In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Timothy J. Hillegonds’s And You Will Call It Fate is a mesmerizingly complex memoir of friendship and recovery.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“A memoir keenly relevant to our times by a gifted writer.”
In his own words, here is Timothy J. Hillegonds’s Book Notes music playlist for his memoir And You Will Call It Fate:
And You Will Call It Fate takes place primarily from 2004 – 2008 and then fast forwards through time to around 2012. When I imagine the soundtrack for this book, I imagine the songs that were playing in the bars and clubs right before I left for rehab in Minnesota, and the songs that were on the little radio we listened to at night while smoking cigarettes with a wet towel stuffed underneath the closed door. I also think of the songs that filled the silence when I emerged from rehab a changed person, but one whose life was still, more or less, an absolute train wreck. While those years can sometimes feel like a blur, when I stop and slow down, these are the songs I can still sometimes hear.
Cajmere aka Green Velvet: Percolator
Chicago is the birthplace of house music, and even if you were a white kid on the outskirts of the city, if you grew up in the 90s like I did, you heard this song at every party, and then every club, you ever went to. It’s still one of the city’s anthems, and every year a new generation of Chicago kids discover it. I’m not sure it’ll ever actually age out.
Eminem: The Way I Am
The anger, the delivery, the aggression, the rebelliousness, the way Em was unapologetic about who he was—it spoke to me before I got sober, and after, especially when I heard it in the boxing gym, right before sparring. I’m older, and I hear the song differently now, but it still sometimes gives me the feeling it used to, which was that I could climb through the ropes and into the ring with anybody, no matter how big and experienced, and throw hands with the best of them.
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Long As I Can See the Light
There’s a scene in the memoir where I’m in a van with another person on the way to rehab, and the driver, an old, kind fellow who seems to have been shuttling people to and from the airport and rehab for years, turns on the radio and a Creedence Clearwater Revival song is playing. I imagine it’s this song, because it captures some of what I was feeling in that moment, which was displaced and scared, but also that I’d be coming home soon.
Robin Thicke: Lost Without U
I discovered Robin Thicke’s first album right after I got out of rehab in 2005 and it seems to be the soundtrack I played the most in those early years when I was just building a sober life. He’s an incredible vocalist and there was something comforting about the way that he sang this song, something that fit the stage of life that I was in. I was missing something then, though I’m not exactly sure who or what, but this song spoke to me in a way not much else could at the time.
Eminem: Mockingbird
I was obsessed with Eminem when I was in my 20s. There were lots of uncanny similarities between his life and mine, not the least of which is that we both had daughters named Haley Jade, who were about the same age, and that we were in really volatile relationships with our daughter’s mothers. This song said a lot of things I wanted to say to my daughter but couldn’t. I played it nonstop for a while there, wishing I could find the words to convey how I was feeling in the same way he was.
Drake: Best I Ever Had (2009)
I met my wife around this time and she was with me during the hardest part of the book, when I was caught up in a lawsuit that was all consuming. But on the weekends, I’d meet up with her in my silver Mercedes coupe, and we’d drive around with Drake’s mixtape on, this song turned up as loud as it would go, windows down, pointing at each other while we sang at the top of our lungs, like only two people new in love can.
Anthony Hamilton: The Point of It All
In the book, as I’m navigating the complexities of a lawsuit that seemingly takes over my life, my wife doesn’t play a huge role. In real life, she kept me sane. In 2011, as the lawsuit was starting to resolve, she and I got married. I’ve been an Anthony Hamilton fan for as long as I can remember and this song, which seemed to say it all, was our wedding song.
Timothy J. Hillegonds’s playlist for his memoir The Distance Between
Timothy J. Hillegonds is the author of And You Will Call It Fate: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, March 2026) and The Distance Between: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Tim’s work has appeared in The Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, Salon, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He serves as a contributing editor for Slag Glass City, a digital journal of the urban essay arts. Hillegonds lives, works, and writes in Chicago. www.timhillegonds.com