Kiera Gerety

Music is more than background noise—it’s a spiritual guide, a pulse that carries me through the deepest folds of story. When I’m writing Where the Music Finds Us, I’m not just building a narrative. I’m building a mood, a world of memory, loss, rebellion, and fragile, fierce connection. And music gives that world its spine.

This playlist—songs by Leonard Cohen, Green Day, Janis Joplin, Bright Eyes, Françoise Hardy, and others—isn’t just random. It’s curated from the marrow of the book itself. These tracks carry the exact ache, joy, and conflict that lives in my characters. They are the undercurrent to the setting. The salt in the sea air. The hum of a string plucked in a quiet room. The echo of something lost—but not gone.

Leonard Cohen’s “Sisters of Mercy” and “Hallelujah” are prayers, elegies, love songs for a world that doesn’t always love back. His voice hangs like smoke over Eli’s memories of his time spent with Miriam, the ache of silence after a fight with his parents, or the quiet mourning that slips between sentences never said aloud. Cohen is the voice of longing and reckoning.

Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia,” “When I Come Around,” and “She” tap into another kind of frequency—teenage rage grown up but still aching. These songs reflect Julien’s internal battle, the punk-rock softness of someone who grew up thinking he had to shout to be heard, only to find that whispering can sometimes carry more weight. “Jesus of Suburbia” especially mirrors the chaotic rhythm of a person trying to outrun what they fear they are.

Les Variations’ “What a Mess Again” and “Je suis juste un Rock N’Roller” bring that continental grit. There’s something about writing scenes set in Marseilles—sticky summer nights, fog over the Mediterranean Sea, cigarettes and quiet desperation—that begs for a French rock soundtrack. It’s chaotic, unpolished, and essential. The music matches the tension between glamour and grime that threads through the story.

Bob Dylan’s “Moonshiner” and Janis Joplin’s “Little Girl Blue” are the ghosts. They soundtrack the personal hauntings of my characters—their past selves, their regrets. These voices are rough-edged, drunk on sorrow, full of a kind of truth that only exists after the party ends and you’re left with the echo. They highlight the beginning of a story on all its own within these pages I write.

The Clash’s “London Calling” and Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust” pulse with rebellion and recollection. These are anthems for when the characters finally choose themselves. When they dare to step out of nostalgia and into the mess of the present. They remind them (and me) that survival can be loud and lyrical at once.

Then we drift to the quieter spaces of the playlist—Françoise Hardy, Amália Rodrigues, Charles Aznavour—and it’s like writing with velvet gloves on. These songs bring texture to setting. They echo through French cafés and seaside Portuguese streets. They conjure Bastien’s travels, the old love letters in the drawer, the traditions he both reveres and breaks from.