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
The oeuvre of Katy Perry occasionally has some profoundly unexpected inspirations: California Gurls is spelt in homage to Big Star’s September Gurls, while Firework was based on, wait for it, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, specifically the line about how his favourite people “burn like fabulous yellow roman candles”.
A bestselling author herself, Michelle Zauner’s latest album as Japanese Breakfast referenced Virginia Woolf, John Cheever and, on its sweet but sad acoustic closing track, Thomas Mann’s sanatorium-based door-stopper Magic Mountain. It’s a song that seems to reflect Zauner’s reaction to the book, and deploy its imagery to explore her own relationship with fame and creativity.
Bug Powder Dust certainly isn’t the only song inspired by the oeuvre of William Burroughs – he’s the link between Duran Duran’s Wild Boys and Throbbing Gristle’s An Old Man Smiled – but it’s definitely the funkiest. Justin Warfield delivers a Naked Lunch-themed rap, over a writhing bass line and immense breakbeat.
Taylor Swift has described herself as “your favourite English teacher”, a nod to the literary references in her songs. The expanded The Tortured Poets Department featured The Bolter, based on a recurring villain in Nancy Mitford’s novels (in turn based on five-times-married British aristocrat Idina Sackville) who Swift identified with.
