Oh, and Jimmy Eat World’s “Authority Song” is about listening to John Cougar Mellencamp’s song of the same name on a jukebox. It name-checks several other 80s hits as well.
Well, I never knew that! Cool tidbit! Re: the Don McLean thing.
The Beatles “For The Benefit of Mr. Kite” was based on an old circus poster.
And CATS the musical based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
The Pogues’ second album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash features Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa on the cover. In a slight change to the original, the faces of the band members feature among those on the ill-fated vessel.
In a further tribute to this painting, their fifth album Hell’s Ditch includes the song The Wake of the Medusa.
“It wasn’t god who made honky tonk angels” by Kitty Wells refers to “Wild side of life” by Hank Thompson. Is this an example?
Here’s a three-in-one:
Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” is meant to be a sequel to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” which is itself a pun on Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Neil Sedanka wrote “Oh Carol” about his nigh school girlfriend Carol Klein. Carol changed her last name to King and wrote “Oh Neil”
Stew’s song “Bijou” (on the album Guest Host) is essentially a long description of a Georges Brassai photograph. Apparently the Getty Museum in LA commissed a number of songwriters to write captions for a Brassai exhibition; not sure if any other songs are available.
The title of Sufjan Stevens’s instrumental “The Vivian Girls Are Visited in the Night by Saint Dargarius and His Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies” makes reference to the works of outsider artist Henry Darger.
In the spirit of this one, The Jayhawks have a song entitled Miss Williams’ Guitar about the ear-opening experience of hearing Victoria Williams play.
Killing Me Softly, Roberta Flack’s version, won Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Female Performer for 1973, according to Wikipedia. It is about Don McLean. Don McLean was big.
Mark Ryle, what is up with your bizarre font choices? I feel as if I’m reading a ransom note. 
Julian Barnes’s book A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters uses the The Raft of the Medusa as the kick-off for several chapters; it also (IIRC) mentions the references that the painting itself includes.
Stoppard’s done quite a bit of this. Travesties was centered around The Importance of Being Earnest, and Shakespeare in Love revolves around Romeo and Juliet. Travesties also includes Joyce, Lenin, and Tristan Tzara as characters.
David Ives does this a lot too; several of the short plays in All in the Timing focus on other works. “Words Words, Words” has some chimps (named Milton, Swift, and Kafka) trying to write Hamlet, and “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread” is fairly obvious in its subject matter.
Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, and Milos Forman’s movie of it, work with a lot of Mozart’s music, and surely enhance the listening for a lot of people who (like me) don’t know a whole lot about classical music.
And Exhibit A in this discussion should be Joyce’s Ulysses.
And Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” inspired by the Tolstoy story which was, in turn, named after a violin sonata by Beethoven.
Right. I got that (I helped boost it up the charts). I just never knew it was about Don McLean. I thought it was a nameless, faceless rock star. That’s the tidbit I was remarking about.
I write only in verdana but its italics are unsatisfactory. I like Times New Roman italics but there is a mismatch in size when used with verdana. I would prefer to use TNR italics at 11 points, or 10.5, but we are only offered 8, 10 and 12 (1, 2 and 3 on SDMB). Thus the mismatch. Ten is too small, the verdana overpowers it. Using 12-point (3 on SDMB) messes up line spacing too, I don’t know if you noticed.
Thanks for the criticism – I mean that. I’m shocked it has a ranson note effect. My personal feeling (up till now) has been verdana is able to stand up well with the larger, impressive, Times New Roman italics. I may have to reconsider. I don’t know where to go, though. I have tried everything and come back to verdana/TNR time and again. It’s better in Word owing to the finer size gradations. They’re perfect together, by the way, when size is ironed out.
I really should read that book.
Looking at Wikipedia we are further informed that rock group Great White also used this painting as the cover art for their album Sail Away.
It’s wonderful. Bizarre, but beautifully written and painstakingly researched.