It's Tuesday evening, and you just sat down with a pen and paper to unearth the setting scene of your newest story. You finished your calculus homework, wolfed down the black beans and rice that your mom cooked for dinner, and even chatted with your friend on the phone for a while. Now, everybody’s gone to bed, most of the lights are off, and the night moths are creeping out of the corners of your world. The moon is out, and it’s time to write. You put your headphones on, too, but what do you play?
If you’re a writer like me, chances are you’re an intense music lover too. So, finding music for creative writing is a challenging feat when your focus is easily diverted by the passion you feel for the songs you’re listening to. That’s why it’s key to turn on a playlist that doesn’t distract you from your piece, while still elevating the rhythm, drama, and autonomy of that story.
Music is the fire of my writing – if the song is right, every note unlocks a plethora of dimensions that push from the underground to deepen my characters, plot, and setting. And every time I find a song like that, I collect it in a special playlist like a treasure. So, while a part of me wants to gatekeep them from you, here is a list of my favorite songs for writing – handpicked, homemade, and curated with the love of a fellow writer. Listen to the full playlist here.
We all know Tyler, the Creator for his extraordinary rap verses and timeless productions, but did you know that this crowd-favorite rapper composed an underground album for a Louis Vutton runway known as The Sunseeker? Second-to-last in the collection, this romantic song takes me to a dream where colors dance together, where moons talk with moons in a disheveled sky, and where the drama of memory still rides the tide of the extreme.
Geometric, mystical, and ambitious, I first heard this song as a teen writer myself, but never wrapped my head around its value as music for creative writing until recently. Its repetitive, unwavering nature provides a force of reason and rationale in the irrational dialogue you have with yourself while trying to put together a scene for your story. This beautiful song fills the gap of logic in the otherwise emotional project of writing.
She’s the voice of R&B, so if this is your genre, then Erykah Badu likely made it to your Spotify Wrapped. Yes, this song has lyrics, but her words are but another instrument alongside the base, percussion, and saxophone. “Other Side of the Game” is a human song, and I often find it helpful to listen to when trying to evoke an secretive, personal setting.
This one, you don’t know, but it’s one of my favorites. As the daughter of a Cuban woman infatuated with the jazz of our island, “El Soñador Está Cansado” (“The Dreamer’s Tired”) returns me to the swaying swing on the red flamboyán tree looming over my childhood house, the daily visits to our blue ocean neighbor, the taste of a salty fried plantain dipped in soupy black beans and rice. Maybe this one’s very personal to me, but I think you’ll like it, too.
A song of experimentation, “Montego Bay Spleen” plays with sound like there’s no tomorrow. From technology to love to the watchful eye of society, this song evokes a versatility of themes in its message from note to note, while still blending in with the air of thought. This is the song I put on when trying to escape the habit of writing what I know, and diving into a scene that goes beyond my own memories.
“Perfidia” is the stab of drama to this playlist of music for creative writing. Told with but a few instruments, this is a story of heartbreak, obsession, and deceit, a story unfamiliar to few but easily told wrong. This song drove many of the pieces that I wrote about Havana after moving away mid-pandemic: the nostalgia for the scent of fresh mango, seaweed, or gasoline, for my friends that I never finished saying goodbye to, for the scorching 20-minute walks to school along Quinta Avenida. “Perfidia” can be your heartbreak song, too.
I fell in love with this one instantly, because “Candy” isn’t the song of drama – it’s the song of simplicity, of the universe just as it is gifted to us. This powerful tune by secretive artist Lifafa reminds me to always describe the effortless things in my stories – the razor-edge taste on her coffee, the angle of the emperor scorpion’s poisonous tail, the way in which her voice rode the telephone line as she said goodbye just like any day. “Candy” is the soundtrack of the magical real.
Back to drama – the title here says it all. To me, “Last Tango in Paris” evokes instability and unwanted change, just as you would feel dancing the tango one last time with someone you love before parting ways forever. The melodramatic build-up in this modern piece of tango music tells you that this is the song you put on when you’re trying to write a climactic moment in your piece.
One of my favorite contemporary jazz pieces, this is a song of time and its cycles. “For My Ladies” builds softly from its subtle origin to its peak, where time can’t tell itself apart and trips over its own feet in forward movement. Doesn’t growth feel that way, too? For a story that plays with time, “For My Ladies” is your song.
Tula Jiménez Singer, Write the World intern, is a Cuban-American writer and third-year student at Northeastern University. You can read her work on The Green Blotter, The Teen Magazine, The Weight Journal, Indigo Literary Journal, and Coelacanth 2022, among others. In addition to writing and her work with Write the World, she has been an intern at GrubStreet and The Boston Globe, and also works as the Social Media Manager of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine, the Events Coordinator of Artistry Magazine, and a writer for Woof Magazine. Her pieces are a slice of her life — filled with jazz, oceans, identity crises, and chocolate. She writes because she cannot let it go.