Best Music Genres to Listen to While Writing

Complete with artists & recommendations!

4 min readOct 11, 2019

As many writers unfortunately understand, sometimes your favorite music is not applicable when looking to improve productivity. In fact, your favorite genres can even be the worst music to listen to while writing. You end up jamming out to your favorite song, and sometimes even type the lyrics instead of your valuable thoughts on the subject of choice.

Here at GoFable, We’re undeniable… Fine, fresh, fierce… We got it on lock…

I mean … we sympathize with your plight to find the perfect jam to pound out your keys at a brisk pace. Therefore, we’ve compiled a few different genres and artists that work great for us and help us get in the flow.

1. Classical

Before you poo-poo classical music, hear us out. Referred to as The Mozart Effect, listening to classical music for even twenty minutes has been proven to improve cognitive function, memory, and even lower blood pressure. Besides, there are never any lyrics to distract you. Ever! This does not mean the pieces you listen to have to be snoring boring like Pachelbel’s Canon in D — there are actually a lot of really fast paced and dramatic classical pieces that took the world by storm during their time. These are the types of works we recommend you explore.

If you’ve never been a fan, some composers that get our “GoFable Stamp of Approval” would be Claude Debussy, Bach, Mozart, Paganini, Camille Saint-Saëns and Elgar. While only a few names, these composers have libraries with the depth of a lifetime. Even if you don’t like the traditional stringed instruments (for now 😉), there are full symphonic arrangements, trios, duets, and even solos or concertos. ~And~ there are many different renditions of famous pieces performed by classical guitarists, pianists, and even ukulele. Trust us, explore, and there will be something to offer.

Still not convinced? Check out this mystery link to test the waters.

2. Lo — Fi

Omg wow if you have never heard of Lo-Fi you are missing out. Extremely. Like seriously. It is the cake of writing and thinking music. Lo-Fi is a genre that is new wave-y enough to have some very cool edits, while still being mostly instrumental. It is created on soundboards and mixers, and sometimes even has themes like old movie references worked in without being too busy to distract you from your work.

Before thinking too hard to picture this style (words will never perfectly describe music), look up Nujabes, David Cutter Music, and The Jazz Hop Cafe. While these are some of the larger names in the game, the absolute best Lo-Fi sound is found on YouTube since this style of music is still pretty fresh. There is an element of extra enjoyment tied into this genre as well.

These numerous and truly endless YouTube playlists (all over an hour long) tend to have the name of each song and artist with time stamps to mark them. This means a wonderful thing is possible — you can pick your favorite tracks and build your own Work/Study Lo-Fi playlists. Nothing’s better than personalized right? And there are hundreds of compilations to choose from while discovering your own underground artists making truly original styles. So look up Jazz Hop, Lo-fi, Trip Hop, NuJazz or even playlists featuring a certain theme, like 3 AM Thoughts. Start with this one, featuring Dyalla, another recommended artist.

3. Movie Soundtracks

As I’m sure you are beginning to notice in this article, all of the genres so far have been very diverse from each other. This is because each one was hand-picked and deeply **researched** by our writers. These lists are the real deal, so I hope you approach this upcoming section with the same open mind. While perhaps a nerdy thought at first, movie soundtracks are actually a completely perfect writing music genre.

Each sound track is a complete work over two hours long, generated to tell a tale with rising drama, beautiful moments, climaxes and conclusions. Therefore, it is something that changes and keeps your interest for hours. Not to mention: a generic soundtrack is not something that gets enough foot traffic on YouTube to garner any ads. So you’ll get to listen to The Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack with nothing to break your flow for over two hours.

You can even pick the movies you adore — because although listening to a movie soundtrack is not the same as watching your favorite flick for fun, at least you still get to feel all warm and fuzzy while you work. Which, might we say, is much better than listening to some random playlist online with a generic title like “Pump it up!” Our beginning suggestions include: Pirates of the Caribbean, Hamilton, Interstellar, Anything Hans Zimmer (one of the best current composers of our time), 500 Days of Summer, Star Wars, James Bond, Etc.

Conclusion

Our exploration is wrapping up here considering the complete wealth of music these lists and artists have opened up. If one truly dives into this rabbit hole, they would have enough writing music for months. Anything beyond these larger genres for now would be too narrow a taste to satisfy the masses. There are many individual artists that we could recommend listening to when writing (Iron and Wine, Sleeping at Last, Fleet Foxes), however this is too narrow to describe as a genre.