Song of the Week

With the exception of The Hallelujah Chorus and the Charlie Brown soundtrack, I loathe Christmas music, partly because most songs are like Katy Perry tunes — fun and catchy the first ten times you hear them, fine for the next twenty to one hundred plays, and irritating thereafter — but mostly because they function as an omnipresent reminder of ALL OF THE THINGS WE NEED TO ACCOMPLISH BY DECEMBER 25, most of which involve spending money on stuff no one really wants.

So. I won’t use this space to promote a Christmas song because we’ve all heard too many of them already. Instead, here’s a fun and heartfelt Chanukah song with a homespun video that I love — it’s like a digital equivalent of the shoe box dioramas we used to make in the days before Michael’s craft stores. Happy Chanukah . . . merry almost-Christmas . . . and a joyous new year to all.

“Chanukah in West Virginia,” Scott Simons

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ONE MORE DAY till What Came First is out in stores! And know what is really exciting? I just figured out how to create an iTunes playlist and how to link it to this blog post.

I. Am. Awesome.

True, I posted a playlist once before, but I must have been in some weird fugue state because I had absolutely no idea how I did it. Anyway, if you’re just tuning in, I listen to music a lot (though never while I’m writing), partly because I like music and partly because it helps loosen up my brain and get me in touch with my characters. Or something.

What Came First is the first book I’ve written from multiple perspectives, and it took me awhile to get a handle on all of the characters. One thing that helped: deciding what kind of music everyone enjoyed. Laura, the single mom and lawyer, liked Michael Buble and sixties sunshine pop, while Vanessa, the dental office receptionist, preferred Rihanna. As for Wendy, the frazzled mother of two tantrum-prone five-year-olds — she just wanted silence.

Here’s the link: What Came First playlist

If you actually link on the playlist (c’mon . . . make me proud), you may notice that there are two versions of the Rihanna song “Umbrella,” but neither is sung by Rihanna. That’s because:

1. Vanessa and her boyfriend have different tastes in music, and she liked the original version, while he liked the mellower Scott Simons cover, BUT

2. This is my playlist and I don’t really like Rihanna so I took her version off, AND

3. When I put my list on Ping, I initially selected an All Time Low “Umbrella” cover by mistake, but I don’t know how to delete it .

Which means? I. Am. Not. Awesome. Damn.

Anyway, there’s no official Scott Simons “Umbrella” video on YouTube, but here’s an unofficial — and kind of comically literal — collage thing. And if you don’t like comically literal collages? Just close your eyes and listen. I think you’ll like it.