You’re the Inspiration: 5 Songs With Surprising Sources of Inspiration

This week's songs are from The Waterboys, Amen Dunes, Sly & the Family Stone, Coldplay, and Miles Davis

Deliver Me From Nowhere, Warren Zane’s fascinating book about the making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska describes in detail a wide range of influences for the album’s songwriting, and ultimately the decision to release it as-is. One of the major influences was “Frankie Teardrops,” by lo-fi goth-punk band Suicide. It’s an interesting connection, given Springsteen was working on Born in the USA, which is sonically the very opposite of everything Suicide was trying to be.

“It had a terror-filled ambience that people weren’t expressing in rock music at the time, and it was totally unique. The sound of his voice was: ‘Whoa, this is—!’ It was something I really related to.” - Bruce Springsteen on ‘Frankie Teardrop’

Listening to “Frankie Teardrop” alongside “State Trooper,” however, the influence is evident. It’s not just in the songwriting and subject matter, but the sonic texture, and the decision to release the poorly-dubbed copy of a bedroom recording, rather than polish it up in the studio. As described in the book, all attempts to re-record the material from the Nebraska tapes were failures. It lacked the spark. Springsteen would go on to cover Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” on High Hopes in 2014.

This example isn’t even that far-fetched if looking across modern popular music. Musicians are constantly listening, adapting, mimicking what they hear, feel, and love about other artists and making it their own. They are seekers and explorers taking what they are listening to, watching, reading, or feeling as they are creating, letting it seep into the DNA of whatever it is they are working on, and sculpting it into something new. Once you have the key into that process, or the nugget of their idea, it can change how and what you hear in the final piece.

Here are 5 songs with some surprising influences that might change the way you hear them.

“There was so much more to learn than I’d ever been hinted at in the culture I’d grown up in. I had a strong sense of wonderment about that, and I realized there are people who had vastly more information in their imaginations and experience than I had.” - Mike Scott

The Waterboys - “Whole of the Moon”

The Waterboys embrace Celtic elements across their catalogue, with a sound described as “the Big Music.” More obvious influences for their sound and vision would be Celtic folk music, Astral Weeks, Bob Dylan, and Irish poets like William Butler Yeats. But according to songwriter Mike Scott, the more direct influence on this selection is Prince. “I had never liked synth-pop. I just hated that sound and style. But Prince did something with that synthetic sound that was more musical, more exploratory, and I loved that.” I’ve seen it described as a love song, and its filled with enough specifics to feel like it’s written for one person in particular. As noted above, Scott says its more about a type of person. There’s love and admiration in it, but also a twinge of jealousy and regret in there as well. It’s a bittersweet song. It’s a cathartic song. It’s best played loud and felt deeply. The love for Prince runs deep with the Waterboys. Showing his appreciation in a very Prince-like way, the Purple One covered “Whole of the Moon” in 2015.

Amen Dunes - “Boys”

Each album from Amen Dunes, the chosen moniker of Damon McMahon, sounds radically different from the others. McMahon not only cites the late hip hop producer J. Dilla as the primary inspiration for 2024’s Death Jokes, he samples the late producer in the final song. Dilla’s influence is evident throughout Death Jokes: layers of samples, sound-collages, and odd rhythms. I’ve picked “Boys” for this entry because of the use of bass slapping to carry a beat that is overtaken by a wonderful chaos of off-kilter percussion part way through. McMahon has also spoken of the influence of hip hop throughout his work, crediting the unique cadence of his voice to the Getto Boyz. I can’t say I hear it, but it’s nice to try.

“Louis Armstrong had a song about them. Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned them when he wrote from the Birmingham Jail. I didn’t retell the whole story but I wanted a taste of it in there.” - Sly Stone

Sly & the Family Stone - “Loose Booty”

Sly Stone was a musical sponge, who took in everything going on around him and would turn it into frenetic, joyous funk. He felt music and culture were always in dialogue and was known to use other artists’ music as inspiration for his own comment. His masterpiece There’s a Riot Goin’ On was a direct response to the question raised by Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On? For “Loose Booty,” Sly lifted the title directly from a Funkadelic song. Where the inspiration story gets a bit weird (especially for a song named “Loose Booty”) is that it is in-part based on a Bible story. The rhythmic chanting is of three names: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In the story, these three were thrown into a pit for refusing to worship King Nebuchadnezzar, but survived, having been led out from the fire by the prophet Daniel. As Sly put it, “Music could help you resist everyday problems. Music could keep you out of the fire.”

Coldplay - “Yellow”

Despite whatever cheeseball silliness they’re up to now, I still have a fondness for Coldplay’s debut album Parachutes. It’s got some nice songs coated in exceptional atmosphere, and crucial for an album that can play start-to-finish, it sustains its carefully crafted mood for the duration. I’m happy to argue about it if you want. Your rebuttal must be limited only to Parachutes, because that’s all I’m willing to defend. “Yellow,” the big hit single, was written “in about 10 minutes,” according to Chris Martin (Coldplay haters are thinking: “sounds about right”). It came out of the conversation about the weather conditions and Martin doing a Neil Young impression as a goof while in the studio. Once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it. I’d like to hear Neil do it.

Miles Davis - “Mademoiselle Mabry”

Similar to Sly Stone, Miles Davis kept his ear to the ground and nose on the grindstone. He knew interesting music when he heard it and it would directly influence whatever he was working on. The piano concertos of Maurice Ravel were a major influence on Kind of Blue, and he would later pick up on and play with the architecture of funk and rock on Bitches Brew. But this track has a more direct influence: the chord progression is lifted directly from Jimi Hendrix’s “Wind Cries Mary.” A number of jazz greats are backing Davis on this recording, including Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams. The song was made and titled as a tribute to Betty Mabry, who introduced Davis to both Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. Mabry would soon marry Davis and is the woman on the cover of Filles de Kilimanjaro. Post Kind of Blue, pre Bitches Brew, the song is an interesting inflection point in Davis’ career. Here, Davis is bending Hendrix’s song into his modal, acoustic jazz style; his next step was to invert that first impulse, and bend his music towards Hendrix’s and Stone’s style. Seeing that process in full view is so illustrative of how influence can mature beyond mimicry and into something entirely new. You can listen and nod along in agreement. But unless you can respond with your own point of view, or in a way that advances the ideas in discussion, are you even a part of the conversation?

Thanks for reading. Enjoy the listening.