By: Caitlin Doughty,
on 9/25/2015
The soundtrack perfectly suited to facing your own mortality. ("My Way," "Wind beneath My Wings," and other popular funeral songs need not apply.) 1. "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo The first time I heard this song, I couldn't believe how good it was. It imagines death as a raucous adventure. "Who could ask for [...]
By: Felicia Day,
on 8/11/2015
These songs go along with some of the chapters in my book You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). Hope you enjoy! 1. "Sooner or Later" by Madonna As a kid I grew up in major isolation, so I never was crazy about boy bands like kids my age should be. I was obsessed with [...]
By: Roger Hobbs,
on 6/29/2015
My new novel, Vanishing Games, is a heist thriller set in the gambling city of Macau, China. I lived there briefly while researching the book and was taken aback by the incredibly eclectic sounds of the city. For those of you who have never been, let me fill you in — Macau is like Las [...]
By: Matthew Quick,
on 6/15/2015
Two of Love May Fail's main characters, Portia Kane and Chuck Bass — now in their early 40s — still love the metal music that was popular in their youth. Love May Fail isn't about music, but examining what shapes us in our early years. Primarily, I wanted to underscore the difference a single high [...]
By: Austin Bunn,
on 4/27/2015
When I first started writing, I'd give stories to friends and press a mix tape into their hand: when you read this, listen to this. Let me take this moment to apologize to all the friends of my youth for those tapes. I was like that: gushy, curatorial, annoying. It goes without saying that I [...]
By: Kent Russell,
on 3/13/2015
I don't listen to music while I write. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can. Since all style is rhythm, and since I cannot write anything that's as clear and simple and still as the truth, needing instead to perpetrate my own Stomp!-style foolishness across the page — I can't be bumping, say, OJ da [...]
By: Kazuo Ishiguro,
on 2/27/2015
The eight songs on this playlist didn't "inspire" The Buried Giant, nor did I play them out loud while writing. And with the notable exception of the Arvo Part, the visual landscapes conjured up by these tracks are unlikely to match the setting of the novel. But each of them relates in some significant way [...]
By: Issa Rae,
on 2/10/2015
I absolutely love writing to music. Even now, as I write this playlist, I'm listening to J. Cole's 2014 Forest Hills Drive. As I wrote my first book, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, music was in heavy rotation — I needed the perfect balance of music that was upbeat (to stop me from jumping [...]
By: Irvine Welsh,
on 2/2/2015
When I started writing The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins, I went through my usual routine of making a music playlist to immerse myself in and help me find the characters. As the two main narrators in the book are women, I decided it would be best to concentrate on female singers and "voices" in [...]
By: Ned Beauman,
on 1/19/2015
I did have a playlist that I listened to over and over again while I was writing Glow, but three years on I'm a bit bored of those songs, which got their final blast at my book party in London last year. So here are the B-sides, so to speak: other good songs by the [...]
By: Mary Helen Specht,
on 1/15/2015
Migratory Animals is mostly set in Texas during the first years of the most recent recession, when the cast of characters — an eclectic group of college friends now in their 30s — are coming to the realization that, in a world of shrinking resources, a good education is no longer enough to ensure an [...]
By: Tim Johnston,
on 1/5/2015
I once told a medical-profession-type lady that I didn't sleep well, that I awoke all through the night and was awake for hours. "What do you do when that happens?" she asked. I said I lie there listening to music and thinking. "Thinking about what?" she asked. I said everything, but mainly about whatever I'm [...]
By: Richard McGuire,
on 12/10/2014
My book Here has just been released; it is a graphic novel that shows one location, a suburban living room, over the span of billions of years. The book is loosely based around my childhood home. While preparing this playlist, it occurred to me how we all get branded by the music we grew up [...]
By: Anne Rice,
on 10/21/2014
These are the songs that wake me up, take me out of my worries and anxieties, wash my brain cells, and send me to the keyboard to write with new vigor. 1. "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi This is a song I associate with my beloved vampire hero, Lestat, today. I imagine Lestat loving [...]
By: Peter Mendelsund,
on 8/8/2014
We "see" when we read, and we "see" when we listen. There are many ways in which music can create the cross-sensory experience of this seeing... through sonic imitation, through poetic evocation, through dynamic mapping, through programmatic association, through the literal use of physical materials... 1. "La Mer" by Claude Debussy The big kahuna of [...]
By: Graham Joyce,
on 8/6/2014
The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit is set on the English coast in the hot summer of 1976, so the music in this playlist is pretty much all from the '70s. The songs follow David's journey of innocence to experience, and on the way he solves a terrifying personal mystery. 1. "In the Summertime" [...]
By: Daniel H. Wilson,
on 6/18/2014
Like many writers, I'm constantly haunting coffee shops with a laptop out and my headphones on. I listen to a lot of music while I write, and songs do eventually get tangled up with certain characters. My novel Robogenesis is a techno-thriller that largely takes place in the country, pitting high-tech machines against decidedly low-tech [...]
By: Josh Malerman,
on 5/12/2014
I can't imagine writing a novel without some sound. When you're facing a few hundred blank pages, silence can be cold. Thing is, I love lyrics so much that rock 'n' roll can be a distraction (though maybe I should try it again). Instead, I go for horror movie soundtracks. So many moods, so many [...]
By: J. Robert Lennon,
on 10/2/2013
Playlist? You want a playlist, you say? Don't you understand that I'm busy? Look, when you're a D-list literary celebrity like me, you don't have time for silly pursuits like making lists of songs for people. Beard grooming alone takes up enough of my time, and this week I'm supervising the modification of my waterfall-bubinga [...]
