Music I: 3 Songs That Inspired My Stories

Hi hi all! Hope April is ending nicely and you’re enjoying the spring season!

I never imagined myself writing a post like this because I don’t listen to music while writing. Formerly, I didn’t even associate music with my writing but loved both separately. However, I’ve seen plenty authors and readers talk about books and their connections to certain songs, and I have been sold on it! I started making playlists for my books, and certain songs have felt very close in lyrics and tone to these stories.

In this three-part series, I’ll be sharing three of the songs that have felt most connected to my books!

• Ghost by Justin Bieber

Multiple things inspired me to write AILEY OSE, two of them being a read of DAISY JONES AND THE SIX, and the explosive Justin Bieber/Hailey/Selena Gomez drama that happened at the time of reading the book. But there were other things that helped form a clear picture so that I just couldn’t resist writing the book—as much as I tried!

One of them is this beautiful song: Ghost

It came out and at that time, I’d been getting tired of the ‘search for good music.’ (Something I used to do before, frequently scouring the web for hours for songs to update my playlists, popular or not.) So I wasn’t keeping up with even new releases. But my siblings heard Ghost and played it often. I loved hearing it, but would soon forget it until I heard it again. Eventually they stopped playing it often and so while on Apple Music, I went looking for it.

I remember sitting down alone in the kitchen, playing the track on the speaker, by myself for the first time, and just seeing images flash through my head.

Images of what? you wonder. Images of Justin Bieber’s fame trajectory, I answer.

I used to love JB and joined in the Bieber Fever with my friends all those years ago. (Someone online said, ‘It’s wild how we watched Justin Bieber grow up, and we’re still younger than him’ and it’s so true hehe.) But then he had that stint where he started acting out and changed his music style, so I fell out of love with him and his music. This also played into my surprise when I heard that he was the one behind this beautiful song. (Him and Jon Bellion, who is my love forever!)

So sitting in the kitchen, listening to the rawness, earnestness, and ache in his voice as he sang, I started flashing back-back-back. To the days when he was this sweet teenager who smiled openly and sang with his whole heart. Whose relationship with Selena Gomez put the biggest smile on my face—although I totally respect his marriage to his wife! Listening to the song, I both fell in love with him again while also feeling sad for the loss of the precious boy who Fame changed.

I wanted to write about someone like him. Someone who was a good guy, went through a very rough patch that more or less broke him, but then picked his life together and bounced back. And so he heavily inspired my hero, Johnny in AILEY OSE. This song also heavily inspired the final, big song in the book. In fact, the lyrics was a complete rewrite of Ghost in the first draft haha, but then as I revised the manuscript, I got inspired for my own lyrics.

Also, because of that unforgettable moment in my kitchen, I knew I wanted to connect this experience I had to the big moment in the book’s end. One where a character listened to the song and thought of the journey my MC, Johnny, had gone through to reach where he was.

I remember calling my close friend right after that ‘epiphanic’ moment with the song, and both of us just going on and on about Justin, as well as the 2023 drama with Selena and Hailey. Analyzing like we were going to get graded for it haha.

I’m glad that I got to have this wonderful connection between music and writing. Now I can’t listen to Ghost without connecting it to my story or remembering that inspiring moment.

Do you connect writing and music?

Check back for the other songs that inspired some of my other stories!