The Hollow Men in Popular Culture - Music

Music

• Denis ApIvor wrote a work called The Hollow Men for baritone, male chorus and orchestra around 1939. It had only one performance, in 1950, under the conductor Constant Lambert, and produced by the BBC through the influence of Edward Clark.

• "The Hollow Men" were a neo-psychedelic rock band from Manchester, England who rode the Madchester sound to US college radio success in the early 1990s

• Eliot's poem was the inspiration for The Hollow Men, a piece for trumpet and orchestra by composer Vincent Persichetti.

• The song "Hollow Again" by the Christian rock band Project 86 is based on this poem and the line "This is the way the world ends" is repeated many times.

• The song "Meant to Live" written by Switchfoot lead singer Jon Foreman and his brother Tim Foreman is based largely on this poem.

• The song "Young Shields" written by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone frontman Owen Ashcroft is a modern interpretation of this poem.

• The song "Longtime" by the band EMF samples T. S. Eliot's reading of this poem.

• The song "The Shadow" by Devo (Total Devo, 1988) contains the lines, "Between the emotion/And the response/Falls the Shadow"

• Sections of the poem are used in the song "The Straw" by musical group Idiot Flesh on their album "Fancy".

• The song "The Chemicals Between Us" by Gavin Rossdale and his band, Bush featured the line "we're of the Hollow Men, we are the naked ones"

• The song "Thine is the Kingdom" by Greek metal band Rotting Christ contains Part III and Part V of the poem.

• The song "Hollow Men" by Minneapolis post punk group Rifle Sport quotes extensively from the poem.

• The song "Hollow Man" appears as the first track on 1983 album Doppelgänger by the group Daniel Amos. The song is a paraphrase of Eliot's poem spoken over the music of "Ghost of the Heart" played backwards. "Ghost of the Heart" is the last song on the group's previous album ¡Alarma! released in 1981.

• The song "Perineum Millennium" by Tim Minchin was heavily influenced by T. S. Eliot, with the end verse written as almost a direct reproduction of the last stanza of The Hollow Men.

• The song "No Homeowners" by Twin Cities hip hop collective Doomtree contains the lyric (rapped by fellow Doomtree member Dessa): 'It goes thanks, T.S., but the world ends like this / Not a bang, not a whimper, but a sibilant hiss.'

• The song "Beast" by Riverside Lawn-based band Tusk takes all of its lyrics from Eliot's poem and ends with the line "Not with a bang, but with a whimper."

• The song "Greenwood" by folk band Peter, Paul, and Mary contains the line "Is this then the whimper and the ending?"

• The Cult penned the song "Hollow Man" on their LOVE album.

• John Cooper Clarke's poem "Psycle Sluts Parts I & II" ends with the lines "or the burger joint around the bend, where the meals thank Christ are skimpy; for you that's how the world could end, not with a bang but a Wimpy."

• The last line of the poem is referenced in Amanda Palmer's song "Strength Through Music," based on the Columbine Shootings.

• Andy White makes reference to the work among others in his song "Speechless" (1992), a savage critique of the Gulf War: "...for we are The Hollow Men, our heads stuffed with straw..."

• In "Sons of Liberty", Frank Turner describes the "hollow men" in government who have eroded people's civil liberties in the name of national security (for example in the use of CCTV and ID cards in the UK). Turner has also referenced Eliot in the titles of two other songs: "Journey of the Magi" and "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous"

• The line "This is how the world ends... not with a bang, but with a whimper" is used in the song "Nightman" by the band The Acacia Strain

• The UK electronic music duo Vent (Sam Ashwell & Dan Havers) utilize parts of the poem in their song "Shape Without Colour"