stories from song lyrics?

[missmeadowsweet]

I love to write, and consequently, I love stories and the opportunity to tell them when I write. I also love music and I am never a casual listener - I always listen to the lyrics and ponder the stories the artists have crafted. These two passions of mine have combined lately. I have written some short stories inspired by song lyrics, using the lyrics as something of an outline. Usually the kind of song lyrics that inspire me are ones that seem to have a backstory which makes me wonder what the artist was communicating in between the few words of the song. This has been an incredibly enlightening and enjoyable process, and I'm just wondering if anyone else has done this, and, if so, what songs did you use?

[Panglossian]

I've written short stories based on photographs and images and dreams but never a song. I imagine it would quite difficult expanding the usually bare-bones lyrics into something deeper. I might try it. But how to pick a song ...

[veganpoet]

So interesting!! I would love to hear what you wrote, or the song you chose!

[Steven Hunley]

I do all the time and can easily agree with you there. Songs are poetry and as such have very evocative lyrics. Dumas once said "Art begets art" so I have no hesitation in using songs to inspire a story.

Heart full of Soul- The Yardbirds. Head over Heels-Tears for Fears. Hey Joe-Jimi Hendrix. Stairway to Paradise- , No Quarter, There are others. I posted them all here. So yes, I heartily agree.

[Steven Hunley]

I do all the time and can easily agree with you there. Songs are poetry and as such have very evocative lyrics. Dumas once said "Art begets art" so I have no hesitation in using songs to inspire a story.

Heart full of Soul- The Yardbirds. Head over Heels-Tears for Fears. Hey Joe-Jimi Hendrix. Stairway to Paradise- , No Quarter, There are others. I posted them all here. So yes, I heartily agree.

OK, so I made a short example. This story happens in 1969. So I find music from 1969. It's a group that used to play in the same clubs as the Doors, they knew each other. Writing prose into poetry is difficult, Mary Hemingway once admitted this is what Ernest did, and that it was tough.
But poetry to prose is easier, because poetry is shorter, and more evocative. You just expand the work, rather than condense it.

Even if you don't incorporate the music directly, you can rely upon it to get you in the mood, and then translate your mood or feelings into words.


Soledad, City College and Love


“Make a left,” she said.

I turned to go up Mount Soledad. It had a view of the moonlit Pacific on one side, and the city on the other. The road was all hairpin-switchback-uphill-straight-a-way-but-not–for-long. I leaned a little nearer and noticed her perfume. It was one of her most dangerous feminine weapons and it was at the ready. Large caliber Chanel number Five aimed straight at my sensory organ, and therefore obliquely at my heart.

She scooted closer and whispered in my ear. “I wanna give you something special, pull over here.”

I pulled off the road, and faced the car overlooking the city. The streets below were filled with a thousand multi-colored lights racing off into the distance at breakneck speed. Then the tall obsidian and steel buildings of downtown San Diego rose up like black paper cut outs with a thousand yellow windows like oriental lantern eyes. Behind that loomed the blackness of Mt. San Miguel, and beyond lay the mysterious shadows that can only exist in Mexico.

Love came on the radio just then. Definitely it was Love. I could tell by the sound and the feel of it, Love was coming on.

©Steven Hunley 2013

http://youtu.be/rZmRS0bg7_M She Comes in Colors Love


Last of all I would like to make the point that with music and lyrics you have two mediums to draw upon. Lyrics as a source to inspire your words. But the music to inspire your mood and color.

Listen to the fuzzed base and guitar in this piece, how it stops and starts and rumbles and vibrates.

http://youtu.be/TxcDTUMLQJI She Moves in Mysterious Ways U2

The crowd grew silent and listened to the nothing. Then the violent rumbling began in earnest.
Old rotten bricks lost their grip on each other and turned to dust. The floor started to roll like a deck of a boat in a storm. A young woman screamed when the walls collapsed. Clouds flew from the shaking rafters above, and dozens, then hundreds of bricks and splinters and beams fell down, crushing the dancers and patrons. Unable to catch their breath, they coughed their innards out in uncontrollable spasms. White powder covered their limbs and faces, giving them a pale and deadly look. Like Karloff’s incredible Imhotep, dancers limped slowly through the wreckage dragging threads of tattered dance clothes, stunned and disoriented.

Eddie passed out under a pile of bricks the size of Manhattan, his forehead torn and bleeding. He recollected a noise like a train wreck and being struck on the head, plaster dusting his face, choking, and feeling like he’d been beat up… and this was the strangest memory…beat up by a communist gorilla.

The noise stopped.

Next there were sirens and the high-low whine of ambulances, shouting firemen and scores of police. The voices grew faint as Eddie struggled to get up on one elbow. All he could see were clouds of smoke, great ancient beams hanging down from the ceiling split in two like matchsticks, and piles of rubble. Nothing was left of old Darko Drazan’s tower except a smoldering mountain of bricks. The scene resembled black and white newsreels of Berlin after allied bombings. Then it occurred to Eddie that he was seeing in black and white, and to further obscure his vision, a trickle of warm blood, like Salome’s crimson seventh veil, descended over his eyes and transformed his acute vision to an inky darkness… just before he lost his head.

The vibrato inspires the earthquake, the images of the dancer-Salome.

[AuntShecky]

Some ballads (i.e. true ballads, like "Frankie and Johnnie," not "slow" love songs misnamed as "ballads") tell the complete story right in the song, so there is no need to expand it into a short story, unless you want to change the point of view, or to resolve it once and for all. Same with a handful of pop songs from a few decades back. For instance, after lo these many years we're still wondering what the hell it was that Billie Jo Mcallister threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, although most of us are pretty clear on what happened down at the Harper Valley PTA.

To answer your original question, yours fooly has written "poems" if one could call them that based on particular pieces of music. As far as short stories go, I've posted several whose titles are the same as songs: e.g. "A Change Will Do You Good" and "Aren't You Glad You're You." Some of the others cop a lyric from an old song: "All to Myself Alone" (from "Slow Boat to China" by Frank Loesser and "Yesterday's Mashed Potatoes" from "A Fine Romance" by Dorothy Fields. (As you can see, with the exception of the Sheryl Crowe song, these references are from songs from my parents' generation, which go way, way back, so few readers would recognize the provenance.)

Going back to your original question, it would seem to me a bit difficult to put the musical part of your song into your short story, and the lyrics much easier. And again, what would be the point of reiterating the lyrics? Grab your inspiration where you find it,though, and best of luck with it.