Why a Booktrail?
2000s and back: Which songs would be on the soundtrack of YOUR life?
Greatest Hits
What you need to know before your trail
One day. Sixteen songs. The soundtrack of a lifetime…
Alone in her studio, Cass Wheeler is taking a journey back into her past. After a silence of ten years, the singer-songwriter is picking the sixteen tracks that have defined her – sixteen key moments in her life – for a uniquely personal Greatest Hits album.
If you could choose songs which defined your life, which songs would you choose and why? What memories do these songs bring back?
Travel Guide
The Soundtrack of your life
No locations as such in this novel but there is a strong sense of the London Music scene over the years and the iconic songs and singers who have made and coloured the British music landscape what it is today. When you take a journey back in time, there is a lot to be found in the lyrics of the songs of the time. Everyone has songs they remember as defining moments in their life and Cass, being a singer songwriter has more reason than most to put the records back on and reminisce:
Laura Bennett is working with acclaimed Kathryn Williams on the songs featured in the novel (the lyrics are featured in the novel) and they will be making an album. The lyrics of each song act as a framing device for the entire novel and frame the chapters surrounding it. Themes of childhood, growing up, working on music, relationships with friends and boyfriends merge together to fix up a musical interlude of life itself.
There is mention of places Cass has travelled to including Washington DC and the world’s biggest library and events hall where she finds it stranger to hear her music sung by other people. A tour of the music halls and musical interludes of one girl and woman’s life
Step back into the past into the glitz and glamour of the music business throughout the 60s and 70s. This was the heyday of Brit pop, new and upcoming stars of tomorrow and of course as well as the singing and musick, there were also days of hedonism. You can smell the cigarettes in the dark recording dens, hear the echos of the underground pubs…and of course hear the music of Cassie’s life throughout. Any one who has lived through the 1960s and 1970s will find this novel musically very accurate and evocative indeed.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
What a lovely and unique idea for a novel – the story of your life told through song. A book of memories which conjures up the great singer song writers of their day and the songs you yourself have written. The Greatest Hits is a clever title as well as a clever idea – we all have soundtracks to our lives don’t we? Songs we remember as a child – where we were, what we were doing, the smells of that hot day on the beach whilst something was playing on the radio?
Music is so powerful and so evocative – it’s very clever to write the story of your life through songs – and the author is working with a real life musician to record them as they appear in the book lyrics too! Of course Cassie in the book is fictional but by the end I was starting to believe she was as famous as Janis Joplin and somehow I’d missed her music.
A homage to British music and the British music scene of the 1960s and 1970s. The author has really gone to town on her research and I suddenly had an urge to go into the loft and dig out some of my mother’s old vinyl – which thankfully is experiencing a resurgence. I will certainly be buying the soundtrack to go with this book, playing it on my record player and soaking in the musical charm of Greatest Hits
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Greatest Hits
Author/Guide: Laura Barnett Destination:London Departure Time: 2000s looking back
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