Belly’s Tanya Donnelly on The Mission

I don't listen to soundtracks a lot. I'm sorry to say that I'm so lyrically focused sometimes I miss out on a lot of instrumental stuff. There's always music playing in our house, and in some ways it's easier for me if there are no words attached, because I do get distracted by what someone's saying in a song. This is the only music-only album that I listen to, and the instruments, those melody lines are like lyrics to me. There's just something about this body of music that I'm addicted to. I've always been an Ennio fan, he's very much a part of the American psyche in some ways, because of the Westerns. But this one, every landmark moment in my life I'm sort of like, "Our wedding. How about the Mission soundtrack coming down the aisle?" It was on when I gave birth to my first child. There's just something about it where I feel like it's like my shadow in some ways. It syncs up with things for some reason, with my clock and my timing... it's very therapeutic to me, and helps me process things. And I also have written lyrics to it, and used those lyrics in other songs. So it's been helpful, practically as well. I was listening to it a lot when I was writing Whiskey Tango Ghosts. It's like a palate cleanser for me – it would sort of clear my brain and bring new sentences to me that I was missing in the songs I was actually writing.