As a reader, I’m more of a “Jane Eyre” girl than a “Wuthering Heights” girl. Of course, I first devoured the novels at an age when I was too young to understand the Heathcliff-Catherine ourobouros dynamic; lonely, bookish orphan Jane was more my speed.
But when I got to college and fell madly in love for the first time, I was primed for the Kate Bush version of “Wuthering Heights,” an avant-garde musical number, all shrieks and pleading. Somehow Bush, that Ur-diva of the ’80s, wrapped up the plot of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel better than any SparkNotes could (this was long before AI). Swathed in lyrics and melody instead of chaptered prose, I got it: Here were two people who embodied the idea behind can’t live with or without you.
Kate Bush, “Wuthering Heights” video
I’m still a reader, one who spends some of my reading time professionally, as a book critic. Talk about wild and windy moors, temper and jealousy! Yet I come back again and again like Cathy, to my own “only master,” stories, words and their creators. In the words of Kate Bush, I can’t “leave behind my Wuthering Wuthering Wuthering Wuthering Heights …“
We’re not the only ones. This month’s new Emerald Fennell film adaptation of Brontë’s novel, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, promises to introduce millions of moviegoers to a classic novel into which Brontë’ poured her soul, creating archetypical lovers — the mismatched, fevered kind who may never find happiness but can’t quit each other.
Once I’d heard the song, I was hooked, both on Bush’s music (we all saw “Stranger Things” blaze “Running Up That Hill” back to life) and on a quest to find out how other musicians might use stories and novels in their work. Some songs are obviously based on fables and folktales, like Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” (“The Lord of the Rings”) and “Ain’t Necessarily So” by Bronski Beat (the story of Moses, etc.) Given my fiction addiction, I started hunting out more obscure titles.
Well, if not obscure, at least more literary. David Bowie’s “1984” was an easy win, based of course on the Orwell novel. Aficionados recognize that the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” derives from Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita;” and “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane echoes “Alice in Wonderland.” There’s even a tiny pop/rock subgenre of songs based on Anne Rice’s vampire novels: Sting’s “Moon Over Bourbon Street,” Annie Lennox’s “Love Song for a Vampire,” and Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting.”
Let’s not forget the classical classics. Could two songs be more different than Steely Dan’s “Home at Last” and the Soggy Bottom Boys’ “I am a Man of Constant Sorrow”? Yet both are inspired by the “Odyssey” of Homer. Sadly, although inspired by the “Iliad” of Homer, ABBA’s “Cassandra” doesn’t reach Mount Olympus heights in quality (there are other egregious songs based on fine books like “The House at Pooh Corner” by Loggins and Messina). Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” gets references in many lyrics, as well as a star turn in the Mark Knopfler ballad of the same name.
Knopfler (who, no coincidence, has a master’s in literature) wrote my favorite-ever song based on a literary work: “Sailing to Philadelphia.” It’s a retelling in miniature of Thomas Pynchon’s 1997 “Mason & Dixon,” about the two Englishmen hired by the Penns and the Calverts to “draw the line” that in 1765 began to divide the United States into North and South, via Maryland and Pennsylvania, and figured importantly during our nation’s Civil War. Performed as a duet by Knopfler and James Taylor, the piece employs a great deal of expert finger-picking to mimic the sounds of wind, waves and seabirds while the two surveyors — one of land, one of stars — argue about how safe and successful their expedition will be.
“Sailing to Philadelphia” inspired me to pick up Pynchon’s novel after I first heard it in the early 2000s. I’d never read anything by the famously reclusive author before (so sue me, I spent grad school as a medievalist) and I was absolutely riveted by his sense of play, of the looseness in the joints of his sentences and paragraphs. I’ve since read two more (“The Crying of Lot 49” and the quite recent “Shadow Ticket”) and hope to get to “Vineland” sometime in the near future.
That is what a great adaptation should do: make you curious about its source material. Not every listener, of course, will connect the Kate Bush song title to Emily Brontë’s novel (and, thankfully, most listeners will fail to connect ABBA’s “Cassandra” with Homer), but those who do might choose to read the book. What could be more relevant right now than Bowie’s “1984” and its basis in Orwell’s novel?
Speaking of late-stage capitalism: If Taylor Swift’s “happiness” (sic) sends some of her die-hard stans to “The Great Gatsby,” they may see “the green light of forgiveness,” referencing Daisy’s dock signal, as its own illusion. I’m under no illusion that each and every lyrical allusion to literature will foster a reading revolution.
However, I also know that I’m far from the only book nerd out here who keeps a log (written or remembered) of songs based on literary works. What’s your favorite? What’s the most obscure one you can recall? Let’s build a great big list.
Meanwhile, I’ll be over here in my reading nook, listening to Kate Bush as I reread “Wuthering Heights.” Pro tip: The book, my friends, is always better.
Patrick is a freelance critic and author of the memoir “Life B.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
