What is musical fiction?
This little-known genre does not receive enough recognition; yet, over the years and decades, many bestselling authors have written in this genre, and several of these productions have gone on to become if not household names then at least to gain cult followings.
Think about Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, Michael Turner’s Hard Core Logo or P.F. Kluge’s Eddie and the Cruisers. As it happens, all three were adapted for the big screen to moderate success. Daisy Jones &The Six gained huge popularity on Amazon Prime when released in 2023. Yes, we can also see fictional music on white screens and small screens. What about Rock Star (2001), Roadies (2016) and, of course, the classic This Is Spinal Tap (1984)? To a lesser extent, what about Bill and Ted and Wayne and Garth in their own comic worlds? They all loved their music.
Here’s the thing: a lot of the time, musical fiction can touch upon other fiction genres. My own short story In Your Blood is essentially horror for all the gore that’s in it, but at the end of the day, it’s still musical fiction because the events centre around members of an alternative rock band.
That’s why the gems of this genre often go unnoticed. Musical fiction is barely – if ever – listed as a sub-genre when you go to publish a book. Music might be but as non-fiction, and a book can’t be both fiction and non-fiction at the same time. A musical fiction book ends up dumped in the chaos that is general fiction or – perhaps worse – literary fiction, a genre where it badly fits unless the author was particularly lyrical with their writing – and we’re not talking about how fabulous their imaginary song lyrics might be. Music fans don’t know to go looking in horror or thrillers and don’t want to trawl through hundreds or thousands of books to find one that might centre around music.
There is a trope within the romance genre for rock star romance, perhaps the most popular of music fiction books, owing to the popularity of romance books in general. Books in this genre are perhaps not the most realistic depictions of the music business and what life in a band is like, and are readers of rock star romance necessarily even into rock music? Everyone loves a rock star, right?
Apart from those of a romantic notion, who exactly reads musical fiction?
In this author’s experience, few people do, but it could be due to the difficulty of finding fiction in this genre. The obvious reader group would be those who love music, particularly the musical genre at centre stage in the story, and those who love fiction, perhaps the edgier, more alternative stuff.
What exactly fits into this category of musical fiction then? How do you recognise it? Maybe you’ve read musical fiction and not realised?
Apart from musical fiction, the term I personally prefer and use here, I have also seen this genre referred to as music fiction or rock fiction, the latter applying to fiction where rock music is the main theme. The terms hip-hop fiction and jazz fiction exist too, while a quick search for metal fiction didn’t bring up any relevant results. That doesn’t mean there aren’t books focused on struggling metal bands – I have toyed with ideas on this front, metal being my next favourite genre of music after rock – but there may not be enough for metal fiction to be considered a term, or it’s possible even the authors didn’t realise what they let out into the world. (Unleash hell, in true metal spirit!)
What all musical fiction books have in common is they all have music at their very core of being. Music is major theme in the book, whether it’s about writing a song, the life in a band, the struggles of family relationships along with a rise to fame, learning to play the piano… It’s all about music.
There are musical fiction books that centre around a particular song. While her name now escapes me, I once came across an author who wrote her stories based on her favourite band’s songs, the lyrics playing a big part in how the story unfolded. I have lost count of the number of times a song inspired me to write a story – second only in dreams as a source of inspiration to me – and In Your Blood, which I mentioned earlier, while originally inspired by an idea from another music-related source, I wrote entirely while listening to Muse’s Showbiz album. I would love to know if anyone has ever written a story based on a concept album, such as My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade. One of my favourite bands, Fearless Vampire Killers, wrote all their earlier music based on a world and the events within it that their singer-guitarist Laurence Beveridge created in his Codex Grandomina books.
Sometimes, music can even inspire how a story is written – the rhythm, the flow, the structure. When you think of it, any good sentence should have those three elements, as should any good story, but some skilled writers take it further yet. I wonder what it would be like to strictly write a story while sticking to intro, verse, bridge, chorus, verse…
There are also stories that are fiction as such but focus on real-life musicians. There’s Jenny Manzer’s Save Me, Kurt Cobain, Neil McCormick’s Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelganger (which was also adapted for the larger screen) and many others. This can be a slippery slope and a thin line all at once, and I have thus far buried any ambitions to use real rockers in my writing, no matter how deep the rabbit hole I fell into while researching Richey Edwards’s disappearance during the COVID-19 lockdowns or how fascinating Elvis Presley became to me after watching Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022). (The latter is not exactly fiction, but it’s a stunning film and worth a watch if you have any interest in popular music at all.)
What musical fiction is not is fan fiction. I confess to not being a fan of the latter; I don’t read and don’t write it, but I acknowledge it can be an excellent platform to get into writing. Fan fiction always uses real characters or characters from other mediums – books, TV shows, movies – and expands their stories in that same universe. Using someone else’s creations limits the writer to not being able to financially gain from their creative efforts in that work, so you won’t see those books in stores. Of course, E. L. James very successfully transformed her Twilight fan fiction into the Fifty Shades series. In general, musical fiction comes up with its own characters. OK, if you’re a Bon Jovi fan, you can likely get away with naming your characters Tommy and Gina while taking your inspiration from their songs, but that’s about it. If you start writing fiction about Jon Bon Jovi, it’s fan fiction. If you create your own stories starring Spinal Tap, that’s also fan fiction. If you come up with a band name oDjKH, possibly decide what the name stands for, name its bassist, guitarist and singer, then you’ve got musical fiction. (If you do write it, please let me know because I want to read it!)
So, now you have a better understanding of what musical fiction is and what it is not. You might even have got a few suggestions on what to read or watch next. (Read first, watch after is my advice.)
If this genre gets your heart beating like a snare drum and you want to discuss it with like-minded people, please join the Facebook group I have created for just this purpose!
Happy reading!
Pamela Harju is an award-winning author of musical fiction. She spends her spare time with her dogs and travelling to see rock bands most people have never heard of. She loves tea, big old houses and tattooed men and is happily unmarried to her partner of many years. A native Finn, Pamela lives in the Irish countryside in an old cottage that's always threatening to fall apart. She has a full-size dog agility arena in her back garden. She can play no musical instruments and cannot sing or dance, but she considers herself lucky enough to be friendly with many of her favourite bands and to have some understanding of how the music business works.