Art comes in all shapes and forms, and music is inspired by an infinite number of topics and muses, from love and war to Dukla Prague football shirts and shaking booties.
But one inspiration is ubiquitous among discerning musicians, and that’s literature. Indeed, books and authors provide bountiful motivation to artists of all genres and ages, so we’re basing this week’s Now Playing on this very theme.
To coincide with 6 Music’s celebration of libraries, Tom Robinson wants your musical choices for a playlist inspired by anything to do with books, writers, characters, titles and the written word.
‘Paperback Writer’ is pretty obvious, you can do better than that. How about starting with a bunch of artists who’ve taken their name from a book? Step forward The Doors (from The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley), Modest Mouse (From The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf), Belle and Sebastian (Belle et Sébastien by Cécile Aubry), Veruca Salt (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl), or Moloko (A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess). There are, literally, hundreds more examples.
Or you could chip away at the coalface of songs inspired by books, including ‘2+2=5’ by Radiohead (about George Orwell's 1984), ‘The Battle of Evermore’ by Led Zeppelin (stimulated by J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), or ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ by Bruce Springsteen which is about The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
And that’s before you’ve even considered the works of Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Emily Bronte, J.D. Salinger or and endless source of material from The Holy Bible.
You pick the music, so get your literature-inspired suggestions to Tom via the hashtag #Libraries6Music to help create a playlist. Comment on the Now Playing Facebook page, here on the blog, email nowplaying@bbc.co.uk or drag tracks onto our Spotify playlist.
