Almost exactly a decade ago I was right here with a playlist for my second novel The Last Illusion, but no book of mine has been more playlist-friendly than this—my fifth book/third novel, Tehrangeles! In fact, David, I imagined you asking me to do this and then you did! I was very ready as I had notes from many years ago all about this very thing! Music has increasingly become a huge part of my practice—and in this book’s case, it felt like I had an audio moodboard well before the visual one. Remember those weird walks we’d all take in the early pandemic when every day ran into the next with no real markers, just this eerie endless deadly spring? Well, I was often walking to take breaks from this most recent draft (I did so many drafts of this book, that I lost count!) and I was listening to these songs to allow me to tap directly into my characters and their dilemmas. I associated many of the songs with different characters and different sections of the book so I will try to get into it without too many spoilers, but all in all if I had to describe the sound of this novel it’s whatever all this sounds like: Petra Collins Day-Glo candyscape camp and never-ending hot girl partylands and Persian kitty purrs and teenage vocal-fried laughter and backstage runway supermodel mutterings and pandemic pots-and-pans banging and vape hisses and iPhone wind chime phone alerts and Paris Hilton cooing “slivin’” and Britney Spears babbling in her baby doll register. . .
Flume “Never Be Like You”
This is an old 2016 hit that sounds like a classic at this point and I always imagine Roxanna, the hot messiest sister, waking up and snorting a line of one of two white powdery stimulants, with this playing absently in the background. Roxi acts way older than she is and even though she’s in high school she’s in the influencer A-list while also being a constantly cancelled functional drug addict. Absolute anti-model-minority to the max! She’d almost consider this song an oldie and I can imagine her very much feeling the indulgent despair of the ingenue of the song.
The Complete Doja Cat
Roxi’s entire psyche is drenched in Doja and she is mentioned in this book actually more than once. The “Millions-thousands-billions Bobs on me like Dylan/Blondes on me like Hilton” of “Rules” is just very Roxanna as is “All y’all bitches was wrong/Talking about I fell off/you ain’t even get on/bitch, bitch, yaw/all y’all bitches is precious/wait, I meant to say jealous/all y’all bitches is jealous/bitch bitch!” But so is “Paint the Town Red” Doja who has been through all kinds of fan drama online and quips “yeah bitch I said what I said/I’d rather be famous instead.” And of course the “Say So” TikTok dance was the first TikTok dance I ever memorized—it’s hard to imagine early pandemic without visualizing Charli D’Amelio doing that head-knock gesture to this song.
BLACKPINK “Ice Cream”
There is a lot of K-pop and a lot of sweets in this book, and this song involves both. It also came out while I was writing my last draft. I have always loved K-pop but preparing for Mina’s obsession with it, I did a deep dive and then just got hooked. This was a big crossover hit as Selena Gomez was in it. It literally sounds like spun sugar and whipped cream and soft serve to me!
Charli XCX “360”
This came out only recently but I know the Milani girls would all love it. Itis just the ultimate hot girl/party girl anthem and I have to say my book does feel fair to file under hot girl/party girl literature. The music video feels so Tehrangeles-coded – I think every Iranian wants so badly want Charli to be West Asian (she’s part South Asian so close but not quite). “I’m everywhere/I’m so Julia-a-a-a-a-a” (as in Julia Fox!) is something my characters would say.
6arelyhuman feat. Tara Yummy “Faster N Harder”
I love Iranian American Youtuber and TikTok content creator/socialite Tara Yummy and when I heard her voice on this track I got even more hooked. It’s such an infectious speed-pop adderally pregame song. And if this book ever become a movie or TV series, I hope Tara auditions for it!
Paris Hilton “Stars Are Blind”
Okay, this is 2006 but this song suddenly made a comeback and seemed embraced by Gen Z, as Paris herself got kind of reembraced during pandemic. Paris a Tehrangeles epigraph but that is mostly because Roxi is obsessed with her.
Addison Rae “Obsessed”
I actually think this is a really fun pop song that should have been a bigger hit in 2021—very well-produced—but Addison is mentioned in the book too! “You say you’re obsessed with me/So I took a second and said me too/I’m obsessed with me as much as you/Say you’d die for me I’d die for me too.” The ultimate self-love (self-lust??) song just feels like one that the Milani girls would succumb to, for sure.
George Harrison “Got My Mind Set on You”
Originally recorded in 1962, this is peak dad-rock and I really see Al Milani loving it. Harrison was always my favorite Beatle and this song always got so much airplay when I was a kid, so I can just see our Persian patriarch snapping his fingers to this in his vintage Maybach or something.
The Weeknd “Starboy”
This is another 2016 song (a good year in music!) and I imagine it playing in that scene where one of my queer and semi-closeted protagonists meets her first love. I don’t want to spoil too much but, yeah, this song just hits so much more beautifully appropriated by young queer women.
DJ Khaled ft Drake “Popstar”
I am not normally a Drake or DJ Khaled fan but this song always reminds me of the early pandemic. Especially the unintentionally (intentionally?) hilarious line “2020 I came to fuck it up” which. . . well, 2020 was not a “fuck it up” year unless you mean “fuck it up” in the “fucked up” way which. . . yeah. I know Al the dad would have loved it during his midlife crisis (I can hear him humming to “bitches calling my phone like I’m locked up nonstop. . .I’m a popstar not a doctor”) The video has that cabin fever vibe with Justin Bieber crashing Drake’s pad and lip-syncing to the whole song while the house turns into one big party. It looks like they are enjoying lockdown but, um, also superspreading and, well, a superspreader party is one of the central nightmares of this novel of mine. Bieber wakes up, with his wife Hailey, and realizes he was dreaming. It ends with them saying “I love you” to each other and walking the dog while Drake calls (presumably to make this video?) I guess a covid era classic though not a single mask in the music video, welp!
Hayedeh “Gole Sangam”
This was the most beautiful emotional Persian ballad I heard my entire childhood and it’s truly a Persian classic. Hayedeh was my favorite Persian pop singer—a genius but also a high drama diva! Iranians made fun of her being heavier and her alleged coke use, but I just found her stunning and supremely talented, with the best voice of them all! She didn’t look as western-friendly as Iran’s pop queen Googoosh, but that was made her even more special to me. The depth of this song really makes me think of Homa, my novel’s avoidant, depressive matriarch who cannot deal with the antics of her family. There is an almost unspoken yearning that Homa feels that gets vocalized—wailed!—in this song.
Andy featuring La Toya Jackson “Tehran”
This is the campiest Tehrangeles anthem of all time! And somehow Persian pop star Andy was able to get La Toya Jackson involved! It’s like a fever dream from my childhood but it came out in 2017. La Toya lip-syncing “daram meeram beh Tehroon” (I am going to Tehran) and “tangeh delam” (my heart aches) doing “gher” (sexy/flirty Persian dance moves) is just too good to be true! It looks like they are at a very opulent Tehrangeles wedding venue (a ballroom, of course) also. The optics and the sound just have the correct mix of manic bicultural camp and desperate longing to capture my wayward Tehrangelenos.
Lana del Rey “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”
This came out in the early pandemic and just the title alone is so Haylee Milani, our resident paranoid conspiracy theorist. But I had a lot of Lana lyrics in earlier drafts before I realized I could not afford the permissions—Lana is just very much a Tehrangelena deity like Pari the Persian cat actually. Ethereal, eerie, idyllic, disturbing, wistful, and sad—it’s a perfect song for all the quiet moments in Tehrangeles, which for me were my favorite parts to write.
Porochista Khakpour’s playlist for her novel The Last Illusion
Porochista Khakpour’s playlist for her novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects