Marissa Meyer - Guest Post.

Muse and The Lunar Chronicles

In preparation of writing this post, Sahina sent me a list of potential topics to choose from, and as soon as I read through them I knew precisely which to write about:

If you could incorporate song lyrics in to your books, what artists would you feature?

My first thought: MUSE. Without a doubt, Muse.

I do create playlists for each of my books, and The Lunar Chronicles’ playlist has everything from The Killers to The Pretenders, Sam the Sham to Death Cab for Cutie. But most artists on the playlist have one, maybe two songs that I feel relate to these books and the characters. Not so with Muse, whose songs make up no less than half of the combined playlist.

I think the reason is that Muse lyrics tend to combine two themes which I use a lot in the books:

1. Space

Starlight…  I will be chasing the starlight

Until the end of my life...

I don’t know if it’s worth it anymore.

Glaciers melting in the dead of night,

And the superstars sucked into the supermassive—

Supermassive black hole.

Given that much of the Lunar Chronicles takes place aboard spaceships and satellites and even on the moon, space is kind of a big theme, and I love that so many of Muse’s songs have this epic feel to them that goes even beyond the confines of our planet.

2. Revolution

Proclaim eternal victory,

Come on and change the course of history.

Don't give up the fight,

You will be alright,

‘Cause there’s no one like you in the universe.

Love is our resistance—

They'll keep us apart and they won't stop breaking us down.

I’m not sure which government Muse was thinking about taking down when they wrote their songs—or if they had some other meaning in mind entirely—but I can’t help but listen to their songs and envision my characters’ attempts to rebel against the Lunars and their wicked queen, to rally the people to rise up against her soldiers and minions, to band together and stand up for what they believe.

So, yes. Muse. Sometimes it seems as if I’ve listened to them practically non-stop for the last four years, since I began writing this series, and I think I’ll still be listening to them on the day I finally type The End.

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A huge thank you to the awesome Marissa for giving us this guest blog post, it's always nice to know authors share the same vices as us mere mortals when it comes to sources of inspiration, especially a band as amazing as Muse. Be sure to check out her current books, the review for which can be found here (Cinder, Book #1) and here (Scarlet, Book #2) and have a splendid week! :)