13 of Stephen King’s Favorite Rock Songs

In Stephen King’s first novel, 1974’s Carrie, he brings up Bob Dylan not just once but several times.

“Elsewhere in this book,” he writes, “mention is made of a page in one of Carrie White’s school notebooks where a line from a famous rock poet of the ’60s, Bob Dylan, was written repeatedly, as if in desperation.”

The line in question is from “Just Like a Woman:” “Nobody has to guess that baby can’t be blessed / ‘Til she finally sees that she’s like all the rest.”

Don’t worry, we’re not going to spoil Carrie for you. What we would like to highlight is that King, who has not stopped writing books since that debut release, is a stalwart of American literature and, at the time of this writing, the 20th best-selling fiction writer in the world.

And he’s also, clearly, a lover of rock ‘n’ roll music. Below, we’ve gathered up 13 (spooky, right?) of King’s favorite rock songs.

1. “Stiff Upper Lip,” AC/DC

In 2015, King sat down with the BBC 6 radio program Paperback Writers and brought with him a whole list of songs, AC/DC’s “Stiff Upper Lip” included, and he described the Australian group as “the best rock and blues band of all time.” That same year, King quoted the song in the preface to his short-story collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: “I shoot from the hip and keep a stiff upper lip.”

 

2. “Anarchy in the U.K.,” Sex Pistols

It should surprise no one that King, whose book was the basis for Ramones‘ “Pet Sematary,” is a fan of punk rock music. Naturally, the Sex Pistols’ classic “Anarchy in the U.K.” also made his BBC Radio list. (Just to prove our point further, here is a photo of King with Rancid after a show in 2021.)

 

3. “It Came Out of the Sky,” Creedence Clearwater Revival

“Favourite musical act of all time?” King once wrote in an “Ask Me Anything” Reddit thread (via Far Out). “Probably Creedence Clearwater Revival.” On his BBC list, King put “It Came Out of the Sky” from 1969’s Willy and the Poor Boys, but we should also note that CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” is quoted in King’s The Shining, a not-so-subtle foreshadowing for the events that ultimately unfold in that book.

 

4. “Dance Little Sister,” The Rolling Stones

King is a master at his craft but he is not immune to the same existential choices all of us rock fans must make. “One of the questions that defines a person is “Is it Beatles or Stones?'” he told the BBC. At that moment, the answer for King was the Stones, and in particular “Dance Little Sister” from 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll. But we’ll get to the Beatles a bit later…

 

5. “Pink Houses,” John Mellencamp

This is going to sound nuts, but there was once a touring musical called Ghost Brothers of Darkland County with music written by John Mellencamp and a book by King. (Also, T Bone Burnett produced the accompanying recorded soundtrack, which featured performers like Elvis Costello, Kris Kristofferson and Rosanne Cash.) The initial story idea was hatched by Mellencamp, who had bought a property in Mississippi in the ’90s that reportedly had a tragedy of some sort attached to it. Mellencamp went to King asking if he’d help him with a treatment for the musical. “One of the reasons I said yes [to John] is because I respect him as a musician and as somebody who’s not content to do just a certain kind of pop music,” King said at a 2011 press conference, a year before the musical made its debut. Anyway, all of that is to say King is a fan of Mellencamp’s and listed “Pink Houses” as one of his favorites in 2015.

 

6. “Ramrod,” Bruce Springsteen

“I respect him as a songwriter and the insight in his songs,” King said of Bruce Springsteen in 2014. “My favorite album of his is Nebraska. I knew from the beginning of ‘Atlantic City’ that it was amazing. He had really grown as a songwriter. He’s done stuff in music that nobody else has done.” But King has called “Ramrod” from The River his favorite Boss song: “It’s just straight-ahead rock and roll, I think it’s what Bruce Springsteen does best. It’s just guitar-driven balls-to-the-wall rock.”

He also particularly likes “Maria’s Bed,” as he noted to Entertainment Weekly in 2005: “Devils & Dust may not have been the Boss’ finest hour, but there’s never been a better celebration of ‘Oh God, tonight I’m gonna get lucky.'”

 

7. “She Loves You,” The Beatles

In 2000, King published a book called On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, describing his own experiences as an author and some tips for those who might also want to journey down the same path. “The action should be able to speak for itself,” he advised in it, “so adverbs should not be needed if the sentence is well-crafted and the idea well-explained.” This same idea could apply to one of King’s favorite Beatles songs, “She Loves You.” “Of all the Beatles songs it seems to me that it’s travelled the best over the years to my ear,” he said to the BBC. “It still sounds totally fresh when I hear it today as it did when I first heard it when probably at 16 years old. So it just gets in, it has only one thing to say and it says it.”

 

8. “Desolation Row,” Bob Dylan

We’re back to Bob Dylan, which appears to be one of King’s all-time favorites. “Desolation Row” is one of several songs King, who started listening to Dylan as a teenager and even attended one of the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue concerts, has cited over the years. Others he has a fondness for include “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Not Dark Yet.” “My kids listen to Dylan, and so do my grandkids,” King said to Rolling Stone in 2016. “That’s three generations. That’s real longevity and quality. Most people in pop music are like moths around a bug light; they circle for a while and then there’s a bright flash and they’re gone. Not Dylan.”

9. “Middle of the Road,” Pretenders

Also on King’s BBC list was the third single from the Pretender’s 1984 album Learning to Crawl, “Middle of the Road.” King has written a few pieces with the word “road” prominently in the title, so perhaps it’s a matter of relating to the metaphoric subject material.

 

10. “The Bug,” Dire Straits

“A philosophy lesson in four minutes,” is how King once described this track from 1991’s On Every Street. “(‘Sometimes you’re the windshield / Sometimes you’re the bug‘), with Mark Knopfler‘s snappy — and often amusing — licks.”

 

11. “Diamonds and Rust,” Judas Priest

In 2016, King posted on social media about some of his favorite heavy metal bands. “I believe I’ll have a Heavy Metal Weekend,” he wrote, “starting with Slayer, Sabbath and Motorhead. Saving Metallica & Priest for Sunday.” In a 2011 interview with The Atlantic, he made sure to ask his interviewer if they’d ever heard his own personal favorite Priest song, their cover of Joan Baez‘s “Diamonds & Rust.” It makes sense when one considers the first few lines of the song: “Well, I’ll be damned / Here comes your ghost again.”

 

12. “California Stars,” Billy Bragg and Wilco

“I was a Wilco doubter for the longest time, especially after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which seemed both dissonant and self-indulgent to me,” King openly admitted to Entertainment Weekly. However, he does have a soft spot for 1998’s Mermaid Avenue, a collaborative album of “rediscovered” Woody Guthrie songs performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco, in particular a track called “California Stars.” In King’s words: “Bragg is the album’s terrific featured artist, but this song is all about Jeff Tweedy’s sweet, slightly weary vocal.”

 

13. “I Summon You,” Spoon

“In the end, the best songs defy explanation or analysis,” King said to Entertainment Weekly in 2005. “I played this one over and over in 2005 — on my computer, on my stereo, and in my truck. I never understood it, never got tired of it, and never failed to get a chill at the line ‘I summon you here, my love.’ For me, that was the summer of ’05. We should all have someone to summon us once in a while, I guess.”

 

Bonus: The Bee Gees

We could not put this list together without mentioning that despite his reputation as the King of Horror, King is an avid fan of disco, and more specifically the Bee Gees.

“I got into a lot of arguments in the ’70s with rock purists who absolutely hated disco,” he said to the BBC. “I thought to myself, ‘If people hate me and if they want to downgrade my musical taste, I’ll just have to live with that and cry hot tears of shame on my pillow.’ If I had more time here, I’d have put on one of the Bee Gees disco songs, but that’s another story.”