Monday, September 20, 2010

Looking for music

I don't come up with soundtracks for all my books, but it's becoming clear the New Shiny Paranormal/Fantasy wants one. So far I've been listening to "Love the Way You Lie" (Eminem/Rihanna) and "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" (Richard Thompson) when I want to think about the story. However, I could really use some nice angsty doomed love songs where the guy isn't an abuser or a robber, because the male half of my own angsty pairing makes grumbling noises in the back of my head every time he hears Eminem and insists pedantically that he most certainly has NOT fought with the law since he was seventeen nor robbed many a man for any purpose whatsoever, so why do these songs make me think of his role in my story, pray?

(Yes, I talk to my characters, and occasionally they talk back. This one is turning into one of the mouthier figments my imagination has produced.)

So. I'm looking for some good intense songs about more or less doomed complex relationships. The New Shiny is going to have a love triangle at the core of what I think will be a trilogy, but we're not going to meet the guy the heroine ultimately ends up with till Book Two or so, so for now I'm focusing on the man she'll eventually have to walk away from. On some levels they're good for each other, but for a whole host of reasons they can't be together permanently. So I think a lot of their relationship is going to be about pretending they have something between what we'd call friends with benefits and what they'd think of as her being his mistress. All about denying to themselves and each other just how much love and mutual loyalty they feel, you know? Because then they'd have to look the We're Doomed and We Have No Future thing in the face, and who wants to do that?

Obviously there won't be any songs that EXACTLY fit my characters, but I'm open for suggestions to expand my angsty love repertoire. Nothing too sweet and cloying. Celtic is good, both in terms of what I like to listen to and for matching the atmosphere of the story (either the classic trad stuff or punk-folk like the Pogues rather than breathy New Agey Celtic). But I'm willing to try just about any genre if the song works. For what it's worth, I love the sound of both songs in the first paragraph.

6 comments:

  1. Hm. These aren't exactly what you're looking for, but I'm throwing them out there:
    Florence and the Machine, "Kiss with a Fist"
    Stabbing Westward, "I Don't Believe" (plus lots of other angsty goodness)
    Barenaked Ladies, "One Week"
    Patrick Park, "Honest Skrew"

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  2. I love "One Week," but it's maybe a bit too light/quirky for my characters. The others I don't know but will check out. Thanks!

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  3. I read some reviews of The Sergeant's Lady and decided to check out your blog.

    Here's an angsty song for you: My Immortal by Evanescence.

    http://www.metrolyrics.com/my-immortal-lyrics-evanescence.html

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  4. Thanks for stopping by, moonette! I like those lyrics and will definitely give the song a listen.

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  5. Okay, I'm kind of a cornball and eighties-tastic, but Billy Joel's "And So It Goes". ("So I will choose to be with you/as if the choice was mine to make/but you can make decisions too/and you can have this heart to break.")

    Alias's "Perfect World"

    Also a lot of stuff by Leonard Cohen, particularly "Everybody Knows" and "Chelsea Hotel".

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  6. Thanks, isabelcooper! As it happens, I'm fond of Billy Joel's version of cornball and eighties-tastic. :-) One of the first albums I ever owned back in middle school was An Innocent Man.

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