Writers and music, a retrospective

A reader emailed to ask why I never post playlists.

Baffled, I emailed back to ask what she meant (I thought it was an audiobook problem at first), and she clarified that some of the other writers she follows post custom playlists of various songs they listen to while writing, and wondered if I did the same.

Short answer, no. My relationship with music has been somewhat difficult and has caused me some interpersonal difficulties in the past. I do listen to music as I write and edit, but my song choices tend to be so esoteric that I generally keep my musical opinions to myself.

Now here’s the long answer, broken down into four points and interspersed with amusing anecdotes:

1.) Music is only significant to someone if they connect to it emotionally, which usually happens in the formative years. I think there are actual psychological studies that say the “formation of musical taste” usually takes place when a person is between 13 to 15 years of age. That is why every generation thinks that the music they listened to in their adolescence is the best, with all the following music a pale imitation of the greatest music ever produced, which by astonishing coincidence happened during that generation’s teen years.

For me personally:

2.) I have a very hard time understanding song lyrics, which makes it hard to connect emotionally to a song.

3.) If I don’t connect to a song emotionally, it just sounds like random background noise to me, like it’s playing over the speakers at the gas station or something.

4.) I only tend to connect emotionally to a song if it’s in a movie, TV show, or computer game (especially computer game) that I really like.

I don’t think point one is at all controversial. We’ve all had the experience where someone shares a song that is deep and meaningful to them – it could be a friend, a romantic interest, a family member, a co-worker, or (possibly the most socially awkward of all) your immediate workplace supervisor – and you listen to the song and you think it’s just the dumbest thing ever. (More examples will follow.) So generally I don’t share my opinions about music except to note when it’s good in one of my movie roundups.

Ooh! I just remembered a previously awkward experience about music that ties into the “your supervisor finds this song meaningful and you don’t” experience that helped me to learn that I should keep my opinions about music to myself. A very, a very long time ago, I had to take an art class during my senior year of college so I could graduate. On the first day we all went outside to sketch rocks or trees or something. The professor came around to talk to all the students during this process, and I don’t remember why I did this, but I made a joke about The Beatles.

The professor spent the next five minutes, explaining in great detail, why The Beatles were so emotionally significant and important to him, and indeed some of the creators of the greatest music ever produced (which coincidentally took place during his teen years) and the entire time I thought “welp, I need this class to graduate, and I’m screwed.” So I put in a lot of work for that class, and I did end up staggering to a B, which was probably generous all things considered.

Anyway, let’s move past my youthful bad decisions!

For point two, it took me a long time to realize this, and I didn’t fully comprehend this until I was almost forty, but I have an extraordinarily hard time understanding sung lyrics. Songs with a vocal component often sound to me like either monotonous droning or incoherent warbling. Now, undoubtedly there are songs that really are monotonous droning or incoherent warbling, but my brain seems unable to tell the difference until after like 200 or 300 repetitions.

I’m not exaggerating about the repetitions. For a while a family member had the Taylor Swift song “Anti-Hero” on an exercise playlist, and it was only after I had heard it a couple hundred times that I could pick out some of the lyrics. Only some of them, admittedly. For the life of me I still couldn’t recognize all of them.

For point three, that is a logical progression of point two. If I can’t understand the song lyrics, the song means nothing to me, and then it become just a bunch of background noise that I tune out.

I’ve always had a hard time understanding hymns, choral pieces, and modern pop music, which is probably unfortunate because that was the music I encountered the most when I was a kid/teenager. Like, there have been times I’ve looked over to see tears streaming down someone’s face during a hymn or a choral piece, and while I acknowledge that the emotion is real and significant to the person experiencing it, it’s not one I understand because I’m not sure how the sound of a hymn or choral piece translates to an emotional experience. I’ve been in a state of strong emotion at funerals, but for the life of me I could not tell you what hymns were sung. Likewise with modern pop music – someone will tell me that a particular song is very meaningful to them, and I’ll nod and agree with them, but for 99% of the time the song sounds like incomprehensible noise combined with vocal screeching.

(One of the exceptions, oddly, is Johnny Cash – I never have any trouble understanding him.)

So the songs that I connect to emotionally tend to be ones I hear a lot while doing enjoyable activities, which usually boils down to songs I hear while playing computer games or watching TV show and movies that I like. I’m not sure why, but a switch will flip in my brain and I will find the song enjoyable.

Computer games especially – I think like half my hoard of MP3s I’ve collected over the last twenty-five years for my music collection come from various computer games I enjoyed.

Because of that, I tend to listen to the same songs over and over again. Sometimes if I’m writing and I think a particular song matches the scene I’m writing, I’ll listen to it 15 or 20 times in a row.

Let’s have some examples!

(The YouTube links to these songs are only to officially released versions, no rips or piracy.)

The song “Town In Chaos” from the DARKEST DUNGEON soundtrack (composed by Stuart Townsend) matches the mood I wanted in the final battle in CLOAK OF TITANS, so when I was writing CLOAK OF TITANS I probably listened to “Town In Chaos” a couple dozen times.

Another example: I really enjoy the game BATTLE BROTHERS and its soundtrack (longtime readers might recall occasional BATTLE BROTHERS posts over the years). One of the songs is “The Rise & Fall Of House Kaltenborn“, and I listened to that a couple dozen times while writing the Battle of Shadow Crown Hill sequence in DRAGONTIARNA: DEFENDERS.

Here’s an amusing example. I spent a lot of 2022 playing the free-to-play game ELDER SCROLLS: BLADES on Nintendo Switch. I enjoyed it, but I acknowledge it is not an objectively good game. It’s one of those “free” games with a lot of pay-to-play content, though it was a point of pride that I beat the main quest without ever paying a single cent for anything in it. 2022 was kind of a stress-intensive year on a personal level, so I played a lot of ELDER SCROLLS: BLADES to blow off some steam. That said, I did buy the soundtrack, which I like quite a bit, and I still listen to it. Sometimes I listen to the main theme to rev myself up before writing or exercising. (Some reviewers said the soundtrack was better than the game, which I think is fair.)

Naturally, since I spent a lot of 2024 playing STARFIELD and I enjoyed the game, I listen to its soundtrack a lot. It helps that the official soundtrack is like five and a half hours long, with some long atmosphere pieces intended for when you’re exploring alien planets. They make for good background music while I’m writing.

(Incidentally, both the STARFIELD and the ELDER SCROLLS: BLADES soundtracks were composed by Inon Zur.)

Speaking of Bethesda games, I have the soundtracks from MORROWIND, OBLIVION, and SKYRIM, and listen to them frequently.

The HEROES OF MIGHT AND MAGIC soundtracks are likewise good. For once, I’m not the only one that thinks so. There’s a “Heroes Orchestra” that puts live performances of the soundtracks on YouTube.

I also have the soundtracks from the extended editions of THE LORD OF THE RINGS movies, which adds up to a lot of music, so those are in frequent rotation as well.

When I want to rev myself up to get to work in the morning, I like to listen to the song “Another Is Coming” from the soundtrack to the AHSOKA Star Wars show. I realize that to 99% of people this sounds objectively insane since that track is mostly bombastic organ music, but Grand Admiral Thrawn is one of my favorite fictional villains. In the scene with the track, Grand Admiral Thrawn learns that the renegade Jedi Ahsoka is coming to oppose his return, and starts making plans to defeat her and effect his escape from exile.

(Amusingly, by modern standards of employee management, even though he is a villain Thrawn acts in an exemplary way in this scene. When his female subordinates come to him with a problem, he doesn’t get angry at them, belittle them, punish the bearers of bad news, or accuse them of hysterics. Instead, he calmly assesses the situation, realizes that his female subordinates are right and their side faces a grave danger, and immediately begins preparations to handle the problem.)

I really liked season three of STAR TREK PICARD (I never bothered to watch the first two seasons) so I have the soundtrack. I frequently listen to the part from the last two episodes in one go.

The two video game soundtracks I’ve had the longest are ICEWIND DALE and QUEST FOR GLORY V: DRAGON FIRE. In fact the ICEWIND DALE soundtrack CD was the very first item I ever ordered online back in 2000, and I bought the QUEST FOR GLORY 1-4 collection just because it had the soundtrack CD included with it. I still have those CDs, though I long ago ripped them to MP3 files.

So, there we go. To return to the original question, I don’t typically post playlists because my musical preferences are too esoteric to make for good conversation or online discussion. Humorous memes and video game screenshots tend to do a lot better for engagement.

-JM