Here’s T.S. Eliot reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock with an accompaniment by Portishead.
An unlikely pairing?
Listen to it and you’ll think otherwise. This kind of juxtaposition accentuates how contemporary and edgy and mysterious a poem like Prufrock is. In fact, Portishead (this must be a late ’90s or early 2000 song?) sounds more dated than Eliot. It’s always a revelation how great art can be so startling and fresh after so many years
How interesting! Reminds me a little of a musical version of Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Applicant’ which the group The Blue Aeroplanes did about 15 years ago. I probably still have it somewhere…
I think the Portishead song is ‘Glory Box’ from their first album Dummy, so yes, mid-90s I think.