Edgar Allen Poe and Incubus

Considering the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and continuing my trend of relating popular music to classic literature, I’ve a longstanding theory that his works are a primary influence behind the music of mediocre American rock band Incubus. While dark and brooding surface themes are prevalent in both and easy to draw connections between, I’ve thought for a while that several specific songs contain allusions to Poe’s works. Allow me to elaborate.

In their 2006 song “Anna Molly,” vocalist Brandon Boyd mourns his titular lost lover, in this case estranged rather than deceased, whose name bears striking resemblance to that of Annabel Lee, who appears in Poe’s poem of the same name. He begins by saying that “a cloud hangs over / this city by the sea,” which is reminiscent of the “kingdom by the sea” Poe repeatedly refers to. Additionally, the narrator of the song explains his theory that the heavens, jealous of the love he shared with Anna Molly, were the cause of her demise—or, rather, of their estrangement. Sound familiar? Could this be interpreted as anything other than a modernization of Poe’s Annabel Lee? Additionally and ironically enough, the album containing the track “Anna Molly” could become Incubus’s final effort as they take a current indefinite hiatus, just as “Annabel Lee” was Poe’s last complete poem before his death.

The parallels are simple with “Anna Molly,” and many listeners have drawn the connections before me. Another song featuring common threads with an Edgar Allan Poe poem is “Here in my Room,” on its surface a traditional love ballad with a unique tempo, could be interpreted to feature allusions to Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” taking place at an “uninviting” party-a modernization of a ball, perhaps? The lyrics also contain many color motifs as symbols, much like the story by Poe. These connections are, admittedly, more strained than the ones drawn between “Anna Molly” and “Annabel Lee,” but I believe nonetheless interesting and worthy of inspection.

Finally, the band’s name, “Incubus,” is a word Poe himself invented, and used in several works including “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Mystification.” More importantly, the band’s music continues the Gothic literary trends Poe espoused and has rekindled these themes in the realm of American popular music. While Incubus is an average traditional rock band with a few popular tracks and fewer great ones, their take on Poe and his gothic themes is something that has interested me for a while now, and something I considered worth writing about.