This morning @BNBooksClubs tweeted this: Songs as Short Stories – What Songs Do You Think Tell a Great Story?
It got me thinking. Doesn't every song tell a story? I'm not talking about the story the songwriter is telling… I'm talking about the story YOU hear when you listen to it. The memories, the moments, the feelings it calls up in you.
People always ask if I listen to music when I write.
The answer is no.
I write in complete silence because I actually hear the characters, like I'm eavesdropping on a private conversation they're having. But I do listen to music before and after I write – and it becomes the soundtrack for the book, scene, or character I'm writing.
As someone who wrote poetry for most of her life, I know that most songwriters consider their lyrics poetry. Take a look at the journals of Henry Rollins (Black Flag) or Kurt Cobain (Nirvana). They're filled with poems that morphed into songs. And every one of them tells a story. Billy Corgan, the lead singer of The Smashing Pumpkins, published BLINKING WITH FISTS, one of my favorite poetry books. And Green Day wrote the album American Idiot as a rock opera, the songs unfolding to create one story.
I used to paint professionally – paintings, not houses. In my last show, all the pieces were untitled. I wanted the viewer to find the story within the work, without the influence of my interpretation. I always wondered about the stories other people saw in them, and if they changed over time.
Here are some songs that hold stories for me, or inspire them:
"Everybody Hurts" – REM
"Pictures of You" – The Cure
"In Between Days" – The Cure
"Wish You Were Here" – Pink Floyd
"The Dark Side of the Moon" – Pink Floyd
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" – Green Day
"Sweet Child O' Mine" – Guns & Roses
"Stay" – U2
"Home" – Foo Fighters
"Still" Foo Fighters
"Tiny Dancer" – Elton John
"Personal Jesus" – Depeche Mode
"Bring on the Dancing Horses" – Echo & the Bunnymen
"Teenage Wasteland" – The Who
"The Beautiful Ones" – Prince
"Who Knew" – Pink
"In Your Eyes" – Peter Gabriel
"Over the Hills and Far Away" – Led Zeppelin
"The Boy with the Thorn in His Side" – The Smiths
"London Calling" – The Clash
"Fell on Black Days" – Soundgarden
There are hundreds more. They change all the time, but some are constants – the way I find a particular feeling or memory, just when I need it most.
a #1 New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author and comic book writer. As an award-winning, Bram Stoker Award-nominated young adult author of 12 novels and graphic novels, she has been published in 51 countries and 38 languages and her books have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Kami’s best known works include the Beautiful Creatures series, Teen Titans: Raven, The X-Files: Agent of Chaos, The Lovely Reckless, Broken Beautiful Hearts, and the DC Black Label comic Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity. She is also a cofounder of the Kid Lit book festival YALLFest.
This is exactly why I love you! I am a HUGE fan of story-telling music! The Cure is my all time favorite band! Their lyrics tell such beautiful stories (well, most of them anyway). Like Cockatoos, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, Jupiter Crash, Strange Attraction…
I feel a Cure-fest coming on! LOL!
You should totally check out the band Blue October. His songs are super intense! LOVE them!!!!
totally random, but when do we get a sequel??
I completely get this. To me almost every song that is on my playlist has a memory for me. The one that gets me the most, that when I close my eyes I see a certain time, a certain place, November Rain by GnR. And its long enough I go go back in time. Here is my top 5 (sorry had to add a little explantion to them). In order of when I heard them, LOL.
Never Surrender by Corey Hart
If you are under the age of 20, then you probably never heard of him, or this song. He is a Canadian musician, that brought this song out in 1985 (you more then likely you have heard “Sunglasses at night,” same guy). This song helped me thru a very hard period in my life. Gave me courge to NOT give up, which is easier then going on.
Runaway Train by Soul Asylum
If you have not heard this song, let me tell you, it is melancholy at its best. But for me, it summoned up my teenage years.
My Immortal by Evanescence
“I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone. But though you’re still with me, I’ve been alone all along.”
This speaks to my mother. The first time I heard it on the radio, I cried my eyes out. My mother was in that song, because all thou she left me so long ago, she still lingers with me. She still has alot to do with my life, my decisions. And she always will be.
Had Enough by Breaking Benjamin
This song gives me courge. This reminds me of a ex-boyfriend who was abusive to me. He tried to put me down onto a level that he thought I belonged. But in the end I got the courge to leave him. Took me years to be able to deal with it and move on. This is something that I would like to tell him.
“When all is said and done, I will be the one to leave in your misery and hate what you become.”
OK, 1 more, I just had to add it.
Until the End by Breaking Benjamin
Not sure why, but I was drawn toward this song.
“Why Give up? Why give? It’s not enought, it never is. So I will go on until the end. We’ve become desolate, it not enough, it never is. But I will go on until the end.
OK, I had to look up desolate cause I was not sure what it meant. And I think this is what they meant: Having the feeling of being abandoned by friends or by hope. And then I understood why I liked the song. So many times over the last 28 years I have felt like that.