mimblebee answered your question “Anyway,what songs do you all listen to when you need to psych yourself...”
I have a complicated answer? I listen to music the day(s) before sitting down to write so the feeling percolates through my brain for a while? So it's not psyching up so much as getting down to think??? All of AM (Arctic Monkeys)... (1/2)
(there was more!) ...Rammstein to 2004/05, Can You Feel It (Pentagon), a lot of Big Bang??? For actual working music, the "Sense and Sensbility" (1995) OS. (2/2)
Ahhh, I love seeing your list -- thank you so much for sharing with me! I don’t know Pentagon or Big Bang at all; I’m going to give them a listen today. You are ORGANIZED for listening to the music that will inspire you the day before. I agree with you (or at least I think that’s what you mean with your mention of that distinction) that the psych-yourself-up music is different from working music; I”m definitely interested in people’s psych-yourself-up stuff right now.
As for working music, I used to listen to music while I wrote all the time, and has such specific bands and songs associated with particular pairings. Now, unless I’ve made a specific fanmix for myself for that story (so it’s familiar, sets a particular mood or cycles through a particular narrative that fits the story), I usually write in silence/to coffee shop noise/with the background noise of the mister laughing uproariously at something. But I often listen to stuff in the lead-up to writing just to spark ideas or try to energize myself.