'Gods & Monsters': Your Musical Guide to 'Paradise Lost'
What can Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, and Lorde teach us about John Milton?
I dreaded taking my first college course on John Milton.
When I began my English degree at UC Berkeley, I was eager to study contemporary literature. Books like Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Emma Cline’s The Girls felt so urgent and alive. Milton, on the other hand, was just one of those dead English guys I had to learn about to get my diploma.
But over the course of the semester, I started to fall in love with Milton, particularly his epic poem Paradise Lost. Even though the language was unfamiliar, the text spoke to me in ways no other poem had before.
And pretty soon, I started to see and hear Milton in everything — even the songs I listened to. He was not just a writer who died more than five centuries ago; he was someone who continued to appear in the world around me.
I made my original Paradise Lost playlist while writing my senior thesis, hoping it would help inspire my 40+ pages of analysis. Whether you’re new to Milton or a longtime reader, I hope this abridged version sparks your curiosity and gets you thinking about the poet in exciting new ways.
But first — What is Paradise Lost about?
Paradise Lost reimagines the Book of Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament. Across 12 books, Milton tells the story of God’s creation of Earth and the first humans, Adam and Eve. The two live in harmony in the paradisal Garden of Eden — until the fallen angel Satan tempts them to eat the forbidden fruit (often portrayed as an apple) from the Tree of Knowledge.
As punishment, God expels Adam and Eve from Eden and introduces them to a world of sin and death — an event known as the Fall. Famously, Eve eats the forbidden fruit first, and as a result, is condemned to suffer pain in childbirth and to live under the authority of her husband.
Paradise Lost Playlist
‘Gods & Monsters’ — Lana Del Rey
In this track from her 2012 EP Paradise, Lana Del Rey paints a picture of Los Angeles after the Fall of humankind, which she describes as a “land of gods and monsters” and “garden of evil” (a play on the Garden of Eden). Surrounded alcohol, drugs, and superficial movie stars, she’s ultimately left feeling detached and unfulfilled. “It’s innocence lost,” she sings at the end of the chorus — an echo of Milton’s poem.
Other songs in Del Rey’s discography that take inspiration from Milton and the Old Testament are “Dark Paradise,” “Born to Die,” and “God Knows I Tried.” For more on Del Rey’s literary influences, read my uDiscover Music piece here.
‘Genesis’ — Dua Lipa
The word genesis means “the origin or mode of formation of something” — so it makes sense that both Paradise Lost and this Dua Lipa track are concerned with beginnings.1
Lipa opens the song by quoting the Old Testament: “In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth / For what it’s worth, I think that He might’ve created you first.” Later, she pleads with a lover, “How can we go back to the beginning?” — this time referring to the start of their relationship.
Milton, like Lipa, explores multiple “beginnings” in Paradise Lost. Even as he describes the moment Earth is formed, he gestures toward an even earlier realm — an unknowable space of Chaos and Night that predates creation. In doing so, Milton suggests that we can never fully grasp the true origin of things. The beginning, it seems, is always just out of reach.
‘Fallen Fruit’ — Lorde
In “Fallen Fruit,” Lorde uses Biblical imagery to reflect on a dying planet.
Addressing previous generations, she sings, “Through the halls of splendor where the apple trees all grew/ You’ll leave us dancing on the fallen fruit.” Once, trees and fruit were plentiful. Now, they’re fading as a result of human action (and inaction).
By referencing the apple and the word “fallen,” Lorde draws a parallel between her predecessors’ environmental sins and the original sin of Adam and Eve.2 Because of damage that began before we were even born, we are now exiled from our metaphorical Eden and forced to deal with the consequences. It’s another kind of Paradise Lost.
‘The Prophecy’ — Taylor Swift
On Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, one lyric in “The Prophecy” continues to puzzle me:
“And it was written
I got cursed like Eve got bitten
Oh, was it punishment?”
Here, Swift references the Fall and the moment Eve eats the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. But Eve was never bitten — not by Satan (disguised as a serpent), and not by anyone else. Still, Swift’s language is telling. The use of passive voice — “got cursed,” “got bitten” — leaves the agent of the action unnamed. Swift never tells us who does the cursing or who does the biting.
This ambiguity raises an interesting question: Did Eve and Swift bring about their own downfall, or were their fates already written? Was it punishment, or prophecy?
A similar tension runs through Paradise Lost. God foresees the Fall of Adam and Eve but insists they possess free will — that their exile is the result of their own choices. And yet, if the Fall was foreknown, was it ever avoidable? This contradiction remains an important issue in Milton scholarship.
Closing Thoughts
John Milton may feel far away from our time, but once you start looking for him, you’ll find traces of him everywhere. I hope this playlist sparks your curiosity — as it did mine — and offers new ways of thinking about Paradise Lost.
Future Reading + Resources
Dartmouth’s John Milton Reading Room has all 12 books of Paradise Lost available for free online.
My “Literary Guide to Lana Del Rey” on uDiscover Music dissects literary references across the singer’s entire discography.
As always, I get all of my keyword definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary.
“Genesis, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/2452099678.
Analysis aided by annotations from Genius: https://genius.com/Lorde-fallen-fruit-lyrics
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