The Midnight Dance – Playlist
Music is the only way I’ve found to store raw emotions, which makes it an essential part of planning every one of my books, but particularly books in a series where the planning takes place so long before I actually start writing.
The Midnight Dance was planned before I’d finished The Spindle’s Curse, because I knew I wanted to weave the two stories together a little. So I knew I wanted to write a Cinderella story and I knew that Cinderella would take over Brian’s sublease and I knew that it would take place directly after The Spindle’s Curse, which meant it started in October and would probably run through the Christmas period of 2018. All of this was set down long before Brian had even found true love. So, While Brian and Philip were still courting, I was already thinking about Elam (whose name came from “Ella” – Cinderella).
Around this time, I encountered a man in my work life (also writing, but the corporate kind) who was so thoroughly unpleasant and condescending to his employees that I honestly didn’t want to work with him. However, there was no way around it and I had to. I started to imagine what could make me understand this person and Charles was born. The real life man has nothing else in common with Charles and I' can fortunately report I no longer work with him. But I will forever be grateful that I did, because working with him gave me Charles!
Now I had Elam literally dancing around my head and I had Charles struggling with his sexuality and All The Feels, whole scenes between the two developing in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t write them yet because I needed to finish The Spindle’s Curse first. So, I needed some way to store not only the plot elements, but the emotions that made these characters work. Music to the rescue.
I have uploaded the Midnight Dance playlist on Spotify, but here’s the track list and what each song meant to me when I was writing. I hope you enjoy!
The Midnight Dance track list
The Music and the Mirror (From “A Chorus Line” ) – Michael Longoria
The Nutcracker Ballet Suit: “Pas De Deux” – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Tchaikovsky)
Line Without a Hook – Ricky Montgomery
Waltz of the Flowers – London Symphony Orchestra (Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker)
Power. – Isak Danielson
Dream Sweet in Sea Major – ミラクルミュージカル
Hand over Hand – Roland Faunte
Young and Beautiful – Glass Animals
You’re All I Want – Cigarettes After Sex
Patience – Hollow Coves
Melting Waltz – Abel Korzenioqski
Somewhere in my Memory (From “Home Alone”) – John Williams
The Christmas Tree – London Symphony Orchestra (Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker)
Journey Through The Snow – London Symphony Orchestra (Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker)
Swan Lake (Epic Trailer Version) – Hidden Citizens
What I Did for Love (from “A Chorus Line”) – Josh Groban
Dear Wormwood – The Oh Hellos
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Main Theme (feat. Elinar Selvik)
Carry You (feat. Fleurie) – Ruelle
Can’t Help Falling in Love (Recorded Live at Daytrotter) – Ingrid Michaelson
Count Me In – Early Winters
The Midnight Dance song breakdown
Songs mean different things to different people, but here are the parts of the songs that spoke to me or ended up influencing parts of The Midnight Dance.
The Music and the Mirror (From “A Chorus Line” )
“Give me somebody to dance for. Give me somebody to show. Let me wake up in the morning to find, I have somewhere exciting to go. To have something that I can believe in, to have someone to be. Use me. Choose me. God, I’m a dancer. A dancer dances…”
When I first envisioned Elam’s character as a Cinderella who wanted to be a ballerina, I immediately thought of A Chorus Line, the Broadway musical about wanting to be in a musical on Broadway. The whole show is the audition process, where dancers have to reveal their very souls in order to maybe be chosen for a coveted spot in the background of a big production.
While this particular song inspired the first scene of The Midnight Dance, I took quite a few pieces of inspiration from the musical because it was such a good reference for what Elam was feeling in the book. The song “At the Ballet” is about a girl escaping a difficult home life by falling into ballet because “everything was beautiful at the ballet” and this is something else I gave to Elam. Then, of course, What I Did for Love also comes up later.
(Complete ADHD-brain side note: Hamilton opened in the same theatre as A Chorus Line and the cast did a tribute, where the chorus from Hamilton sang one of the songs. You can see it on YouTube. I would have loved to bring that into the scene where Charles and Elam go to Hamilton but there just wasn’t a good place to dump that fun fact.)
The Nutcracker Ballet Suit: Pas De Deux
When I realized that The Midnight Dance would be going over Christmas in New York and featuring a ballet dancer, I immediately knew that The Nutcracker would have to be a part of it.
The Pas de Deux is the romantic dance between the Sugar Plum Fairy and her prince and it was definitely the song I listened to the most while writing Charles and Elam scenes. If you ever watch a video of it with the Balanchine choreography, you’ll see how it could very well be a metaphor for their relationship.
Instead of one dance at a ball, this Cinderella story is a whole book of the two dancing with each other.
Line Without a Hook – Ricky Montgomery
“I don’t really give a damn about the way you touch me
When we’re alone
You can hold my hand
If no one’s home
Do you like it when I’m away?
If I went and hurt my body, baby
Would you love me the same?”
This song captures Elam’s feelings when Charles seems to like him but sends mixed messages or is embarrassed to be with him. Later in the story, all the references to a broken body and broken bones and being a burden helped me capture both how lost and frustrated Elam felt, but also how Charles felt when he wasn’t sure how to care for Elam and finally had to confront the depth of his own fears.
“Was it something I said to make you feel like you’re a burden?
Oh, and if I could take it all back
I swear that I would pull you from the tide
….
And I found hope in a heart attack
Oh at last, it is past
Now I’ve got it, and you can’t have it back
…
Baby, I am a wreck when I’m without you
I need you here to stay.”
“Darling, when I’m fast asleep
I’ve seen this person watching me
Saying, “Is it worth it? Is it worth it? Tell me, is it worth it?” Oh
Guess there is something, and there is nothing
There is nothing in between
And in my eyes, there is a tiny dancer
Watching over me”
The Nutcracker Ballet Suit: Waltz of the Flowers
I needed to choose a song for Elam to be dancing to when Charles walked in to find him (this was one of the earliest scenes I had in mind for the book). I considered which Nutcracker songs were likely to be playing on the radio. The March and Trepak would have also been options. However, Waltz of the Flowers is the one with the beautiful solo dance. I watched so many videos of that dance to find the exact moment in the Balanchine choreography when Charles would walk in (even though I’m pretty sure no one else would care how accurate it was!)
Power
“When you move, you make my oceans move too
…
I was lost until I found me in you
I saw a side of me that I was scared to
But now I hear my name and I’m running your way
All I feel as I get closer to you
Is the desire to move like you do
So now I hear my name and I’m running your way
I am ready now”
This song was definitely more about the mood than the lyrics. However, I feel like the song captures the magnetic desire that Charles feels for Elam and it encapsulates the moment that he gives in to his desire after he sees Elam dancing.
Dream Sweet in Sea Major
I love the surreal nature of this song. It’s an emotional landscape of happiness far above the city that I listened to a lot while writing Chapter 22.
Hand Over Hand
This is Charles’s song. Whenever I needed to get in touch with Charles, I listened to this song. I must have played it a hundred times, trying to weave the emotion into the narrative.
Young and Beautiful
“Will you still love me
When I’m no longer young and beautiful?
Will you still love me
When I got nothing but my aching soul?”
This is the question that was already at the back of Elam’s head even before the broken leg. He believes his only worth is in his ability to dance and the body that he has sculpted for that purpose. You see that when he first goes home with Charles — he thinks that the only reason that Charles wants to sleep with him is because of his dancer’s body and is surprised when Charles is willing to huddle with him under the blankets. It’s a theme that comes up over and over again for Elam and it’s why breaking his leg hits him so hard, because he no longer has the only thing he thought he had going for him.
You’re all I want
The words of this song are not really relevant, but the mood is a juxtaposition between sadness and hope and for me it perfectly captured the mood after Charles gets back from the police station. They’re both scared and sorry, but also slowly realising that the other feels the same way they do. The song influenced this line:
“Or, it’s okay if you’d rather keep things as they are. Friends with benefits, I think, right? Given the circumstances, I understand if you don’t want to get too entang…”
He cuts me off with another kiss. His hand threads through my hair, pulling my face closer to his so our mouths are fused as our tongues dance. My blood heats even as my lungs burn for air. When he pulls back again, we’re both panting.
“Yes,” he says.
“To which?”
“To everything. I want everything. I want you.”
Patience
This is Elam’s song. Like Hand Over Hand with Charles, this was the song I listened to whenever I wanted to get in touch with Elam.
Melting Waltz
This was the song I listened to while writing the road trip and Chicago scenes. As with the next few songs, it’s largely happy and romantic but also has a thread of worry that runs through it as the two anticipate the challenges of hiding what they are to each other and as Elam is forced to hide his identity.
Somewhere in my Memory
I listened through a few Christmas playlists to find inspiration for the scenes at the White farm. This one from Home Alone, of all things, captured the mix of emotions. The anticipation, the pretty decorations and friendly people, but also there’s that always present ominous undercurrent. The title was pretty apt too as Charles remembers his childhood.
The Nutcracker Ballet Suit: The Christmas Tree
This song plays in the ballet when the family decorates the Christmas tree, so what better song for while Charles decorates the Christmas tree with the kids. Once again, though, this song has a mysterious (or ominous in this case) undercurrent. There’s genuine happiness but also a little bit of fear.
The Nutcracker Ballet Suit: Journey Through the Snow
This was the song I listened to when Charles took Elam out into the snow to gift him the locket. It’s an incredibly emotional composition that encapsulates wonder, happiness and the majesty of a world covered in layers of snow. It was the perfect backing track to confess love for the first time.
Swan Lake (Epic Trailer Version)
I referenced Swan Lake, the famous ballet, so many times in The Midnight Dance that I joked with friends that I’d actually written a Swan Lake retelling more than a Cinderella one. There are the overt references, when Charles and Elam actually watch it and when Elam says he doesn’t know if the’s the white or the black swan, but it also played into the idea of the twins (Charles the white swan, Zane the black swan), and even Elam’s character who is cursed by his wicked stepmother until a handsome prince discovers him dancing.
The scene when Charles is outed to his family was the culmination of this. In Swan Lake, the prince confesses his love to the swan and invites her to a ball, but the evil wizards sends his daughter (disguised as the swan princess) in her place and the prince accidentally proposes to her instead. When the true swan princess sees this, she dies of a broken heart. (The “dying swan” dance is so dramatic that my mom used to tell me I was having a ‘dying swan’ moment whenever I had a meltdown growing up).
This scene is a dying swan moment for them both. For Charles, literally gasping on the floor, but also for Elam when he hears Charles asking the family to let him stay (which Elam misinterprets as him choosing his family) and his heart breaks.
The Hidden Citizen epic trailer version of the song captures the darkness and the drama of the characters, lowest point.
What I did for Love (From “A Chorus Line” )
As Elam catches the train back to NYC, he sings this song to himself. It’s another reference to A Chorus Line. In the musical, a dancer is injured and the director asks the others auditioning what they would do if they could never dance again, which is also applicable to Elam’s story (something he is very aware of). But in the context of leaving Charles, the song encapsulates how happy he is that he at least got to have that amazing experience of loving Charles even if it could never last. He was mentally preparing for this moment from the start. He never truly let himself believe that they could last. It was a risk he took willingly knowing that Charles was a ‘closet case’ and he doesn’t regret making that choice.
Dear Wormwood
“There before the threshold
I saw a brighter world beyond myself
And in my hour of weakness
You were there to see my courage fail
For the years have been long
And you have taught me well to sit and wait
Planning without acting
Steadily becoming what I hate”
This song reflects Charles’s state of mind here towards the end of the story, when he stands up to his family for the first time and openly embraces his sexual identity.
“I know who I am now
I know who I want to be
I want to be more than this devil inside of me”
The title of the song indicates it’s a response to C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters between a demon and his protege. The song is a letter from the human to the “devil inside” (Screwtape’s protege, Wormwood) telling him he’s failed to prevent him from achieving salvation. I liked the religious imagery because, in conversion therapy, homosexuality is often referred to as “the devil inside”. One of the main things holding Charles back from allowing himself to love Elam is his fear that it will keep him from salvation. At this point in the story, Charles is choosing to let go of that belief and the self hatred that accompanies it and embrace the “brighter world beyond”, where he can be himself with Elam.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Main Theme (feat. Einar Selvik)
I know, this is a hilariously out of place addition to the playlist. I wrote the end of The Midnight Dance in the month that this game was released, so I was hearing this tune a lot. I started hearing it in my head when writing because the emotional tune perfectly encapsulated those last few scenes chapters for me. Especially Charle’s journey back to Manhattan and his search for Elam and the moment he reunites with him.
Carry you
A song that reflects how Charles and Elam are committed to caring for each other going forward. Their problems haven’t disappeared, but they have each other.
Can’t Help Falling in Love
“Wise men say only fools rush in, oh
But I can’t help falling in love with you
Shall I stay
Would it be a sin
If I can’t help falling in love with you
Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
So take my hand, and take my whole life too
Cause I can’t help falling in love with you”
It’s a classic for a reason. Charles and Elam are going to build a life together.
I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of my musical inspiration!