The Twilight Saga, by Stephanie Meyer, is a series of four novels and a novella focused around a plain girl and her life after she moves from Florida to Forks, Washington. The clincher of the whole saga is this: she meets and falls in love with a vampire. Who can read minds. Well, every mind apart from hers. And also, her blood smells better than every other human’s blood. Which gives readers the reason for the entire first novel. She’s at a supernatural game of baseball in a mountain field with a family of vampires when a trio of nomadic enemy vampires catch her scent and chase her all the way back to Florida. Oh, and in the second novel, there are also werewolves who are awakened by the prolonged presence of the vampires. Because why not?

Meyer, unlike other better fantasy authors, fails to explain so many things in her novels. For example, why do the vampires sparkle? That was just tossed into the mix. The tidbit that most bothers me is this: Meyer explains that when a human becomes a vampire, the human body freezes into a stronger, more beautiful body. They no longer need to eat food, drink liquids, or sleep like a human. Readers are led to believe that all bodily fluids are eradicated – existing vampires can’t have children. But (SPOILER ALERT) on their honeymoon in the first part of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, while Bella is still human, they conceive a child. Of course, the child is seen as a problem by other vampires and this provides readers and viewers with the whole second part of Breaking Dawn. Holes in the plot aside, Meyer took the world by storm. People were addicted and obsessed with the romance between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen – myself included.

Hey, I was in middle school, at the peak of my awkward stages, and I got swept into the hype. I wore half of the werewolf tribe insignia as a “best friend” necklace for far too long, and I stood in those crowded cattle-corralling-looking lines for upwards of forty-five minutes waiting to see The Twilight Saga: Eclipse for one of my birthdays. I’m not proud of it, but it happened.

A few weeks ago, I was so terribly bored on a day off that I actually watched the entire series. In one sitting. I know, it was awful. But it gave me the opportunity to really loathe the entire saga all over again. I believe I actually groaned aloud at times because the acting seemed to be awful (but actually wasn’t)

However, all groaning aside, I did manage to find one glimmering piece of redemption for the entire saga: the soundtracks rock! The first movie's soundtrack featured bands like Paramore, Linkin Park, Iron & Wine, Muse, and Mutemath. The soundrack for New Moon included Death Cab for Cutie, The Killers, and Bon Iver. Groups like Florence + the Machine, Sia, The Black Keys, and Band of Horses were on the soundtrack for Eclipse. Breaking Dawn: Part I brought back Iron and Wine and Christina Perri and brought in Angus & Julia Stone and Breaking Dawn: Part II featured Ellie Goulding and Green Day.

This looks like the makings of a killer playlist to me. The person responsible for the one saving grace of The Twilight Saga? We have Alexandra Patsavas, the music supervisor of the films, to thank for putting some awesome music into some not-so-awesome movies. The movies may be hated by the actors themselves, but hey, at least the music was alright!