In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Anna North’s Bog Queen magically merges two storylines, two thousand years apart, into an engrossing novel perfect (and necessary) for our current time.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“A remarkably crafted tale that asks important questions about the imprint we leave on our loved ones, our culture, and our land.”
In her own words, here is Anna North’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Bog Queen:
I’ve always used music when I write. Sometimes I give my characters particular theme songs that help me get into their heads (I did this for each narrator of my second novel, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark). Other times I’ll use a song or an entire album as a way to set the right tone in my mind as I work on a particular scene or section.
But my latest novel, Bog Queen, found me at a weird time in my music-listening life. Something about having a second child really messed with my relationship to music. I’m a lot more exhausted than I was when we had just one, and whatever spare mental energy I have has gone toward reading and writing, not listening. My younger kid is three now and I’m starting to feel this change a little bit — I’m finally listening to pop again, for instance. For a while there, though, my most-played list on Spotify was all stuff like “White Noise Two Hours” and “Let a Frown Be Your Umbrella.”
All that is to say that my playlist for Bog Queen is going to be more idiosyncratic than playlists past! Bog Queen is the story of a young forensic anthropologist called to investigate a recently-discovered bog body in northern England. It’s also the story of an Iron Age druid trying to make her mark on a rapidly-changing world, and the mossy landscape that ties these two women together. It’s a murder mystery, and a historical novel, and I also like to think of it as a story about the power of the non-human world and how people sometimes overestimate our importance among other living things. Here’s my playlist:
- “Joan in the Garden,” The Decemberists
This is the main song I used to get myself in the mood for writing Bog Queen — especially in revisions when I was really trying to make sure everything felt right. It is — well, it’s a 19-minute long epic about Joan of Arc, apparently inspired by Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan. It is very Decemberists, but I like that. It was exactly the right thing for a project that’s partially set in the distant past, and that plays with ideas of visions, divining, and the supernatural. I liked to put this on and take a morning walk before getting to work — bonus if it was raining.
- “The Reapers,” The Decemberists
The fact that the second song on this list is also by The Decemberists should tell you something about how little I’ve been getting out of my musical comfort zone these days. That said, I think it also captures the mood of the book — vaguely archaic, a little sexy, a little death-y. It kind of reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” a longtime favorite of mine.
- “The Bog Body,” Viagra Boys
Obviously had to put this on the list. People started sending me “The Bog Body” as soon as I announced the book, which I greatly enjoyed (honestly I get a lot of my music recs now from readers on Instagram, so please keep them coming). It’s a weird, punky banger with lines like “do you even know the difference between a swamp and an ancient bog?” The Viagra Boys are quite correct that “in a bog you are pickled, in a swamp you would decompose” — obviously they have done their research into the unique preservative powers of the anaerobic peat environment.
- “Lady Divine,” by Alela Diane
This is actually an old favorite that I’ve been revisiting. I used to listen to Alela Diane’s To Be Still when I first moved to New York and was working on Sophie Stark — I first heard it in a coffee shop where I’d gone with my little writing notebook. This is my favorite track, and I think it has druid-y vibes: “I chant to the black/You were my lady divine.”
- “Resurrection Fern,” by Iron & Wine
I listened to this song on repeat in grad school, when I was finishing my first novel, but I think it’s apropos here too. The lyrics are extremely weird: “We’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire/ Both our tender bellies wound in baling wire.” What? While it remains unclear to me why the speaker and his lover are covered in wire, I do like the haunted, elegaic mood of this song. I think it pairs well with my book, which I hope has some haunted vibes. Also, I enjoy the reference to the resurrection fern, which is real.
- “Brutal,” by Olivia Rodrigo
Kind of a left turn here, but I wanted to include a track from Sour because it’s the last album I really listened to on repeat before I had my second kid and entered my music black hole. I had Olivia Rodrigo on a lot when I was just starting to work on the first draft of Bog Queen. To me Brutal is about being a teenager and craving yet also hating attention, and it makes me think of the druid a little bit, since she’s a young person trying to carve out a place in society. She’s a lot more naive than the speaker of Brutal, though — it was fun for me to write her because she’s very self-confident even when she shouldn’t be, which is not really a problem I’ve struggled with in my own life.
- “John Saw That Number,” by Neko Case
I’ve always loved this song, and I think it’s a good companion for Bog Queen because it’s about having visions and eating weird stuff (to say more would be a spoiler). Case refers to the verse in Matthew that describes John the Baptist eating “locusts and honey” — apparently there’s some debate over whether this refers to actual locusts or a type of plant, but I prefer to believe the locusts were real.
- “Lafayette,” by Orville Peck
I got into Orville Peck after Outlawed came out (another Instagram rec), and Bronco remains my favorite of his albums so far. It’s hard to pick one track because they’re all so good, but “Lafayette” is probably the one I listen to the most. More Outlawed than Bog Queen, probably, but I did listen to this throughout the BQ writing process. It’s a sad song, but it really propels you — I like the idea of memory and regret as sort of frenetic and high-energy, and of a “last-born son” forced to make his own way in the world.
- “Annabelle Lee,” by Sarah Jarosz
Unlike “The Reapers,” this is explicitly an Edgar Allan Poe reference. I love Sarah Jarosz, and a lot of her music has the eerie feel I’m going for in parts of Bog Queen, but this song is probably the clearest fit. Like “Lafayette,” it’s surprisingly up-tempo; I like the juxtaposition of dark themes (the death of a young woman at the hands of her “wicked brothers”) with this sort of rollicking banjo line.
- “Dead,” by Cardi B
Kind of a murder mystery? Maybe not the most on-theme, but I really appreciate Cardi for coming out with her second album just in time for me to start really listening to music again. Also for using the word “preeclamptic” in a song, which not everyone could pull off. I listened to Invasion of Privacy a lot in 2020, when I was finishing up Outlawed and trying to think about what was next, and maybe AM I THE DRAMA? will help me transition from Bog Queen to my next project.
Bonus: “This Is Halloween,” The Citizens of Halloween (The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack)
I don’t think Bog Queen is exactly a horror novel (it is unlikely to scare you), but it is about a bog body, and I love that it’s coming out around Halloween, my favorite holiday. The whole soundtrack of The Nightmare Before Christmas is great, but this song is probably the most iconic — clever and catchy and introducing several indelible characters. Who could forget “the one hiding under your stairs/Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair”? Kind of sounds like Seamus Heaney, now that I think about it.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Anna North’s playlist for her novel Outlawed
Anna North’s playlist for her novel The Life and Death of Sophie Stark
Anna North is the author of instant New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Outlawed, America Pacifica, and Lambda Literary Award winner The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. She is a senior correspondent at Vox. She lives in Brooklyn.