The songs of your world...?

[Nobby]

I'm curious to hear about the songs that spark ideas for different people, personally MY musical tastes are a tad eclectic, I mean, I can go from "the Blue Danube" to "Down in the Tubestation at Midnight", via "Birdhouse in your Soul" to "Watching the Detectives" to "Welcome to the Cheap Seats" and still get a touch teary eyed at "Jerusalem"...

To me they (and many more) are all part of everything that I write, I'm just curious to know if anybody else has their own "Playlist of Awe"

 

[Svrtnsse]

Do I have music that inspire me? Sure thing, but rather than just drop some names I'll try and link a few examples.

In no particular order: Svrtnsse's top inspirational tracks of the last few months.

Seems I can only link one video per post. So I'll just link the rest this way:
Covenentat - Call the Ships to Port
American McGee's Alice - Flying on the Wings of Steam (Remix) - not to mention the title in itself is inspiring.
Birdie - Port Sunlight
Mandalavandalz - Kaunista

 

[Ophiucha]

I have an entire short story/novella collection that is built around a world where all sound creates a magical resonance, so like a solid 27% of my iTunes library is just one playlist dedicated to that project.

For most of my other projects, I like to listen to music from artists who sound like how I imagine my characters sound. Like, my blacksmith character in one project, I always imagine him sounding like Roy Khan, so I might toss on some Kamelot while writing scenes with him. I do listen to thematically relevant music while I'm planning a novel, doodling in my notebook and whatnot, but when I'm actually writing it out I prefer the 'sounds like my character' songs. And yeah, genres range from black metal to Broadway to British rap to baroque. Not too picky.

 

[Sanctified]

I like how Alastair Reynolds, one of my favorite SF authors, likes to work in the names of his favorite bands and songs...sometimes they're the titles of short stories, other times they're the names of ships or off-handed bits of dialogue, but it's a great way to pay homage and maybe help set the mood.