10 Movies You Didn't Realise Inspired Songs
8. The Gunfighter
Artist & Song: Bob Dylan - "Brownsville Girl"
Bob Dylan has written some incredible songs over the years, from iconic protest songs to electronic experiments, that have taken influence from other mediums.
The Knocked Out Loaded album didn't perform as well as some of Dylan's others, but "Brownsville Girl" managed to break through the critics' dislike to become a hit many praised as being one of the artist's best songs. The lyrics are strange, to say the least, as it breaks from its reminisces of the titular girl to describe the plot of a movie.
The opening of the song perfectly summarizes the opening of The Gunfighter:
"Well, there was this movie I seen one time/About a man riding 'cross the desert and it starred Gregory Peck/He was shot down by a hungry kid trying to make a name for himself/The townspeople wanted to crush that kid down and string him up by the neck"
He continues with a description of the film for some time before breaking into the tale of the so-called "Brownsville Girl," but at no time does he explicitly state the name of the movie he's referencing. Of course, anyone who's seen it knew it was Gregory Peck's The Gunfighter.