As long as I’ve been writing I’ve been listening to music. And nearly as long as I’ve been listening to music, I’ve been writing. My earliest forays into poetry – and ahead of that, prepping for that, just copying out my favourite song lyrics on an old electric typewriter – were accompanied by a cassette tape of choice.
Music has been the trigger for writing – and that was the case long before I started writing about music. Or, in some sense, I was always writing about music. Or writing for music. Most certainly writing with music. It not only provides the breadcrumb trail to follow, it hints at a rhythm, it gives the drive.
For nearly 10 years I wrote a daily blog about music – so music was always on. And these days I still fill the house with music, or, via Bluetooth, my ears at least. There’s a ‘homework’ aspect to freelance writing – you are always with an assignment or wanting to be. (Just as often not wanting to be!) But there’s a comfort aspect to music when it’s part of the assignment. Music is the soul’s photo album; the soundtrack to your endeavours and to you, and of you, personally.
And I’m not the only one that feels this way. Many of you can’t live without music. And use it to hype you, to hold you, to help you navigate through each and any day.
I’m always interested in new ways to approach music. Playlists being a big one. Hearing songs with new – and strange – bedfellows. Changing the context. I think this is why I love soundtracks so much – the ideas have been arranged for you and it’s someone else’s choice. With a soundtrack, there’s a meta-grab, as someone is choosing the music to suit someone else’s vision – we as the third party receive it and use it to join up some dots…
All of this is by way of intro to today’s plan of sharing with you some playlists made by – or gathered from – famous writers.
Just the other day this Stephen King playlist took my interest. A story of King’s ultimate selection. I had to hear this. And wow. Some pretty great choices. Now I have Stephen King’s favourite music to listen to when I’m reading a Stephen King book. Or as I’m writing. It won’t ever make me write like him – but it will give me plenty to think about. And I like that. The choices he made. The rabbit holes it sends you down. You probably won’t know everything on King’s list. I sure didn’t. But you’ll recognise a lot of the names – I like that he doesn’t always pick the most obvious song associated with a big name. So, you’ll get the deep cuts from Sam Cooke, Jimmy Buffett and Janis Ian. It won’t be the AC/DC you were predicting. It’s not the Shawn Mullins song you know and possibly hate. Then of course there’s the juxtapositions – Richard Thompson ahead of The Cramps? And from there into James McMurtry? I am there for that trio!
When I’m writing about music I’m most obviously listening to that very music – even albums I’ve played a bunch get a final run-through while I’m typing up the review. If I’m revisiting an artist for a blog topic then they might dominate the stereo for a week – and of course whatever dominates the stereo becomes writing fodder – as with last week’s Thrash piece. I didn’t set out to write about Thrash, I just noticed a pattern in my listening (which is still going. And I’m still loving it).
But if I’m just sitting down to a blank page – hoping to write a story or poem, not sure where I’m about to go, then the music is absolutely a crucial part of the journey. Music is my diary, my history book, my valve for nostalgia.
And so opening myself to someone else’s line-up, someone else’s decisions, really throws nice curveballs. I can’t keep listening to Jeff Beck’s Blow By Blow or I’ll keep writing about bus trips to Gisborne when I was 13 or 14. I mean, I’ll obviously find more than that in the music – but I probably won’t think about Gisborne, or buses, or Jeff Beck, when listening to Haruki Murakami’s Personal Jazz Playlist.
Jazz is crucial in my life – for many reasons, and with many functions. But as a go-to for background listening, including when writing, I’m all about jazz. So, Murakami’s quite-famous jazz playlist based on his own extensive record collection is a must. Just some wonderful choices. But also you feel like you are in the hands of someone else. They’re taking you somewhere.
And with Murakami you can go super deep – his record collection digitised.
Or you can go meta – every song mentioned in his books. I love this sort of thing!
See here, since I’m also on a big Beatles kick again, following the doco, a playlist of Beatles songs that ended up a books. And Beatles playlist is basically an alternative Greatest Hits, but you listen to this and start thinking about the titles, and why they were chosen, and whether you know about the book that took its title from the song. You have a whole new set of deep dives to dig for as a result. Plus I’m always looking for new way to listen to The Beatles.
Colson Whitehead was recently a guest on the Adam Buxton podcast. And it was a wonderful listen, one of the best interviews I’ve heard. I’m a fan of Buxton’s podcast anyway, and I really do think he’s a brilliant interviewer – he asks smart questions, he’s so engaged and he’s such a deep pop-culture junkie that he brings some critical analysis and some fan geek-out, perhaps in equal measures.
Now, Whitehead is a writer I really only know about, and I’m interested to read him – even more so after this interview. But I found his writing tips and process extraordinary. Including his mention of just listening to the same music over and again while getting going. Someone even made up a playlist to highlight this.
YouTube is one of my favourite places for listening to music. One of the great ways of ‘finding’ things, Autoplay keeps things going for me and sends me to weird and wonderful places. I also prefer the curation-aspect of YouTube to Spotify if anything. I have playlists stored, I have folders filled with strange choices – audio and video. And there are some great YouTube playlists made by other people. Smart compilations, and plenty of out of print records that haven’t ever made it to another streaming site and are literally unavailable elsewhere.
So the sky is the limit and with so much music in the cloud/s, I always feel that writer’s block is something of an excuse. Writer’s block is a privilege actually. Pumping out content for pay – and never really for that much pay either – means you don’t have time to be ‘blocked’. But, when needed, music has been the great way of unblocking the drain, always.
I wrote this – while listening to Nicholas Britell’s score for Don’t Look Up. Which I will probably review over on Off The Tracks by the time you are reading this, or shortly after.
But I wondered if you have any go-to writing or writer’s playlists? And if so please do share them below.