It sits in a strange and indescribable place in Morrison’s discography: at times sweeping and at times intimate, not quite as soul-influenced as what came before or as forceful as what came later. What quality, then, has made Morrison’s music so vital for a certain strain of writer?Īs a quick primer: the album Astral Weeks was recorded in New York in 1968, during a time when the Irish-born singer was living in Massachusetts. There’s something about Van Morrison’s music that pushes writers in unexpected directions, turning essays on his own sound into places where writers can push their own prose towards the heartfelt and ecstatic. For the right writers, Morrison’s work-particularly the music he made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and specifically Astral Weeks-is an absolutely transformational muse. While certain artists have inspired works that could fill bookshelves-Dylan, The Beatles, James Brown-Morrison’s literary footprint is less massive, but has had just as much impact. And then there’s Van Morrison, who’s probably not going to be a surprise Nobel winner-though you never know-but whose literary influence is quietly formidable. and Philip Roth’s The Counterlife right now, if they haven’t already. ends with a lyric envisioning a radically different parallel timeline for Lamar, turning the whole narrative of the album (and Lamar’s life) on its head-meaning that someone’s probably writing an academic paper juxtaposing DAMN. Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning DAMN. Bruce Springsteen’s talked about the influence of Flannery O’Connor on his album Nebraska for decades. For some musicians, the literary connections are obvious: Bob Dylan, for one, even before he ended up taking home the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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