the 21st century with flamenco and street symbols. “A feminist classic from the 13th century,” was quick to say the publisher, which hurriedly reissued the book as soon as the connection that brought the Catalan artist to skyrocketing fame spread.
Universities around the world such as Harvard, Stanford, Ghent, Melbourne or the College of Music in Boston study Taylor Swift’s lyrics for their connections with literary classics such as Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, Lewis Carroll, Mary Wollstonecraft either Geoffrey Chaucer. The swifties They dive as deep as they can to scrutinize even the smallest detail, but here we are going to go to the obvious, remembering this story of universal love, this love story starring Romeo and Juliet and inspired, therefore, by William Shakespeare Although the ending of the couple of lovers is different and not at all tragic: that’s how happy the magic of pop is. And since we are talking about this essential work of British letters, we cannot help but mention the Romeo and Juliet of the Dire Straits of Mark Knopflermuch earlier, and also with a variation in the plot, since she abandons him when she finds fame.
The songs of King’s wool They are equally overflowing with literary references, even more clearly, such as Lolitaof Vladimir Nabokov, present in Off the roots, which begins with the first lines of the novel: “Light of my life, fire of my loins.” Other authors present in his compositions are Oscar Wilde, Allen Ginsberg, Friedrich Nietzsche, Tennessee Williams or also Slyvia Plath. The New Yorker’s main passion seems to be Nabokov’s Lolita, since he even named this song that way.
Heavy metal and hard rock have always had a direct relationship with literature due to their evocative instrumental power, present in the greatest bands of the genre. There is Metallica with For whom the bell tolls, composition inspired by the novel of the same name (For whom the Bell Tolls) of Ernest Hemingway about the Spanish civil war. In the challenging sound setting, completely appropriate to the theme, specific allusions are made to the scene described in chapter 27 of the book, in which five soldiers are annihilated during an air raid after taking up a defensive position on a hill.
Likewise, literary references abound in the always epic repertoire of Iron Maiden towards classics like A happy world (brave new world) of Aldous Huxley either The phantom of the opera (The Phantom of the Opera) of Gaston Leroux, both ideal for the narrative and progressive musical style of the British band. Of course, as pioneers, Led Zeppelin They entered the universe of The Lord of the rings of JRR Tolkien in Ramble onin which Robert Plant sings: “I was in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair. But Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her. Her, her, yeah. Ain’t nothing “I can do, no.”
New space and time jump to land in Barcelona and meet The friends that I lost of Doriana band that takes its name, indeed, from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. With a clear literary hobby, the group is not inspired by a particular book for this song, but we actually find allusions to several authors from that first verse that says “I went out in search of lost time”, which takes us directly to In Search of Lost Time of Marcel Proust. “A madman gave me strychnine classes, a writer told me about Maldoror,” the lyrics continue, citing the popular work of Isidore Ducasse The songs of Maldoror. And there is still another one that leads us to The Quijote of Miguel de Cervantes: “I mistook windmills for giants after a week without sleep.”
Incomprehensible is the presence of literature in the musical work of Enrique Bunbury, who takes his fictitious last name, his artistic nickname, from a character from The importance of being called Ernesto of Oscar Wilde. We found William Blake in The path of excessfrom Heroes of Silence, to Ruben Dario in That love does not admit sane reflections oa Lewis Carroll in Alice expelled to wonderland. And more recently, we find Bartleby, the clerkstory of Herman Neville that the Aragonese turns into a song to sing for social insubordination. “Herman Melville wrote that fantastic story about the clerk who always responded to his boss ‘I’d rather not do that’. It’s an attitude that increasingly catches my attention,” he explained to Vanity Fair.
Even greater is the literary desire of Nick Cavewhich together with its Bad Seeds was inspired by the epic poem of John Milton Paradise lost to write the song Red right hand, one of the most popular in his repertoire and which ended up being the main theme of the television series Peaky Blinders. The ‘red right hand’ comes from a line in the aforementioned poem that refers to divine vengeance. The aforementioned appearance in The lost paradise (book II, 170-174) is: “What would happen if the breath that lit those dark fires, / Awakened, blew them with seven times fury, / And plunged us into the flames; or from above / if again the arm of vengeance / His red right hand to torment us?”
Bruce Springsteen He has maintained that double face of festive rocker and introspective singer-songwriter for half a century. A storyteller, in short, that describes all kinds of feelings and desires, who as a good social narrator of America went through the phase of his obsession with Grapes of the wrath of John Steinbeck, a work that narrates the emigration of the 1930s after the crash of ’29, towards the American West in search of a promised land of prosperity. This is how it was born The ghost of Tom Joad, their eleventh album, acoustic but one could almost say cinematic, starring Tom Joad, precisely the name of the protagonist of The grapes of wrath.
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It is not exactly a book, but a poem that would have been forgotten forever if it had not been for the chance meeting one night in the mountains of Béjar between a young Robe Iniesta and a local man with the soul of a cursed poet named Manolo Chinato. . They both connected quickly, establishing a direct connection and Love, love, love and expand the soul shortly after it became one of the first great balls of Extremea transgressive rock group that through the lyrics of its leader had already expressed an unusual literary concern by including references to Marcos Ana, Lorca, Antonio Machado either Pablo Neruda.
Of course, if there is one work that has fascinated musicians throughout the decades, it is 1984 of George Orwell. Its premonitory nature of Big Brother and prophetic of the world to come (long before Google) has always fascinated artists of all stripes and conditions, which is why it is a novel that has always had a special connection with rock. That is why it has inspired artists like David Bowiewhich captured it in a song titled simply 1984, Radiohead in another call 2+2=5 either Muse in The Resistance. Varied reflections on social surveillance and manipulation of the masses over the years.
And one last topic to finish: Wolvesfrom the latest album Shinova, which is not inspired by a literary work as such, but by a Roman legend that has been narrated literary (and in painting and sculpture and cinema) countless times. This is the myth of the founding brothers of Rome Romulus and Remus adapted to our time, telling us about those “irreparable conflicts that unite us and at the same time separate us from the people who know us best.”
