Novel Soundtracks 2: Bad Guy Songs




Villain songs! Villain songs! I could sing their praises from a high mountaintop using a megaphone and a worldwide intercom. I could screech their karaokes until the space station calls to complain about the noise. I could bellow them all day while stalking around my house wearing a black cloak and the heads of twelve teddy bears around my neck. That is how much I love villain songs.


Novel soundtracks should always, 100% of the time, without exception, have a song for their villain (I mean, unless you don't have an embodied villain. Then that could be a problem). For some reason, only one of the three novel soundtracks I've created have had a song for the villain, so I don't know what's wrong with me, but I really do think that all novel soundtracks should have one.

But first things first! Remember that your villain is a person too, and their song on your soundtrack doesn't necessarily have to be 'Be Prepared' or 'Poor Unfortunate Souls'. My lowly one villain song for last year's NaNoWriMo was 'Stay Alive' by Hidden Citizens. Hidden Citizens is a group? I think? that I ran across on YouTube. They have some good epic music.


Seriously, any song that reminds you of the villain's thoughts or motivations can be your villain's theme song. If 'Beautiful Dreamer' does it for you, go for it. I won't judge.

And oh, the variety of songs you can choose from!

Here's some of the best ones I can think of:

  • Jonathan Young!!! This guy is a YouTube artist (notice my YouTube fetish yet?) who covers Disney songs and Anime songs in Pop Punk, Hard Rock, Metal, what have you. His Disney villain covers are the BEST. I legit discovered his channel and proceeded to watch most of his 100-something videos in the next few weeks.
  • Uh, Disney songs. Doi. Poor Unfortunate Souls, Shiny, Mother Knows Best, My Lullaby, Be Prepared, etc., etc., etc.
  • Any number of Taylor Swift's angry songs. One of the best for villains, imho, is 'I Did Something Bad' from Reputation.
  • Like I said, check Hidden Citizens.
  • Broadway. They have some good baritones singing villain songs.
Uh, that's all I can think of so far as villain songs. Let me know in the comments if you think of any ones I missed, and I can add them to the list.


That's it for today. You can visit my first post about novel soundtracks here (it's about the good guy songs).
Visit my Instagram and Twitter for writer funnies, and put your email in on the sidebar for emails every time I put up a new post. See ya next week!

Comments

  1. CG @ Paper FuryMay 27, 2018 at 3:27 AM

    Ooh I love Hidden Citizens!! Their songs are EPIC and I definitely use them for battle scenes and such!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

12 Underused Creatures and Animals in Fantasy

Image
Photo by  Антон Воробьев on Unsplash Look look! Another series! It'll probably be pretty short since I can only think of fantasy, sci-fi, and realistic fiction to involve in a series about underused creatures, but if you have another genre I could do, please comment and tell me because I would LOVE to expand this series! It is one of my favorite things in the world to think outside the box and do things that other people haven't done yet. And using creatures that no one else has used yet has been a big deal for me ever since I started writing. Heck, people didn't use the internet a ton just yet, so I would go fishing through the dictionary and encyclopedia to find a creature no one had used yet so I could use it. Or other times I would just make up something weird and give it a name.  Here's a list of the fantasy creatures/animals you've probably heard of, written about, and/or read about. Elves (one of the most common tropes, but how I love them) Fai...
Read more

10 Underused Historical Settings in Fiction

Image
I've already done  10 Underused Concepts in Sci-Fi  and  12 Underused Creatures in Fantasy (click the titles to go to the posts), now it's time for historical fiction to get the spotlight. I don't write a lot of historical fiction myself, but I know there are a lot of historical fiction writers out there! These settings can also be used in a historical sci-fi novel, in a steampunk novel, or even for a fantasy setting. So this is applicable to almost everyone! So on that note: Idea list: activate! The Great Depression. I know that writers like to stray away from talking about people who are broke, on hard financial times, or homeless. It makes people uncomfortable. Well, you know what I say? Good . If you want to make a change, you're gonna make some people uncomfortable. You could write an excellent sci-fi novel based on the next depression that hits the future, or a fantasy world that is hitting hard times. Mesoamerica. Me! Me! I've done this! Whet...
Read more

Villain Motivation Ideas Taken From History

Image
Not all villains are works of the imagination. And not all villains are as completely inhuman as we might prefer to think. Some people that we consider to be very, very bad had what could almost be seen as good reasoning behind their actions. Their deeds may have been bad, but maybe the thoughts from their heads can be used to tell some incredible stories. So here's four villain motivations taken straight from history. Changing the wording. (Hitler) Let's just get this guy out of the way first, shall we? Hitler and his Nazis are known across history to be some of the evilest people ever to exist. If someone's trying to think of a really evil person to use as an example, the name they settle on is normally Hitler's. And don't get me wrong. Hitler was a very, very bad man. But the thousands of people who followed him did not start off thinking the same way he did. They were carefully primed before they were commanded to help him in his dirty work. Hitl...
Read more