This is the start of a multi part series of posts looking at crime themes in music. Now, you need to understand that I know very little about music. I missed that phase of adolescence where music is a big part of a young person's life and at this late stage of my life find myself with almost no background as to who sang what when and with which band. What I do know a little about and enjoy is crime and noir fiction and film.
My wife,, having grown up with much older siblings has a near encyclopedic knowledge of pop/rock/soul music starting in the 50s. She especially likes the music of Bruce Springsteen. Having observed her watching every Springsteen video on You Tube until the wee hours of the the pre-dawn, I started bouncing around the interwebs myself, reading about Bruce. It didn't hurt my interest that Springsteen's guitarist, Steven Van Zandt, plays an Italian mobster on The Sopranos.
It didn't take long for Google to link to articles such as: Bruce Springsteen's American Noir, Top Ten Springsteen Crime Songs, The Crimes of Bruce Springsteen, and The Dignity and Humanity of Bruce Springsteen's Criminals. I also found out that Bruce himself has said that the film noir genre influences his music. You might be thinking "Well duh, you just figuring that out?". Well, yes, that is exactly what's happening.
Anyway, searching for stories on Bruce Springsteen and crime and noir led me to many other websites that discuss crime themes in music. My searches also led me to short story collections based on crime themes in the songs of various artists. Springsteen's songs alone have inspired three collections and there are anthologies of crime stories based on the music of Lou Reed, The Go-Gos, and, not surprisingly, the outlaw country artist, Johnny Cash. There are also three music videos by Lady Ga-Ga that have crime themes and I will explore those as well.
The theme of crime in song is more extensive than I ever thought and over the rest of the year I will review the short story collections, the Lady Ga-Ga music videos, and document everything I find about the subject. There are lists of individual songs by various artists that fall into the scope of my research.
My first hurdle is where to start. Springsteen is the most complex. Lady Ga-Ga's videos are visually stunning and complex in their own way and there are only three I'm going to discuss. Or should I start with a good old academic literature survey. Who knows, I might actually learn something about music along the way.
Stay tuned, this is looking to be a long term project.
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