“The answers to all this lie with their psychoanalysts…”

“Quid Plura?” readers regularly suffer through evidence of my terrible taste in music—but you probably didn’t know that Becoming Charlemagne also has a hokey soundtrack all its own. It’s true!

Recently, Julie K. Rose interviewed me about the music that accompanied the writing of the book. Next week, you’ll be able to read the complete interview (with rationalizations for each song choice, I swear), but for now you can hear tantalizing snippets in the podcast on the Writers and Their Soundtracks Blog. If you’re an iTunes user, you can sample the playlist, too. No one but iTunes makes any money if you buy a song, but I assure you, these tunes weave trancelike melodies that slip over the transom of social consciousness and insinuate themselves into your dreams.

As for the weird faces you’re making as you read the playlist: Go on. Really. I’m used to it. As a deejay for my high school radio station, I shared the afternoon airwaves with a committed metalhead and his polar opposite, a lovestruck soul who punctuated our show with mellow R&B dedications to his girlfriend. They found common ground by speaking unkindly of what they called “Jeff music.” Under those conditions, you learn strength of character—because really, there’s no reason not to associate the age of Charlemagne with 1980s English synth-pop. Is there?