Top Ten Songs for Writers

Ok, so these songs aren't only for writers, I mostly just think they're awesome. However, I do think music can be one of the greatest sources of inspiration, and these ones in particular have incredible lyrics, or emotional honesty, or tell a great story, something I think writers can learn from.

So in no particular order:
1-No Children, The Mountain Goats
2-I Think It's Going to Rain Today/God Give Me Strength, Audra McDonald (One video for 2 songs. Cool, eh?)
3-The I Love You Song, from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
4-Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)/And So It Goes/Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, Billy Joel
5-The Lonely, Christina Perri
6-I And Love And You, The Avett brothers
7-Space Oddity, David Bowie
8-Pretty Women, Brian Stokes Mitchell
9-Lonely Anywhere, The Everybodyfields
10-This Night, Black Lab
11-Wheels of a Dream, Ragtime the Musical (ignore the video, its the only one good audio I could find of the song)

Ok, ok, so that's more then ten, but it was hard enough narrowing it down this far. I linked to videos of each song (I really tried for number 8 but couldn't find anything--its still worth looking up) in case you're interested. I tried to list songs you might be unfamiliar with (ok, so Billy Joel and Christina Perri aren't exactly unknowns) and I hope you aren't too against a little Broadway. Here is the video for number 10, a particularly good video and a recent find I'm kind of obsessed with right now.



Now its your turn. What are the songs you think everyone should know about but don't? You don't have to give a list of ten if you don't want to, but I really want some good recommendations here.

Left a nice long list of songs in the comments? Good, now stop procrastinating and get back to work. Your novel isn't going to write itself, you know.

Sarah Allen