Sometimes, I feel like an idiot.

Like today.

Like I didn’t realize until This Very Night that everything creative I have written that I liked included some kind of music going on in the background (or frontground).

I remember my first playlist. (No, really! I do!) Winamp was my favorite music thing in the world in 2000, maybe even earlier, and I was addicted to the freedom it offered. I was particularly addicted to its playlists!  I had a typical “ooh I like this” playlist of all my favorite goth songs, and another playlist for a story I was writing back then. The latter playlist was full of ambient works.

I miss that playlist.

I grudgingly migrated to iTunes in 2007. (I had used both until I realized it was a lot easier to purchase music for my writing playlists – and retaining that purchased music – by using iTunes.) All this time, though, I’ve missed Winamp’s flexibility and cheesy 16-bit charm. I mean, sure, I used iTunes and there’s a bunch of good stuff about it, buuuut…

I mean, changing the look of my player to match the mood of my writing? That was AWESOME.

So here I was, plonking around and wondering why I feel so lackluster… and I decided I would ask Jon for relatively good Bluetooth headphones for Moviversarmas.

“Maybe removing a few cords would help,” I thought.

*headdesk* Of COURSE it helps. The noise-cancelling aspect helps too, and the fact that these headphones are not about to fall off my head or out of my ear anytime soon. And I have this playlist, titled “Dance, Baby, Dance!” that includes Earth, Wind and Fire, Parov Stelar, Covenant, Beyonce, TV On the Radio, Duran Duran, Queens of the Stone Age, Jackie Wilson…

I spent about an hour dancing wildly in the kitchen until I threw something in my back.

(Yeah, I know, I’m old.)

So I’m always thinking about what’s on my playlist for whatever story I’m writing. What’s the tone? What’s the lyrical style? What’s the rhythm?

What’s YOUR playlist?