Emily Layden’s novel Once More from the Top is an immersive debut about ambition and the music industry.
The Washington Post wrote of the book:
“Layden’s immersive mystery looks behind the scenes of celebrity music culture and weighs the price of stardom.””
In her own words, here is Emily Layden’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Once More from the Top:
One of the best parts of writing Once More From The Top was the excuse it gave me to make myself a student of pop music: music history, music theory, music production and musicology. As I wrote, I listened more widely than I ever had before, reaching through the decades and across genres to understand my fictional artist’s roots; this playlist isn’t that, but instead an edited selection of the contemporary music I see in conversation with the novel. In part a thematic tour through the book, in part a collection of the art and artists Dylan Read would find herself compared to, were she a real artist working today, this is Once More From The Top: The Soundtrack.
“making the bed,” Olivia Rodrigo – Dylan Read knows that it’s a dangerous cliché to say that a young artist is wise beyond her years, but there’s nonetheless an aching self-awareness in Olivia Rodrigo’s music that can’t be ignored. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t wanna be where I am / Gettin’ drunk at a club with my fair-weather friends,” she sings on this standout track off her sophomore album GUTS: “But it’s me who’s been makin’ the bed.”
“American Teenager,” Ethel Cain – One of the things Dylan struggles most with in Once More From The Top is the difference between her public and private personas. Interestingly, it’s a tension that’s been blown open by the next generation of artists: Like Chappell Roan’s “project,” Ethel Cain is a “character.” These creators are challenging the assumption that intimacy between the artist and their fans is necessary for the work to resonate; it’s a notable shift, and worth contrasting with the struggles that have defined millennial fandom.
“Ribs,” Lorde – Friendship – especially those friendships formed in girlhood—can be as defining, exhilarating, and heartbreaking as romantic love—and yet it is rarely given the same treatment in art. This song off Lorde’s breakout album Pure Heroine knows that’s a paradigm worth shifting.
“This Is What Makes Us Girls,” Lana Del Rey – Dylan and Lana would be contemporaries, but their ages and the timing of their comings-up aren’t their only parallels: The artist Lana Del Rey is from a small town in way upstate New York, near where I imagined Once More From The Top’s Thompson Landing. It’s easy to imagine Dylan and Kelsey in the same “small town firelight” or at the same “local dive” as Lana sings about on this track off 2012’s Born to Die.
“You’re Gonna Go Far,” Noah Kahan feat. Brandi Carlile – On this bonus track off the extended EP Stick Season (Forever), the bard of small towns sings about a friend (a lover?) who made it out. When the song concludes with Kahan and Carlile harmonizing “We ain’t angry at you, love / you’re the greatest thing we lost,” there’s a choose-your-own-adventure application to OMFTT: They could be talking about Kelsey, or they could be talking about Dylan.
“Ghost On,” Angel Olsen – Despite Nashville’s skepticism of interlopers, country’s specific language and lyrics-forward production makes it rich territory for artistic experiment. From Springsteen’s Western Stars to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, I love when an artist intentionally takes a tour through the genre—as Angel Olsen does on 2022’s Big Time. It helps that the lyrics are right on the proverbial OMFTT nose: “The past is with us, it plays a part / How can we change it? How do we start?”
“Made Like That,” Sierra Ferrell – “I’ll be waitin’ right here for your beck and call,” Sierra Ferrell sings on this penultimate track off 2021’s Long Time Coming: “I can’t help it, I’m made like that.” Her voice rasps lightly over a production that sounds vaguely like something off a wartime radio show—of another time, or something left behind. But it turns out the narrator isn’t rooted in the past: By the end, she makes a choice to try to change what she’s spent several minutes insisting she “can’t help.” It reminds me of Kelsey.
“Daddy Lessons,” Beyoncé – 2016’s Lemonade is the best divorce album that wasn’t a divorce album, and this country-tinged track is emblematic of the record’s vast ambitions: A wholly-unexpected country-tinged production with lyrics that place the artist’s marriage in the context of her childhood. While the accompanying film is a piece of genre-defining art, it’s the kind of layered work that Dylan strives for in her own visual album.
“Circles Around This Town,” Maren Morris – In the lead single off Maren Morris’s 2022 record Humble Quest, she sings openly about the ambition and hustle required of a songwriter. “I drove circles around this town / tryin’ to write circles around this town,” she says. This isn’t only a song about hard work; it’s a song about wanting to be the best. And that’s something Dylan can relate to.
“Heartland,” Hailey Whitters – Even before Kelsey disappears, Dylan makes herself a student of country music; it’s a genre that loves its unique tropes and conventions, and Dylan is drawn to it in part because it feels like country can be learned. This track off of Hailey Whitters’ sophomore album is built around one of my favorite songwriting tricks, a simple bit of word play where a phrase is repeated but with its meaning flipped: “You’ve gotta let your heart land,” she sings—perhaps in the American Heartland where she came from.
“la,” Kelsea Ballerini – “I ask myself, does it feed my soul or my anxiety?” Kelsea Ballerini sings on this track off her 2020 self-titled album, wondering whether she belongs in La La Land—or if she even wants to. It’s a push-pull that’s mirrored in Dylan relationship to fame and the trappings of success in Once More From The Top.
“cowboy take me away,” Brittney Spencer – Country is really intensely aware of its own legacy, as Dylan knows and as she discovers when she joins the supergroup The Wildflowers, and it was important to me on this playlist to show generations of artists in communication with one another. Here, Brittney Spencer covers a hit by the once-famously-exiled Chicks—one barrier-breaking artist paying homage to another.
“right where you left me,” Taylor Swift – This song is an easter egg (or a spoiler), and you’ll get why when you read the book.
“I Remember Everything,” Zach Bryan feat. Kacey Musgraves – It’s impossible to make a country-leaning playlist in 2024 and not include Zach Bryan, who would famously prefer that I not pigeonhole him into any genre at all. But this is a book about memory and storytelling, and both are so sharp in this song: “No you’ll never be the man that you always swore / but I’ll remember you singin’ in that ’88 Ford.”
“Fair,” The Secret Sisters – There are songs on this playlist meant to evoke Dylan, and some meant to evoke Kelsey, and some meant to evoke how Dylan thought about or saw herself in comparison to Kelsey. Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle harmonize like Simon & Garfunkel in a track that takes a “Scarborough Fair” production to the homonym: “I never touched the darkness, I never went astray / I was treasured every moment, every single day…can you tell me how that’s fair?”
“Amelie,” Gracie Abrams – “I met a girl once / she sort of ripped me open,” Gracie Abrams whisper-sings on this song off her début EP. “Amelie” might be about romantic love or it might be about friendship, but the beauty of the song is that either is entirely possible. It might even be about both things at once.
“Seventeen,” Sharon Van Etten – There are seventeen tracks on this playlist, this is the seventeenth, Kelsey disappeared when she was seventeen—I’m having a little fun with this one, which is something Dylan would have done. Layered with Kate Bush-y synths, the lament “I used to be free, I used to be seventeen” becomes by the song’s end, “I used to feel free, or was it just a dream?” It sounds harsh—but Van Etten’s delivery is full of empathy and yearning for the narrator’s younger self, or the versions of her younger self she sees in today’s teenagers. This song rules.
You can listen to the Once More From The Top playlist on Spotify.
Emily Layden is the author of All Girls, which she developed and wrote an adaptation of for HBO. A graduate of Stanford University, Emily has had her writing appear in The New York Times, Marie Claire, The Billfold, and Runner’s World. A former high school English teacher, she lives in upstate New York.