Obsessed: When Artists Can't Put Down a Book (And Change Music History)
Five Books That Shaped Music History
I went on a first date recently. It was a fun one, and at the end of the date, we wandered through a bookstore, sharing books with one another. We also talked about the music we grew up with. This date asked if I knew the song "Scentless Apprentice" by Nirvana, and he said he had recently seen an interview in which Kurt Cobain said it was inspired by a book called Perfume.
That evening, he asked me out on a second date, and I told him I was going to read Perfume before our next date. Then he sent me the video, and Kurt Cobain says he read the book 10 times. That’s a lot of time to read any book. But artists are obsessive, and it takes a lot to synthesize a story into a new interpretation. I was curious what other books have inspired songs, and I’ve decided to share these discoveries with you.
Literature and music have always been lovers in the dark, but some relationships burn brighter than others. Here are five iconic musicians whose art was fundamentally transformed by the books they couldn’t stop reading.
1. Kurt Cobain & Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
The Book: Patrick Süskind’s 1985 novel follows Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an 18th-century perfume apprentice born without a scent of his own, blessed (or cursed) with a supernatural sense of smell, who becomes a murderer in his quest to capture the perfect fragrance.
The Obsession: In a 1993 interview with MuchMusic’s Erica Ehm, Cobain confessed: “I read Perfume by Patrick Süskind about 10 times in my life, and I can’t stop reading it. It’s like something that’s just stationary in my pocket all the time. It just doesn’t leave me. Cause I’m a hypochondriac (and) it just affects me–makes me want to cut off my nose.” From Novels to Notes
The Song: “Scentless Apprentice” from Nirvana’s final album In Utero (1993) directly adapts the novel’s opening chapters. The lyrics describe how most babies smell like butter, but Jean was scentless and passed around from wet nurse to wet nurse From Novels to Notes, with the chorus—”Go away / Get away”—capturing Grenouille’s profound misanthropy.
Cobain told Ehm this was “really one of the first times that I’ve ever used an actual story as a book, as an example in a song” Far Out Magazine, adding that he related deeply to the protagonist’s disgust with humanity and need for isolation.
Listen: Nirvana - “Scentless Apprentice”
Get the Book: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
2. David Bowie & 1984 by George Orwell
The Book: Orwell’s 1949 dystopian masterpiece depicts a totalitarian future where Big Brother watches everything and the Thought Police punish even mental dissent.
The Failed Musical: In 1973, Bowie became obsessed with creating a full theatrical production of 1984—a West End musical with an accompanying album and film. He told William S. Burroughs in a Rolling Stone interview that he was planning to adapt Orwell’s vision for television.
Then disaster struck. Bowie recalled: “My office approached Mrs. Orwell, because I said, ‘Office, I want to do 1984 as a musical, go get me the rights.’ And they duly trooped off to see Mrs. Orwell, who in so many words said, ‘You’ve got to be out of your gourd, do you think I’m turning this over to that as a musical?’” Far Out Magazine
The Salvaged Album: Orwell’s widow Sonia Brownell denied him the rights, but Bowie had already started writing. The result was 1974’s Diamond Dogs, featuring explicit Orwell tributes: the songs “1984,” “Big Brother,” and “We Are the Dead” (a direct quote from the novel). Bowie described Orwell’s world as mirroring his own upbringing in postwar Brixton and Bromley Literary Hub, and throughout his life returned to images of people trapped in systems of control.
Listen: David Bowie - “1984” | David Bowie - “Big Brother”
Get the Book: 1984 by George Orwell
3. Tupac Shakur & The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Book: Machiavelli’s 1513 political treatise on power, strategy, and survival—the original manual for achieving and maintaining control through any means necessary.
The Prison Transformation: While incarcerated in 1995, Tupac read voraciously. Works such as The Prince by Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli and The Art of War by Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu sparked Shakur’s interest in philosophy, philosophy of war and military strategy. Wikipedia He studied Machiavelli’s work intensely, reading it multiple times.
The Rebirth as Makaveli: Upon his release, Tupac adopted the stage name “Makaveli” for his final album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. In a September 1996 Vibe interview, he explained: “It’s not like I idolize this one guy Machiavelli. I idolize that type of thinking where you do whatever’s gonna make you achieve your goal.” 2Pac Legacy
The transformation was profound. Tupac—who had studied Shakespeare at Baltimore School for the Arts, where he performed in Shakespeare plays and identified themes of gang warfare in the Bard’s work Wikipedia—emerged from prison with a new philosophy, applying Renaissance political strategy to hip-hop warfare.
Listen: 2Pac - “Hail Mary” (from The Don Killuminati)
Get the Book: The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
4. Patti Smith & A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
The Book: Arthur Rimbaud’s 1873 collection of prose poetry—raw, visionary, rebellious work from the teenage French poet who wanted to become a “seer” through the derangement of all the senses.
The Lifelong Obsession: Rimbaud became Patti Smith’s North Star. She describes how she loves classics and modern works, with A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud among her most reread poetry Goodreads. Speaking of another Rimbaud-influenced work, she wrote about receiving Sylvia Plath’s Ariel at twenty, saying it became “the book of my life then, drawing me to a poet with hair worthy of a Breck commercial and the incisive observational powers of a female surgeon cutting out her own heart.” Far Out Magazine
The Punk Poet: Smith carried Rimbaud’s spirit into every performance. Her debut album Horses (1975) opens with a Rimbaud-inspired reimagining of “Gloria,” and her memoir Just Kids chronicles how she immersed herself in New York’s literary scene while keeping the French poet’s revolutionary fire alive in her own work.
Listen: Patti Smith - “Gloria”
Get the Book: A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud
5. Jay-Z & The Odyssey by Homer
The Book: Homer’s ancient Greek epic about Odysseus’s ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, facing mythical monsters, divine wrath, and the ultimate test of loyalty and perseverance.
The Hip-Hop Odyssey: Jay-Z has cited Homer’s epic as a formative influence on his understanding of narrative, journey, and loyalty. The ancient poem resonated with his own story of rising from Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects.
The Connection: Discussing The Odyssey, Jay-Z said he “got lost in reading about Odysseus’ struggle to get home and his longing for someone so strong, as his wife was, waiting for him. That’s like a dream—that kind of strength, love, loyalty,” Echostories noting the poem has “beautiful rhythm.” Echostories
His 2010 memoir Decoded makes the case for rap as a form of poetry, arguing that hip-hop, like all great art, touches on universal human experiences—the same timeless themes Homer explored thousands of years ago.
Listen: 99 Problems
Get the Book: The Odyssey by Homer
The Alchemy of Influence
What makes these connections so powerful isn’t just that musicians read books—it’s that they devoured them, returned to them obsessively, and let them fundamentally reshape their artistic vision.
Kurt Cobain didn’t just read Perfume once; he carried it in his pocket everywhere, reading it on airplanes, between shows, until its protagonist’s isolation became inseparable from his own. David Bowie didn’t casually reference Orwell; he tried to transform the entire novel into a multimedia experience, and when denied, channeled that dystopian energy into one of his most unhinged albums. Tupac didn’t skim Machiavelli; he studied the text like a manual, emerging from prison with a new name and philosophy.
This is literature as fuel, as obsession, as transformation. The words on the page become riffs, become screams, become entire aesthetic revolutions.
What books have fundamentally changed how you see the world? Drop your literary obsessions in the comments.
Ps. Second date is coming up, and I’m halfway through the book with Scentless Apprentice on repeat. Hopefully he doesn’t think I’m insane.