It’s finally here, whether or not you knew you were waiting for it: my book Invisible Violets, which is chock-full of music references, has playlists!
There are two versions. Both are built upon the references and allusions in the book and follow the text in order.
Invisible Violets Unabridged Playlist
The first version is the all-out, maximalist, go-big-or-go-home, completist playlist of excess.
Still, it was created with strict rules, though it may not seem like it. I will have further posts about how I constructed the playlists, what songs I had to leave off, and so forth, but for now, here is the feast of a playlist.
This playlist is essentially my debut book if it could only be told in songs.
Unabridged Invisible Violets playlist on Apple Music
Unabridged Invisible Violets playlist on Spotify
Invisible Violets Abridged Playlist
Aaaaand this is the playlist with a more sane length, distilled to only a hundred songs. The culling was painful and difficult, but sometimes we must sacrifice for our art.
I am not capable of giving a shorter version, so, this is as short as it gets.
Abridged Invisible Violets playlist on Apple Music
Abridged Invisible Violets playlist on Spotify
A Little Peak
To either entice or horrify you, here’s a word cloud of the music references in the book. By far and away the most referenced musical artist is Chris Cornell. And if you add up the references to him plus his bands, well, it gets even more lopsided. So if you don’t like that man’s voice, probably skip the playlists but also get your head examined.
Coming Next
You all, I have so much cooking right now, you wouldn’t believe it. I hardly believe it. Who knew that finishing grad school would unleash me into the creative prime of my life?
I’ll hint at three things.
There’s something in the works to explore all of the music in Invisible Violets in more depth in ways that I hope are highly entertaining, and sometimes at my expense. Soft launch for that is scheduled (in my head) for December and the hard launch is January 1st, as this will be a hugely fun 2027 project.
A live show for Invisible Violets is in the works. Also look for more about that in 2027.
I’m working on Book Two. It’s very different from Invisible Violets in some ways, including structure, but there’s some overlap in topic, and of course, it’s still me with all my writing quirks and my incurable music referencing. I have never in my life had such a blast writing. Even when the writing is hard and it takes me seven hours to write three paragraphs (which for anyone who knows my typical writing process, this is not at all how I normally work) and even when I revisit things I really would prefer to pretend don’t exist and feel like I’m suffering for my art, it is still fun. Everything is hilarious if you give it enough time. For this one, I can’t give a specific date to expect it, but oh my freaking god, I can’t wait till I can. And the playlist for this project is going to make the Invisible Violets playlist look like a paragon of restraint.
Speaking of hilarious, I’ve been doing some stand-up comedy, but that’s a topic for another day.
Chrys
Chrys Buckley 