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February 12, 2026

From Brontë to Ballard, Orwell to Okri: the best songs inspired by literature

As Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights gets a boost from a new film adaptation, we survey the surprising, seditious and sensual ways in which prose has influenced pop

From Brontë to Ballard, Orwell to Okri: the best songs inspired by literature

TL;DR

  • Katy Perry's 'Firework' was inspired by a line in Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road'.
  • Japanese Breakfast's 'Magic Mountain' references Thomas Mann's novel of the same name.
  • Bomb the Bass's 'Bug Powder Dust' is influenced by William Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch'.
  • Taylor Swift's 'The Bolter' is based on a villain from Nancy Mitford's novels.
  • Killer Mike's 'Willie Burke Sherwood' entwines references to 'Lord of the Flies'.
  • The Cure's 'Charlotte Sometimes' is inspired by Penelope Farmer's novel.
  • Black Star's 'Thieves in the Night' incorporates passages from Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye'.
  • Nirvana's 'Scentless Apprentice' is linked to Patrick Suskind's 'Perfume'.
  • Radiohead's 'Street Spirit (Fade Out)' draws from Ben Okri's 'The Famished Road'.
  • Rosalía's 'Pienso en Tu Mirá' is based on a chapter from the romance 'Flamenca'.
  • David Bowie's 'We Are the Dead' is a fragment from his unproduced musical based on Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.
  • The Normal's 'Warm Leatherette' is inspired by J.G. Ballard's 'Crash'.
  • Kendrick Lamar's 'King Kunta' references Alex Haley's 'Roots' and Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man'.
  • Magazine's 'A Song From Under the Floorboards' is clearly inspired by Dostoevsky's 'Notes From Underground'.
  • Kate Bush's 'The Sensual World' is inspired by James Joyce's 'Ulysses'.
  • Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now' was sparked by Saul Bellow's 'Henderson the Rain King'.
  • Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' transforms Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'.
  • Joy Division's 'Dead Souls' is inspired by Nikolai Gogol's novel of the same name.
  • The Velvet Underground's 'Venus in Furs' is inspired by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch's novel.
  • The Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy for the Devil' was influenced by Mikhail Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita'.

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