Top Ten Tuesday

I’ve never done this before, but I figured I’d give Top Ten Tuesday, sponsored by the lovely people at The Broke and the Bookish, a try. For February 16th, the assignment was to come up with your top ten songs you wish were books.

I love this concept! There are many times I remember hearing something on the radio and just thinking, “This could be the background music to this or that scene in my book!”

So, here, I present to you:

Top Ten Songs that I Wish Were Books!

10. Supermassive Black Hole by Muse– If you haven’t heard this song before, take a listen. It’s an incredibly fun number that was used for the movie Twilight during the baseball scene. Although I am no longer a fan of the teenage vampire romance novel, I still love this song and think it deserves mention. I imagine this song as a far flung space opera focusing on the life of criminal following his cybernetic lover across the galaxy.

9. Sail by Awol Nation– Deep, heavy beats in this song set the scene for a gloomy futuristic science fiction piece. In a mechanical world, a cyborg drudges his way through his life of slavery. In his failure to understand his place in life, he speaks with a young impressionable human, trying to explain away his odd thought patterns and his need for something more.

8. Shoots and Ladders by Korn– I have long been a fan of Korn for their emotionally saturated songs and genius use of alternative sounds (gotta love bagpipes!) This re-imagining of stale childhood nursery rhymes makes me envision a young boy struggling through catastrophe, grasping at these last vestiges of childhood even as the songs of safety and home are morphed and mutated into the insanity of his new reality.

7. On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons– Such a wonderful anthem! The main character in this book has been drudging through life, working a nine to five soul-eating job, but finally gets sick of it all. She throws down her schedules, emails, nowhere relationships, and disappears on an adventure of self discovery, lifted up by colorful new friends and characters at every step of the way.

6. Victorious by Panic at the Disco– This is a wonderfully fun, gritty song. You can’t help but move when this song comes on the radio, imagining the disco ball and flashing lights reflecting off the dance floor of some seedy underground nightclub. I imagine the main character of this song as a vampire king being seduced by enemy royalty, destroying their kingdoms and their minions in their whirlwind, murderous love story.

5. Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant– Cage the Elephant did a great job telling a pretty thorough story themselves in this darkly cynical song. A book for this song would virtually write itself, appearing as a multifaceted story of apparently unrelated plot lines focused on struggling individuals as they sell themselves and their souls to scratch out a living.

4. Don’t Stop by Foster the People– This very upbeat song reminds me of young friendship, learning to understand the world around us and trying our best to fit in. This story follows a group of kids rampaging around their neighborhood, creating their own fun and chaos during their last summer together. But they happen to get into a little more trouble than anyone bargained for…

3. Roots by Imagine Dragons– This song by Imagine Dragons is deeply rhythmic and touches on the depression and loss felt by every young person at some point in their life when nothing is going right. The young adventurer in this novel has been arrested, beaten, and starved in his attempt to escape from his past only to discover in the long run that there is no escape from the person he was. Our young anti-hero returns to the black side of magic, digging himself out of depression and taking his place as a dark sorcerer.

2. Animal by Three Days Grace– One of my favorite songs of all time. I imagine this as a book about an addict, addicted to drugs, killing, black magic, it doesn’t matter. The main character’s addiction eats him away as he searches the world for a life partner to accept him and his sins, finally helping him overcome his demons and learn to love himself.

1. Radioactive by Imagine Dragons– You may have noticed that there are a few songs on this list by Imagine Dragons. For one thing, I love the name of the band (because dragons are pretty much my self proclaimed spirit animal), but also, they’re ridiculously talented and have created some great music with very emotional undertones. This particular song was my internal theme song and inspiration when writing the major fight scene for my first novel. This book would be set in a post-apocalyptic world, a young child surrounded by tyrannical tormentors. Until he breaks free…

Well, there you have it, my top ten! This was an inspiring process and a lot of fun. Now I have a bunch of new ideas swimming around inside my skull for new novel ideas…

Happy Tuesday everyone!