Watermelon Theory

All through middle school and high school I was deeply invested in the genre of dystopian ya books, and of course by extension, their movie adaptations. There was a big pop of consumption and production of these types of stories throughout the 2010s in particular. Books like the Legend Series by Marie Lu, The Selection by Kiera Cass, Shatter Me by Taherah Mafi, Divergent by Veronica Roth, Scott Westerfields the Uglies, The Maze Runner by James Dashner, and perhaps most famously the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins dominated much of my reading and had a huge fan base. Whether or not these books were adapted to film didn’t dictate how they were tied to music. Fan playlists, edits, author song recommendations, and of course, movie soundtracks all helped translate the genre into music. So today, we are going to be listening to some of the music that scored the dystopian genre. This is not to say any of these songs were made for the genre or to intentionally fit into a category. They find new meaning when projected into the stories we are so fond of– that’s the main common thread between the tracks you’ll be hearing. So without further ado, let’s hear some 2010’s dystopian daydream songs.