November 6, 2009 | lists
We’ve previously covered Cocaine Songs, Drinking and Driving Songs and Songs about Bars so we thought we’d class it up a notch by focusing on something just as near and dear to our hearts—writing. The Guardian invited readers to suggest their favorite songs about putting pen to paper,and their list was massive. We decided to tighten the focus a bit, by focusing on the writers themselves.
Pop songs are pretty basic. They are mostly in 4/4, seldom change keys and when they do, predictably land on the relative major or minor. To juice up those C and G chords, it’s effective to nick a few bits from Keats and call it your own. However, generally the writer, even if they’re on the wrong side of the dirt, doesn’t get the credit—the reference is so obtuse that you’d have to Google a recently edited Wiki and it slips by unnoticed.
Some songs however, explicitly reference a particular writer, which made it that much easier to compile. We’ve listed as many as we could as a reference here, a considerable number of which were taken from hip hop.
[Editor's digression: For those of you dismissive of sex and violence-laden hip hop, remember that the music critically lauded by white people today---blues---was the hip hop of its time. Take a song that is one of our favorites, See See Rider, originally recorded in 1924. In Lonnie Johnson's excellent version, one of the hundred or so out there, he sings, "I'm gonna buy me a shotgun, long as I am tall, gonna shoot you pretty mama, you're the cause of it all".
From that song, it's not that big a stretch to get to something 'gangsta' like MOP's 'Ante Up': "Hand over the ring, take over the chain, Gimme the fuckin' watch before I pop one in your brain." When Ma Rainey recorded See See Rider in 1924, it was about a woman getting revenge on her man by putting a cap in his cheating ass and then over the course of 50 years, it morphed into various pimps and hos incarnations ("you made me love you, now your man has come" and "bowlegged woman", respectively)]
Anyway, here they are and feel free to Google them yourselves as inserting the links would’ve been considerably more painstaking than even tracking these down. When the writer referenced isn’t obvious, it’s highlighted.
The House that Kerouac Built
The Go Betweens
Behind Enemy Lines (Francis Bacon)
Canibus
Get By (Norman Mailer Maya Angelou)
Talib Kweli
The Show (Hemingway)
The Roots
Severe Punishment (Hemingway)
Wu-Tang Clan
The Makings of a Perfect Bitch (Maya Angelou)
Nas
Shadrach (JD Salinger and Charles Dickens)
Beastie Boys
Well All Rite Cha (Charles Dickens)
Redman / Method Man
The What (Charles Dickens)
Notorious B.I.G. and Redman
Graham Greene
John Cale
Koto Chotan (HG Wells)
RZA f/ Masta Killa, Tash Mahagony
Jacques Derrida
Scritti Politi
Hey Jack Karouac
10,000 Maniacs
Renegade (Shakespeare)
Jay Z and Eminem
Schizophrenia (Philip K Dick)
Sonic Youth
Song for Myla Goldberg
The Decemberists
Walt Whitman’s Niece
Wilco / Billy Bragg
Go Ask Shakespeare
Rufus Wainwright
Sylvia Plath
Ryan Adams
Rave on John Donne
Van Morrison
The Ballad of Dorothy Parker
Prince
Desolation Row (Ezra Pound, TS Eliot)
Bob Dylan
Tore Down a la Rimbaud
Van Morrison
Pushkin
Palace Brothers
You’re gonna make me Lonesome when you go (Rimbaud)
Bob Dylan
Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again (Shakespeare)
Bob Dylan
Bukowski
Modest Mouse
Too Long in Exile (Beckett, Wilde, Joyce)
Van Morrison
Our Mutual Friend (Charles Dickens)
Absent Friends (Oscar Wilde)
In And Out of Paris and London (Dickens and Orwell)
Divine Comedy
Antonin Artaud
Bauhaus
Charles Bukowski is Dead
The Boo Radleys
Tear Shit up (Mark Twain)
Biz Markie
Do the Ladies run This (Edgar Allan Poe)
Rah Digga
Guillotinz (Shakespeare)
Raekwon
Step Off (Shakespeare)
The Furious Five
In Public (Shakespeare)
Kelis F/ Nas
Play it Again (Mark Twain)
Kool G Rap
3 Minute Rule (Jack Kerouac)
Beastie Boys
Keep Their Headz Ringin’ (Stephen King)
Dr Dre
Body Bag (Stephen King)
Kool Keith aka Dr Doom
Vocab (Stephen King)
The Fugees
Mecca and the Soul Brother (Agatha Christie)
Pete Rock & CL Smooth
Dat’s My Word (Agatha Christie)
DJ Honda and Redman
After School (Machiavelli)
LL Cool J / P Diddy
My Old Home (George Orwell)
K’Naan
Battleaxe Experiment (HP Lovecraft)
Swollen Members
Olde English (Maya Angelou)
Dilated Peoples
Black Star Line (Marcus Garvey)
Brand Nubian
So Much Things to Say (Marcus Garvey)
Lauryn Hill
Whachanoabout (Marcus Garvey)
KRS One
Recapturing the Vibe (Oscar Wilde)
Hilltop Hoods
DWYCK (Langston Hughes)
Gangstarr (feat. Nice & Smooth)
Live Life (Ralph Ellison)
Rapper Big Pooh
Psychohistorian (Isaac Asimov)
7L & Esoteric f/ KARMA
Mr Nigga (Woody Allen)
Mos Def
Rushing Elephants (JRR Tolkien)
Wu-Tang Clan
Get Busy (W.E.B. du Bois)
The Roots
Ya’ll My Niggas (James Baldwin, W.E.B. du Bois)
Nas
Gun Music (W.E.B du Bois)
Talib Kweli f/ Cocoa Brovaz
My President (Booker T Washington)
Young Jeezy f/ Nas
Galaxies (Cyrano De Bergerac)
Mountain Brothers
Although I can’t stand their music, the song “Bat Country” by Avenged Sevenfold is about Hunter S. Thompson.
Nice post by the way. Very interesting.