Mix Tape: the Marauders' Era

[paulamcg]

Mywitch's mix tape has inspired me to compile a playlist for my series The Four Shapeshifters – stories about the Marauders and their friends before Halloween 1981. The fics are canon-(first-five-HP-books-)compliant, but thanks to Lily and Peter, these characters learn something about Muggle music even before leaving Hogwarts.

I could add more to this list, more such songs (like these), too, which the characters know and think about, listen to or sing in the stories. The last song in the list was released on the 26th of October 1981, and the others are older than that. Some bands appear several times, as my characters have lasting favourites. And in some fics – for instance those which are (partly) set at parties – there are references to several songs.

I've left out all Christmas songs because I could make a separate list of them... And character-specific lists. And playlists for some of my other series. I can get addicted to this new way of playing with my fics. :)

You could tell me what kind of list – if any – you'd be interested in.

The links are to Youtube and to AO3.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John) – Peter in Our Most Noble Prank

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash) – taught to Sirius and Remus by Lily in Further Sound

Give a Little Love (Bay City Rollers) – James, who has a minor role in What's In His Heart

Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) – Remus in A Discordant Wail

Flick of the Wrist (Queen) – Remus (at this concert with James and his other friends, as a minor character in) More and More Exciting Muggle Music

Sa’altak Habibi (Fairuz) – Lily in Layers of Treasure

Pigs on the Wing (Parts 1 and 2) (Pink Floyd) – Lily & Remus in Layers of Treasure

When I Need You (Leo Sayer) – Lily/James in Layers of Treasure

The Elf (Al Stewart) – Remus in The Angel of Charity, or This Awfully Long Month

2-4-6-8 Motorway (Tom Robinson Band) – Sirius in The Angel of Charity, or This Awfully Long Month

Jigsaw Feeling (Siouxsie and the Banshees) – Amelia in Palm-Shaped Leaves In New Shades

Burning Up Time (The Stranglers) – Sirius in There Is Some Hope


Light My Fire (the Doors) – Remus in Turn the Night on Fire

Baby, Why Don't You Reach Out? / Light My Fire (Baccara) – Peter in Turn the Night on Fire

The Winter of ‘79 (Tom Robinson Band) – Remus in Come to Rescue

Holiday (Scorpions) – James & Sirius in This Little Oyster

Transmission (Joy Division) – Sirius in The Rainbow Theme

Message in a Bottle (Police) – Remus in The Rainbow Theme

Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division) – Sirius in Freedom They Can Reach

Riders on the Storm (the Doors) – Remus in Freedom They Can Reach

Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) – Remus/Sirius in Not Our House

Under Pressure (Queen and David Bowie) – Sirius in Trying His Best

Comments

[senmut]

I do love seeing people's playlists in general. I am rather limited in my ability to set them up - I think I made one as a gift back in my DC Comics days.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for commenting! This is my first playlist, unless we count the mentions of several songs (including their release years) in the notes to some of my fics. It took some time to make this one, because I hadn't included the links in the notes when posting the fics – and because it was not easy to choose what to leave out, so as not to list even more than thirty songs.

[delphi]

Oh, this is fantastic!

[paulamcg]

Thank you! In 2019, when I wrote mainly stories set in the Marauders' era, I got the habit of using music for the feel of these young people living in the 1970s' Britain, but I'm now surprised to see that (even though I've referred to the same songs – some that meant a lot to my characters – in several fics) there's too much of it to fit in a mix tape. :)

[delphi]

I love doing that too! I've got thematic picks for some of my longer stories, where meaning lines up to certain sections or chapters, but I also just like throwing ones together on the fly to get me in the right headspace. I'm working on an HP story right now set in 1976 with a lot of scenes in the Muggle world, so I've got a playlist of songs that I can picture playing on the radio in the background at one of the locations. It just helps me picture the space and where the characters' heads are at culturally speaking.

[paulamcg]

Yay! Thank you for this fascinating further comment! I'm looking forward to sharing headspace with your characters in that story set in 1976. :)

It's also lovely to talk to someone about my fics in this way. Particularly in 2019 I often searched for such songs that my characters could have listened to in a particular year in which the events I wanted to narrate took place in my timeline, and hoped to find one that was suitable also thematically. When in a scene set at a party or a club the POV character pays attention to several songs, those songs are also chosen so that reactions to them can tell us something about one or more characters.

You're the writer with whom I've talked a bit about Under Pressure, aren't you? I'm afraid I've now overused that song, not only in Trying His Best but also in (a bit less short fic) He's Come Back (which is set several months after the end of OotP).

[delphi]

I vote for there not being any such thing as overusing Under Pressure. :D

I'm working on a separate story set around 1979 that involves Severus having to flee wizarding Britain, and it's pretty much all scaffolded on Bowie's discography - with a little two-years-later epilogue already living in my head that takes place around the time that Under Pressure drops. I like the idea of Severus having made a show of shunning any Muggle media in his teen years, but secretly having positive feelings about Bowie because Lily was very taken with him. So when Severus lands in a foreign city in the Lodger era and walks past a second-run theater showing The Man Who Fell to Earth, those memories of listening to a Bowie record with Lily some summer before their friendship ended is enough to make him stop and walk in, willing to put one foot into the Muggle world again.

[paulamcg]

:D Your vote has just reminded me of how the personal way my Sirius (or whatever part of him has come back) interprets the song has actually made me suspect I've underused Under Pressure. Perhaps I'll still let it serve in another fic. And in any case I'll be looking forward to seeing the role Bowie's music plays in that Severus story and its epilogue. <3

[pauraque]

I love that you draw inspiration from the music the characters would have listened to when they came of age. I've read a lot of Marauder-era fics that feel, to me, totally disconnected from the time period when they're supposed to take place, as though the author doesn't even realize they're supposed to be writing about the 1970s and not the present day. But I think that context does matter, even in HP where you have wizarding culture on top of Muggle pop culture.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I guess I've enjoyed the challenge of connecting my stories to the real time and place (as well as to each other), and music is just one of the aspects I've done a little bit of research in. I'm glad to hear you appreciate such context. Maybe because it's now more popular at least among Wolfstar fans to write Muggle, often "modern" AUs than canon-compliant stories, and a lot of these writers were born close to the end of or after the 20th century, it must be rare to have features of life in Britain in the 1970s included in fics about the young Marauders.

You've now also reminded me of how I've tried to remember to include magic even when my characters, living on the borderline between the wizarding world and the Muggle one, are more excited about the latter culture, new (and rather on top) for most of them. I suppose I focused more on worldbuilding related to wizarding culture in my early post-OotP writing.

[a_belladonna]

What a great idea! And it's quite a playlist you've made there. :)
Like other commenters I'm impressed at how period-correct the songs are. But then, the 70's was a decade for great music. ;)

I suppose you could make it on Spotify too (provided all the artists are there, of course) and share it that way. :)
Of course, then you'd miss the notes about which character the song fits, but it'd make it possible to listen to it on the go.

I'm tempted to try and make a playlist myself, but I'm afraid it'll be much more what songs I feel fit the moods, rather than what is period-correct. ;)

[paulamcg]

Thank you! <3 I think it turned out a fun mix, as I listed the songs in the chronological order of my Marauders' story, not in the order the songs were released, and not all the Queen songs, for instance, one right after the other. And not all these songs are from the 1970s. I've just hoped that it's plausible that Lily first heard CSN as a child, and Remus got interested in the Doors at the latest when Baccara made the cover of Light My Fire in 1978.

I don't use Spotify myself (and I don't think I will start to, because due to my tinnitus I can't listen to music much or with headphones). And I want to include the links to the fics, hoping that someone will click at one of them by mistake at least. :)

Yay, do it – make a playlist! It seems to me that most people compile playlists in that way – lists of songs that make them think of a character, and feel the character's mood. I rather choose such songs which my characters think of :) – songs they have heard, or listen to or sing in the fic.

[a_belladonna]

I listed the songs in the chronological order of my Marauders' story, not in the order the songs were released

That makes a lot of sense to me - after all, that is how you usually encountered music, especially back in the day before the internet.
So to me it sounds very plausible what you describe - for instance about Remus not encountering Light My Fire until he hears the cover, seeing as he'd have been a bit too young to have noticed the original.

because due to my tinnitus I can't listen to music much or with headphones

Oh, of course, I can understand that. I guess it's just because some of my FB friends have been sharing Spotify playlists a lot this last month that I got inspired. :)

Yay, do it – make a playlist!

I'll see if it makes sense. ;) It also feels intensely private and vulnerable for me because I was bullied quite a lot about my music taste when I was a teen, so I'm actually a little afraid every time I share songs that I like.
The main challenge for me is that a) I don't really like the music of the eras Tintin took place in and b) there isn't really conserved any music from the pre-Roman Iron Age. ;)

[paulamcg]

he'd have been a bit too young to have noticed the original In my version (which is based only on the text of the first five books) Remus also did not have a Muggleborn or Muggle parent, and he – like James and Sirius – first learnt some of the music we know only as some of their school mates (including Lily and my half-blood Peter) sang and played instruments brought to Hogwarts.

Yay for music from the Iron Age! :D But I suppose playlists for your Tintin and Asterix fanworks would have to include any such music which best reflects the themes and emotions you want to convey in your writing. And I, too, feel that such a list can be very personal, but I hope you'll feel comfortable sharing some kind of a list with some of us on DW.

If you make a Spotify playlist, perhaps you could just list the names of the songs in your post, in the way mywitch did.