Lyrical Ballads

 By Ashley Lister
 I don’t listen to a lot of pop music. I have no ability to focus on more than one thing so, if I’m listening to lyrics and writing at the same time, you can bet money that those lyrics I’m listening to will appear within the fiction I’m creating. This was most poignantly illustrated by a series of shorts story I wrote entitled: Never Gonna Give You Up, The Power of Love and The Birdy Song.Perhaps part of the issue here is that I tend not to switch off. I was listening to The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony,  the other day. Aside from enjoying it as a decent piece of music I ended up using it in a class to illustrate the determination of personality and to demonstrate character constructs within fiction. But it’s rare I get the chance to listen to any form of music. My mobile has the facility to play various tunes but, in truth, I’ve got several series of lectures stored on there: all of which help wile away those long car journeys that would more usually be served by a background of songs and tunes. That said, if you did come here today looking for good music – these are three of my all time favorite tracks: