The votes are in.

Last week, with a pair of free tix to see Cloudbusting celebrating the music of the bookish Kate Bush at the Button Factory, Dublin 2, on Thursday September 19 on offer, I asked you to name your favourtie literary reference in a song.

You answered in your tens.

But there could be only one winner

In reverse order…

3rd: Place:

The Divine Comedy – The Book Lovers

Cian writes:

“James Joyce: Hello there!
Virginia Woolf: I’m losing my mind!
Marcel Proust: Je me’en souviens plus
F Scott Fitzgerald: baa bababa baa
Ernest Hemingway: I forgot the…
Hermann Hesse: Oh es ist alle so häßlich
Evelyn Waugh: Whoooaarr!”

Runner up:

Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Dance Stance

Otis Blue writes:

‘Skewers British ignorance beautifully. As apt now as it was when released nearly 40 years ago:

“Never heard about Oscar Wilde
Don’t know about Brendan Behan
Know anything about Sean O’Casey
Or care about George Bernard Shaw
Or Samuel Beckett
Won’t talk about Eugene O’Neill
He won’t talk about Edna O’Brien
Or know anything about Lawrence Stern…”‘

Winner:

The Cure – How Beautiful You Are

Brother Barnabas writes:

“in another incarnation, I once interviewed Robert Smith and asked him about the song Killing An Arab (a pretty much straight retelling of Albert Camus’ The Outsider). [aside: The Cure were touring again and were getting a lot of grief about it in, especially, America – and he was bothered about right-wing nuts deliberately misinterpreting the song, taking as an anthem calling for some kind of reverse-jihad].

Smith said that this was one of his main techniques when writing a song – make a song out of a poem or a novel (or another song). My own favourite Cure song – How Beautiful You Are – is a pretty much direct retelling of Baudelaire‘s ‘Les Yeux Des Pauvres’ (the eyes of the poor). He hardly even changed the words, but I’d never noticed up to then. there are also a few other Cure songs bases on the Gormenghast…”

Thanks all.

Last wee: Win Nick’s Free Tix