What do I listen to while I'm writing?

Luis Natera asks:

Can you share your writing playlist? I'm always looking for good music to have in the background and don't distract me that much from writing and thinking.

I've been hoping someone would ask me about this.

The overly literal answer is: I don't have one consistent writing playlist. I use Spotify and am generally pretty happy with what I get from its algorithmic recommendations, so I'm usually listening to something different every day. Sometimes I will listen to my "liked" songs until one catches my attention and then start a station based on it; other times I will use one of Spotify's daily generated playlists.

The answer to your question, however, is The Sims soundtrack, a handful of other video game and movie sound tracks, 50s and 60s library music, and modern music inspired by library music, plus often some instrumental jazz and funk.

My Spotify wrapped every year is like, "You are the world's biggest Marc Russo fan," but it doesn't know how Marc Russo is so it doesn't know how funny this is. There are days when I put "Now Entering" on repeat and listen to nothing but that for hours, because it was made to be listened to for hours.

I also like a lot of Kirk Casey and Jerry Martin contributions, both to The Sims and Sim City soundtracks.

I don't particularly like music from the later Sims games, at least for working, though your mileage may vary.

This playlist doesn't have absolutely all The Sims music that I listen to, but it's a good starting point.

I have a couple of other sound tracks that I return to regularly. I really like Persona 5 sound track — it has a similar "light jazz" area code, and is also mostly intended to be listened to on repeat.

It's rare that I listen to this album straight through but "She's a Pass" and "Mega City One" regularly make it onto playlists.

Have you watched Dredd, by the way? One of my favorite movies. If you like the soundtrack you'll like it; it's essentially a movie-length music video.

And of course, John Carpenter, and particularly Escape from New York. This movie is a real comfort watch for me; it's probably a unique quirk of my neurology that I find this music very calming.

Other than that, I listen to a lot of library music — music made specifically for the purpose of being easy to license, intended to be played in movies or in the background in supermarkets — and music that's not technically library music but sounds like it. Walter Wanderley comes to mind for this latter category.

For true library music, you probably want to start with Keith Mansfield, and something like Kpm 1000 Series: Contempo.

I made this playlist for a friend recently who was putting together a soundtrack for a heist-driven tabletop roleplaying game set in an alternate 1950s, and wanted instrumental music that fit that vibe. It's less an exhaustive list of everything I listen to while working than a sampling; a lot of the songs on it are one representative song from a band or composer I listen to a lot.

I particularly like The Sorcerers, who are one of the few musical projects that can get even my degenerate self to listen to full albums. They do fantastic instrumental concept albums, which sound exactly like what the album title promises.

If I'm going to mention albums I'd be remiss not to include Sven Wunder, and especially Eastern Flowers, which I also recommend quite highly as an album to listen to while under the influence of psychedelics.

The big exception to all of this is the Special Project. I have two playlists dedicated just to it. The first is a mix of mostly instrumental music that evokes what I'm trying to do with the setting — Melechesh, Heilung, Sven Wunder's album Eastern Flowers, The HU, Nemuer — and modern lyric-driven music that felt like it had the right mood. Sometimes I listen to the whole album, other times I'll set one song on repeat — "NOBODY" in particular is what I reach for when I'm having a hard time "getting it."

The problem with this playlist is that there's a lot of metal in it, so it's pretty angsty, and the original concept for this work was a lot lighter and more romantic. It's also got a lot of lyrics in it and sometimes lyrics are fine while I'm writing and sometimes they are absolutely the opposite of what I want. So in the last couple of days I've been trying to put together something that's just "atmospheric of the setting" music, and that's less metal and more acoustic folk.

The problem with this playlist is that it's mostly music I don't otherwise like very much. It's hard to find upbeat Sumerian stuff!

Also, Spotify keeps trying to convince me that it should include My Magic Flute in Ruins of Medieval Castle.

I've got more, but the newsletter needs to go out. Happy to answer more questions on this topic, and I could take some time to pull everything that I listen to without lyrics on a playlist, too.