When you get right down to it, songs can often be mistaken for poetry, if they appear in front on you in print. Just like poems and great works of literature they can have rhyming schemes, alliteration, metaphors, and perhaps, most notably, allusions. These allusions may draw from pop culture, or historical events, but often they are taken from literature. So for all the book lovers, the English majors, and anyone who has been dying for a literary playlist to accompany their morning run... I've got you covered.
1. Song: "Rollerskate Skinny"
Artist: Old 97's
Allusion: In "Catcher in the Rye," Holden Caufield's sister was referenced as roller-skate skinny, "She's quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny."
2. Song: "Sheep go to heaven goats go to hell"
Artist: Cake
Allusion:Matthew 25 (The Parable of the Sheep and Goats)
3. Song: "One"
Artist: Metallica
Allusion: It is an anti-war song that can be connected to "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo; scenes from the music video are taken from a film based on the book.
4. Song: "Hand Ball"
Artist: The Mountain Goats
Allusion: It references Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart."“I am Evil Forest. I kill a man on the day that his life is sweetest to him.”
Artist: Radiohead
Allusion: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams. The song was titled after the character Marvin the Paranoid Android.
6. Song: "Let's not Sh_t Ourselves"
Artist: Bright Eyes
Allusion: "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe, "To love and be loved."
7. Song: "I Am the Walrus"
Artist: The Beatles
Allusion: From Shakespeare's "King Lear," "If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body; and give the letters which thou find’st about me to Edmund Earl of Gloucester/Seek him out upon the British party: O, untimely death!”
Artist: David Bowie
Allusion: "1984" by George Orwell. The song takes the book's name and references newspeak, Big Brother, and the main character Winston.
9. Song: "Yertle the Turtle"
Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Allusion: "Yertle the Turtle" by Doctor Seuss, the song takes the title and many lines from the book.
10. Song: "Killing an Arab"
Artist: The Cure
Allusion: Albert Camus' "The Stranger."The line,"Standing on a beach with a gun in my hand/Staring at the sea, staring at the sand/Staring down the barrel at the Arab on the ground," connects strongly to the novel.
11. Song: "Breezeblocks"
Artist: Alt-J
Allusion: "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak takes the lines, "Oh, please don't go! We'll eat you whole! We love you so!," among other lines from the children's book.
12. Song: "Soma"
Artist: The Strokes
Allusion: "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley directly references the drug that the characters take in the book: "Soma is what they would take when/Hard times opened their eyes.”
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