Procrastination...A List of Songs to Inspire Love Scenes

A few weeks ago, Bryn Colvin, fellow author, hosted a theme chat on her Yahoo! book group to discuss “inspiration” for both readers and writers. Not surprisingly, many authors use music as inspiration. I’m one of those authors. I can look at a scene in any one of my books and tell you what music I was listening to at the time. Sometimes I’ll reference songs in my books and in the case of Kicking Sideways, a Benders song, “Blue Lightning,” inspired the story, but I listened to The Sisters of Mercy and Led Zeppelin while writing most of it.

Music is great inspiration when you are trying to set a particular mood for a scene. Bless iTunes because I have a playlist for any given mood: depression, fear, joy, romance, and melancholia. There are song lists for spirituality, atmosphere/weather, relaxation, and partying. Brilliant invention, is iTunes, for those with obsessive compulsive tendencies.

Music can be an especially useful tool when you have to write a sex scene and the love you feel for your hero is just not enough to block out daily life that keep you from getting in the mood. So, to procrastinate even further, here’s my list of songs to get you in the mood:

• “Today” Jefferson Airplane
• All of Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails
• “Skinny Dip” Zulus
• “It Ain’t Like That” Alice in Chains
• “Room a Thousand Years Wide” Soundgarden
• “Driven Like the Snow” Sisters of Mercy
• “Fix” Sisters of Mercy
• “Jessie” Paw (sure, it’s a song about a boy and his lost dog, but it’s the way it’s sung)
• “You Know You’re Right” Nirvana
• “Bloodletting” Concrete Blonde
• “Turnover” Fugazi
• “Girl” Danzig
• “Sex” Berlin (obviously!)
• “Indian Summer” The Doors
• “Five to One” The Doors
• “Silvertone” Elbow
• “When the Levees Break” Led Zeppelin
• “Spacelord” Monster Magnet
• “Mummers Dance” Loreena McKennit