Stephen King’s favourite songs of the 1960s
Nothing can transport you back to a particular moment in time quite like a song, just like nothing helps to set the tone and set the scene in your favourite film or show like a great music placement. The same is true in literature.
Haruki Murakami is a master at dropping the name of a song or a singer to help his readers get into the mood of the moment. Nick Hornby’s ‘High Fidelity’ is nothing but “needledrops”. Stephen King might not be best known for his music writing, but there is no shortage of songs mentioned in his works, either.
King has released 65 novels and novellas over the course of his long career, so it’s not surprising that he has referenced so much music in his work, and has included references to such a broad range of genres, artists and songs. Whether it’s Sly and the Family Stone with ‘Dance to the Music’, or Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan or more contemporary names like Röyksopp and Robyn, it would take you days to listen through to every song Stephen King has name-dropped in his work.
Unsurprisingly, there is a huge crossover in the music he writes into his works and his own personal preferences and tastes. When asked to name his favourite songs of all time, King came up with a list that was as varied as that which he has placed into his extended literary universe, and with plenty of artists, like The Rolling Stones, The Kingsmen and Creedence Clearwater Revival, that appeared in both instances.
Having been born at the end of the 1940s, it’s no wonder that most of King’s favourite songs came from the decade he spent as a teenager, the 1960s, but let’s be honest, considering all the great music that made its way into the world in the 60s, it wouldn’t be a surprise for most people’s favourite songs to all come from the decade.
Though there were some more modern picks, like Nathaneil Rateliff’s raucous ‘S.O.B’ and even a surprising shoutout to Rihanna’s ‘Pon de Replay’, there were fewer surprises or shocks in King’s selection of favourite songs than in any of his novels by far.
‘Louie Louie’ is mentioned throughout King’s 1983 novel Christine, as the main protagonist, Arnie, is obsessed with it. King presumably related to Arnie’s enjoyment of the Kingsmen classic, as it made its way onto his list of all-time favourite songs, as did a track from Creedence Clearwater Revival, which had something of a 1940s B-movie horror movie title about its name, which would surely have appealed to King, ‘It Came Out of the Sky’.
A song with a much more tangible connection to the moving image, which features on King’s list of favourites, was Johnny Rivers’ theme song from the US broadcast of Secret Agent Man. A song which we all know and love, but which surely doesn’t feature too highly on many other people’s lists of all-time favourites.
‘The New Girl In School’ by Jan & Dean is another surprising pick (why wouldn’t you prefer anything by the much superior Beach Boys?). Surely King must have a sentimental reason for liking this one so much, or maybe he likes the idea that something so inoffensive-sounding can invoke such a sense of horror when you hear it. You could say something similar about the hauntingly, eerily quaint ‘Dirty Water’ by The Standells or The Searchers’ ‘Needles And Pins’. Somebody get one of these songs into a new 1960s period piece horror flick.
Stephen King names his favourite songs of the 1960s
- The New Girl in School – Jan and Dean (1964)
- Dirty Water – The Standells (1966)
- Louie Louie – The Kingsmen (1963)
- It Came Out of the Sky – Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)
- Secret Agent Man – Johnny Rivers (1966)
- Needles and Pins – The Searchers (1963)
