What does music add to the equation?

Posted by Meesh in Mouthing Off with Meesh | 1 comment

I was going to do a book review today, but instead of reading this weekend, I spent it doing other things – like taking my 18 year old for his first tattoo and driving my daughter back and forth to work. I did get in some reading of the book I’m going to review eventually, The Darkest Lie by Gena Showalter, but since I didn’t get to finish it, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to try to review the part that I did read. I do think it’s going to be hot, though. That much we can be sure of.

So onto music. I didn’t realize authors had playlists until I read Twilight and visited Stephenie Meyer’s website. She lists the music she listened to while writing her books and it intrigues me a lot to think about how music can influence what we are thinking while we’re reading, writing, or doing pretty much anything.

Music has been a huge part of my life forever. I remember the music my parents listened to when I was very young, how they would dance with us, how my dad would sing some songs. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have Conway Twitty and George Jones, The Everly Brothers and Patsy Kline in my CD collection. And when I listen to that music now, really strong feelings are invoked. Scientists say that our sense of smell is the sense that has the most power over us, the one with the longest memory, which is why when we smell scents long forgotten from our childhood, we can be instantly soothed by them. How many of us had grandmas who used a certain kind of powder and that powder now pulls us back in time? I think music is the same way for me, probably for most of us.

I’ve been teased that I must have been born singing. I know all the words to hundreds of songs, probably more. I can sing many of them without music. Note that I no longer sing well due to a little mishap with my voice at a football game and some scarring on my vocal cords, but I used to be in choir and chorus and I loved to sing. I still do. I’m the woman you see singing really loud in her car when she pulls up to the stoplight. You know, the one you laugh at because she looks really silly. I love music, play it almost constantly, and I bask in the feelings I have when I hear certain songs.

When I found SM’s playlist, I immediately investigated to see what music pulled Twilight out of her head. Definitely not what I’d normally listen to, though now some of the bands are in my constant rotation. My Chemical Romance is one of my favorite to listen to and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have ever gone to find their stuff if I hadn’t seen it on SM’s site. The very emo stuff she listened to while writing the Twilight Saga matches her story very well. Teens tend to be quite emo most of the time, dramatic, with every bad thing that happens being life ending.

In fan fiction, I noticed authors sometimes put lyrics in their stories. Some also have playlists that they put in the notes. So music is definitely a big part of what they’re feeling and thinking.

Then we move to my favorite topic, the Brothers. In the BDB books, music is often mentioned. The Brothers listen to loud rap, Tupac, 50 Cent, and they hang at a dance club a lot, so I’m sure there are club songs they hear a lot as well. And I think about the Brothers and how they differ so much from the Cullens in their behavior and it just makes sense to me that their music would be louder and angrier, and most definitely not emo.

We have a page of playlists that we set up so we could share music with everyone who comes to our site. The thought was we could have authors send us the code for their playlists and add them to ours to create a page of really good musical choices that go with the vampire/paranormal genre. If you would like for us to include your playlist on our page, let me know and we can get it added. Oh, and if you look at the left column, you’ll see our music tab.

In my regular column next week, I’m going to discuss the genres of music that authors are choosing and what music I think would fit well with vampires and other creatures.