Just as some music fuels my creativity, some stops my writing dead in its tracks. Not necessarily because it’s bad; to the contrary, frequently it’s so absorbing that it simply distracts me from what I’m working on. Country music particularly affects me this way, because country songs feature strong storylines. Often involving prison, whiskey, and cheating lovers, and who’s going to ignore that?
However, certain country songs have a particularly devastating effect on me.
Jesus Take the Wheel, Carrie Underwood. Let’s see: exhausted mom, icy highway, baby in the back seat. The car slides… so she throws her hands in the air and begs the Lord to drive. No, no, no! I don’t care how much you love Jesus – demanding that he steer into the skid is both needy and unwise.
Private Malone, David Ball. The spirit of a dead soldier saves the singer from the burning wreckage of his 1966 Corvette. It’s cheesy, it’s sentimental, it yanks at the heartstrings with all the subtlety of a crowbar. My kids will jump out the nearest window rather than listen to it, even if that’s the car window, on the freeway. And it chokes me up every damn time.
There Goes My Life, Kenny Chesney. Got a daughter? Is she going to grow up and go to college some day? Do NOT listen to this song. At least, not if you need to work without sobbing.
Tell Me I Was Dreaming, Travis Tritt. This power ballad hits all the heavy chords in country music. It’s abandonment, in the key of C. Moreover, my husband and I have decided that it wins the prize for the Most Pathetic Country Video of All Time. Check it out. It has disabled vets, outboard motors, a faithful dog, barefoot kids in overalls, and a beautiful pregnant woman – wife of a guy in a wheelchair – who has a fatal accident involving a bass-fishing boat. Take every southern trope, slather it in bathos, and turn up the volume. It’s like a Carl Hiaasen novel gone hideously wrong.
lying for a living 
To write, I turn to “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Mussorgsky or Wagners “Tannhauser.” Can’t write to anything with words.
Can’t write to: anything jazz….fingers curled to wring necks, anybody’s neck, prevent me from typing properly.
Irish music is a must for getting me prepped to write….
I would like to point out that I do NOT leap out the nearest window upon hearing Private Malone. Your country-hating sons do that.
And you should check out Carrie Underwood’s second single. It also involves a car, but I think you’ll approve of what she does with it this time around. It’s called “Before He Cheats”.
As for music I write by . . . country. But happy country. It just gets ya goin’.
I write to non-vocal music or silence. Music that brings up images. The Moldau, The Hebrides. In fact, many of my classical records are landscape/”Ma Patrie” inspired. Finlandia, Peer Gynt, 1812, Warsaw Concerto.
Some vocals work, but not all. Joan and Judy and Joni and the like, on low volume, inspiring me in their own special way.
Yes. I said “records”.
Kate: West Virginia + Oklahoma = Country-lovin’ California girl! I’m so proud.
Susan: Finlandia makes me gasp, and then sometimes cry. It may be too much for me to write by. And what are these “records” of which you speak?
Snart: Now I know what to get you for Easter, to repay you for all your attempts to get me to snark. The collected works of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker.
Susan, I too have some of those “records” of which you spoke, but am awaiting a new belt for the turntable (another archaic word). Apparently we Canadians get to be cutting edge in our fiction, yet blunted edge in our technology.
Meg. I have photos. Need I say more?