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## The best songs inspired by literature – ranked!
Rock music and literature have always enjoyed a fruitful, if sometimes uneasy, relationship. Here are ten of the best songs inspired by books, ranked in order of their brilliance – and to desperate, chilling effect.
2. The Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs (1967)
Lou Reed’s stated aim was to invest rock’n’roll with the quality of literature: he never achieved it more successfully than when inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novel, *Venus in Furs*. A wall of detuned guitar and scraping, droning viola, “Venus in Furs” is both menacing and hypnotically alluring: a perfect musical embodiment of its subject matter.
1. The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil (1968)
Marianne Faithfull’s suggestion that Mick Jagger read Mikhail Bulgakov‘s *The Master and Margarita* is widely considered one of the most fortuitous literary recommendations in rock history. The resulting song was fantastic, the malevolence and amorality of Jagger’s lyric amplified by the music: with its samba-derived rhythm and ecstatic whoops, it sounded not ominous but inviting. Moreover, it was timely: the psychedelicised optimism of the summer of love had begun to erode; the world seemed to be getting darker – Jagger included a line about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and later added a reference to the murder of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy – and attitudes were hardening. “sympathy for the Devil” was the perfect soundtrack to the changing times. Over fifty years later, it still sounds amazing.
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