Sunday, February 22, 2026

Reading festival

This Guardian list of the "best songs inspired by literature" may have been prompted by the new film adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, but the Kate Bush classic doesn't actually feature in the rankings. Instead, Alexis Petridis pointedly picks Bush's 'The Sensual World', her reimagining of Molly Bloom's monologue from James Joyce's Ulysses. Justifiable choice or deliberate ragebait? Let's give him the benefit of the doubt.

Some of the literary inspirations I knew (J G Ballard on The Normal's 'Warm Leatherette', Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch's Venus In Furs on the Velvet Underground track of the same name), but others I didn't. Particularly enlightening was the selection of Nirvana's 'Scentless Apprentice', for which Kurt Cobain drew on Patrick Suskind's Perfume - a stomach-churner of a novel that I read a couple of years back and that helps to make more sense of a song I love.

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