How original are Stevie's lyrics?

[vivfox]

We know how Stevie gets some lyrics from outside sources, but I was totally surprised how much she gets from Oscar Wilde! Some of "Rooms on Fire" "Tragedy of One's Own Soul" "Paper Doll" "Freedom" "Fire Burning" "Have No Heart" "Kick It" and "Lily Girl" get lyrics from his writing.


Fire Burning

Wilde: "A huge fire was blazing."
Stevie (Fire Burning): "A huge fire was burning"
Wilde: "His eyes grew strangely bright."
Stevie (Fire Burning): "And her eyes grew strangely bright"



Rooms on Fire

Wilde: "Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes the real life that we had known."
Stevie (Rooms On Fire): "Somewhere out of the back of your mind comes your real life and the life that you know."
Wilde: "He hated to be separated from the picture that was such a part of his life,"
Stevie (Rooms On Fire): "he hated to be separated... from that picture"
Wilde: "He would laugh at anyone who tried to taunt him"
Stevie (Rooms On Fire): "she laughed and she cried and she tried to taunt him"



Tragedy of One's Own Soul

Wilde: "Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to Tannhauser, and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul." (Tragedy of One's Soul) "presentation of the tragedy of his own soul" "For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night..."
Stevie (Tragedy of One's Own Soul): "House is full tonight"

Paper Doll

Wilde: "'I like men who have a future, and women who have a past,' he answered."
Stevie (Paper Doll): "you like a man with a future... you like a woman with a past"

Freedom

Wilde: "When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, it was as a rebel that he fell."
Stevie (Freedom): "Beautiful as you are, with that high spirit... morning star of evil hit me" .
Wilde: "Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him the hideous error, into which he had fallen,"
Stevie (Freedom): "Dim and wavering on a wind-blown night" & "As was the wind-blown night into which she'd fallen"

Have No Heart

Stevie's song Have No Heart parallels the story of The Birthday of the Infanta.
Wilde: "'But why will he not dance again?' asked the Infanta, laughing."
Stevie (Have No Heart): "why will he not dance again?"
Stevie (Have No Heart): "If he had lived, well, he might have made the king smile"
Wilde: "'For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts,' she cried, and she ran into the garden"
Stevie (Have No Heart): "well, in the future send no one to me who has a heart"

Kick It

Wilde: "'I am waited for in Egypt,' said the Swallow."
Stevie (Kick It): "Well I'm waited for in Egypt"
Wilde: "'I will stay with you one night longer' said the Swallow."
Stevie (Kick It): "I'll stay with you one more night"

Lily Girl

Wilde: "A LILY-GIRL, not made for this world's pain/ With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears/ And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tears/ Like bluest water seen through mists of rain"
Stevie (Lily Girl): "She was a Lily Girl, not made for this world/ Veiled eyes covering nights of tears, nights of tears/ Like the blue, blue water and the crystal fountains"

[brysondt]

Oooo, that is very interesting to me. Thanks for researching all that. I'm not really all that familiar with Oscar Wilde, but it does appear that Stevie has sampled him a little bit, huh?

[daniellaaarisen]

I LOVE Wilde and I LOVE Stevie and yet I have never seen this comparison! I'll have to keep looking for it elsewhere in his works..

[Supernaut]

Wow - cool. That's some heavy borrowing. Nice sleuthing!

Most of these are from The Picture Of Dorian Gray, no? Makes total sense that that book was a thematic inspiration for The Other Side Of The Mirror.

I wonder if there are other lyrics that borrow so heavily from other authors.

[priestofnothing]

She borrows from Poe quite a bit too. This site lists some of her "inspirations".

http://www.inspiredangel.com

[CADreaming]

Great topic.

It reminds me of these quotes from Lindsey about Gift of Screws:

"I am not a scholar of Emily Dickinson. I had a pocket book of her poems. As you know, we're always looking for stuff we can rip off." (2008)

"It was just a riff and we started doing it and just had an idea for the lyric. It came from an Emily Dickinson poem. The meaning of it wasn’t really clear to me at first. The meaning of the chorus was a direct lift from this poem. We’re always looking for things to rip off, things that are public domain [laughs]."

At the very least, I find it interesting to see what has inspired both Stevie and Lindsey's songs. And, maybe the songs were actually more inspired by literature - or "public domain" than their actual lives/relationships! That would be so hysterical if all these years people have been trying to decipher their lyrics to fit into a "who's it about" scenario and yet they were just ripping off some dead poet.

[FMlex]

That's pretty cool, Vivfox!

And that website is fascinating. I think I could spend my whole Saturday looking around there. I love stuff like this!!

[David]

Stevie provides variations on old lit.

Come to think of it, she provides variations on old movies, old fashion designs, & old speechways, too.

I only wish she'd provide an occasional variation on old chord progressions (read: not her own).

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by CADreaming

At the very least, I find it interesting to see what has inspired both Stevie and Lindsey's songs. And, maybe the songs were actually more inspired by literature - or "public domain" than their actual lives/relationships! That would be so hysterical if all these years people have been trying to decipher their lyrics to fit into a "who's it about" scenario and yet they were just ripping off some dead poet.

And I hear Poe's Dream Within a Dream in Lindsey's Say Goodbye too.

Susan Dickinson had a poem called Castaway Dreams that I found when I learned the song title from Lindsey's song Cast Away Dreams. I had not heard UTS yet. I only saw the tracklist. I was thinking that Lindsey must have come across this poem (Hyssop) in some Dickinson family collection when he wrote CAD. The subject matter is not the same, but the title is rather singular.

CAH said she used to look through poetry to find lyric suggestions for Lindsey. Of course, CAH was such a scholar, she probably spent the bulk of her time curled up in a chair reading poetry anyway. . .

Michele

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by michelej1

CAH said she used to look through poetry to find lyric suggestions for Lindsey. Of course, CAH was such a scholar, she probably spent the bulk of her time curled up in a chair reading poetry anyway. . .

That's funny!

[gypsy4life]

Originally Posted by priestofnothing

She borrows from Poe quite a bit too. This site lists some of her "inspirations".

http://www.inspiredangel.com

This site is amazing!! It's good to know that Stevie is a reader!! Reading is a fast-dying past time in the newer generation...my little cousins wouldn't be reading at all if Twilight hadn't come along

[seekerj]

Hmmm....

something else that all those songs have in common.... Klonopin.