I’m the kind of person who is always mentally soundtracking her life. In high school I burned CDs with titles like “Summer Mix” and “Rainy October Day” and “Songs for the Late Shift,” all in hopes of either capturing a certain mood or moving myself along during an otherwise mundane stretch of everyday life. At the bookstore where I work, the sporadic moments when the music stops are ones I always notice—sometimes in irritation, and honestly sometimes with immense relief. Some of the discs we throw on might do better at the bottom of the ocean. The way it works in our store is this: we have copies of a few new-release albums along with some standby albums (The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel) and a handful of discs brought in by the booksellers who mainly work in the music department. It’s always a crapshoot, whether or not your shift is going to be at least a balance of music you like, music you tolerate, and music that’s more accurately classified as “bad ideas in sonic form,” like the one album we have of a Latin band covering Michael Jackson songs. In the first bookstore store I worked at, we had no in-store stereo system, so all we had was Pandora hooked up to a small speaker near the front of the store. The outside mall music often overpowered it. In other stores that don’t have a music department, there’s a satellite radio-like setup, and apparently they play the same songs in a loop–every day. I am glad I do not work in those stores. The booksellers are not the only people who pay attention to the music in a bookstore, of course. I’ve heard many comments about the music over the years, and only a few of them had a desire to buy the CD playing. One woman felt that James Brown wasn’t good for a bookstore; another woman seemed perturbed that we’d play music at all. Recently a man asked if we’d be playing Billy Joel all day—apparently three songs in a row was two songs too many.
Whenever I run up against a terrible CD (the store was once subjected to an elevator music collection that included a cover of Frozen’s “Let It Go”. Does it get worse than that?) I always ask myself what I would choose to play instead. At this point, I have about six hours of music in a Songs for the Bookstore playlist, and the criteria for good bookstore music I keep coming back to are these:
- Are they unobtrusive enough for people who want to focus on browsing books?
- Are they generally upbeat, or at least not so sad you want to curl up and cry, or so slow that you want to fall asleep?
- As a bookseller, would I potentially want to hear the song again, assuming my shift is longer than the playlist?
The repetition thing, I think, is really important, and logically even the most carefully curated list of songs will get old if you play the same list every day. I know my list isn’t practical for real, regular use. This is merely an exercise in soundtracking.
Most of the songs fall into the calm, relaxing category. This includes Wilco, Death Cab for Cutie, She & Him, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and a few others. I also included a few instrumentals, like the Downton Abbey soundtrack and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. There’s something about “Rhapsody in Blue” that makes me think of waking up to a triumphant day. It’s what I’d choose to open the store with.
One of the first musicians I think of when I think of music I’d like to hear in a bookstore is Sam Phillips. Gilmore girls fans will know her as the musician who provides the soundtrack to Stars Hollow, and it’s one of my main regrets in life that it took me five years after the show ended to realize Phillips was a musician in her own right, and not just someone the studio hired for the show. Everything Phillips writes has that familiar Stars Hollow vibe. In addition, Gilmore girls centers around a girl who doesn’t go anywhere without a book or two (or sometimes five) on her person at all times, so the music that we’re led to believe plays inside her head makes complete sense for a bookstore. As a side note, I’d also consider the Gilmore girls complete soundtrack playlist on Spotify a good option for a bookstore, though some of the songs are little more distracting than what, say, the Anti-James Brown Lady would want.
Then there’s what I call “theme” music, songs like Elvis Costello’s “Every Day I Write the Book” that lyrically have something to do with books. I also threw in Costello’s “Welcome to the Working Week” as a nod to the booksellers. Paul Westerberg’s “As Far As I Know” starts with the line “I’m in love with someone that doesn’t exist,” which sums up the devotion we feel towards our favorite heroes and heroines. Wilco’s song “One Sunday Morning” was actually inspired by a conversation Jeff Tweedy had with author Jane Smiley’s boyfriend. And I also added a U2 track, because whenever I’m fruitlessly browsing at any store, I can’t help but laugh whenever the song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” starts playing.
The music playing after the store closes and we booksellers recover the store is a different matter altogether. When it’s late and there’s a ton of work to be done, we need a shot of sonic adrenaline to keep us going until every last stray book has found its way home. We’ve played everything from hits of the 1980s and 90s to Disney movie soundtracks to ABBA; anything goes once the customers have left, as long as it keeps us awake and moving, until we finally lock the doors behind us and drive home to get some sleep and then start up the playlist again.
For The Stories 