Creating a playlist for a novel

I create a playlist for every novel. This includes my work-in-progress, Christina’s Portrait. You will find the playlist on Spotify.

I listen to a few songs on my playlist before starting a writing session. It gets me into the mood of the scenes I’m working on and helps me focus on the themes of the story. Each song plays an important role in the book. I’d like to talk about some of the songs and how they fit into Christina’s Portrait.

The novel is split into two timelines, one in 1977 and the other in 2021. I paired songs from both eras that go together in theme and tone. For example, “Brick House” from the Commodores in 1977 goes with “Body” by Megan Thee Stallion in 2021.

“You Should be Dancing” by the Bee Gees is a quintessential 1977 song, but it’s here because of James at 16, not Saturday Night Fever. As I wrote in 2014, there was an episode where several Reseda girls’ basketball players appeared. (In this clip, the audio with that song had been stripped out.)

My book has a scene that takes place at a girls’ basketball game, so I had to include…