I have this thing about music that’s used in movies and TV. I think that’s the one sad thing about books, you don’t get that awesome background music with cool scenes which is why I have to have something to write to. Looking at my music collection, the majority is soundtracks. I just love music that goes with stories. In this iTunes era we live in, I find myself buying and downloading many more individual songs by numerous artists saving the full albums for particular favorites.
Tonight I downloaded the music by Florence + the Machine used in the Beautiful Creatures trailer (just read the book and loved it). It’s an amazing song and I know it will get added to one or more of my writing playlists. It wouldn’t be the first song I heard on some sort of tv/movie promo or in a show itself that caused me to do a desperate Google search to uncover and claim. The following is a list of some of my favorites. For the record, I will always encourage you to listen to things through free radio that pays the artists or to buy from legitimate sources like iTunes.
Some of my favorites include:
- Jessy Green’s “Time Bomb” as heard in in the season 2 finale of Burn Notice when Michael jumps from the helicopter
- Phantom Planet’s “Dropped” and the Thermal’s “Returning to the Fold” as heard in the season 2 premiere episode of Chuck
- Anberlin’s cover of “Enjoy the Silence” as heard in the famous Damon dancing scene in The Vampire Diaries
- Nine Inch Nails’s “We’re in This Together” as heard in the trailer for The Avengers
- Cage the Elephant’s “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” as heard on a tv promo for Leverage
- Stereophonics’s “Trouble” as heard on a tv promo for White Collar
- Kasabian’s “Club Foot” as heard on the movie trailer for Serenity
- Garbage’s “#1 Crush” as heard on the TV series Hex
- Nonpoint’s cover of “In the Air Tonight” as used in the tv promos for Dark Blue
- Track and Field’s version of “Running Up That Hill” as featured on Warehouse 13
Who else discovered awesome music from storytelling media?
elizabethmacandrew.com 
When I was younger, I always wrote to music. Then I took a masterclass with a professional author at Ohio State, and she claimed this practice often tended to lessen productivity and slow down the creative process. We argued that music inspired us. She challenged us to write without music for a week – and I found I did write better. Too often, the music distracted me. If you’re able to write with music in the background, I applaud you, but I get more done without it.
Interesting. I can’t stand the quiet when I’m working and I would have been curious to know if any of your classmates tried the experiment and found they went slower without it.