In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Elizabeth Zaleski’s essay collection The Trouble with Loving Poets are as introspective and profound as they are funny.
The Chicago Review of Books wrote of the book:
“…full of the intricacies and eccentricities of life―often funny, at times somber, and always moving.”
In her own words, here is Elizabeth Zaleski’s Book Notes music playlist for her essay collection The Trouble with Loving Poets:
The book is divided into five sections of three essays each, and I’ve picked one song (and occasionally a bonus track) to accompany each essay. Enjoy!
WITH FAMILY
Vegetable Psychology, Lovesick Astrology—Prince, “1999”
Prince’s “1999,” along with its campy music video, nicely encapsulates the apocalyptic polyamory* that is the background of this essay. Though I don’t talk about this particular parent-child enmeshment episode in the book, the bonus tie-in here is that one of my mom’s paramours was a nightclub singer who looked a lot like Prince. I know this because my parents once took us to the nightclub to make his acquaintance. Because I was seven and had no idea what was going on, I spent most of the evening doing quite serious cartwheels across the dance floor.
*I gift “Apocalyptic Polyamory” to the first metal band who claims it.
The Sweeper and the Residue—Cat Stevens, “Hard Headed Woman”
Aside from the complete Letter People record collection (especially Mr. M, Mr. S, and Mr. R, who rock out), Cat Stevens’s Tea for the Tillerman was the only vinyl record in my parents’ collection worth keeping. My dad has always said that “Hard Headed Woman” was the theme song to his marriage (well, two marriages) to my mother. Though I usually have little patience for didactic folk, something about Stevens’s unironic striving for significance has always struck the right chord with me, and I find his voice utterly compelling.
Moving—Metallica, “No Leaf Clover”
If we had a family soundtrack, it would be 75 percent Metallica, 15 percent Bon Jovi, and 10 percent Enya. I was the kind of uncool Metallica fan who got a late start and liked Load, Reload, S&M, and Garage Inc. more than their early albums. I rewatched some of the S&M concert recently and realized that James Hetfield was just thirty-six years old at the time, six entire years younger than I am today. Good god, where does the time go. A more fun realization in looking back at Metallica was that their lyrics, always under attack for heathenizing us, are largely innocuous—practically PG compared to much of contemporary pop. Lyrics aren’t especially Metallica’s strength as a band, but the line “Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel was just a freight train coming your way” is A+.
WITH MEANING
Waking Up Is Hard to Do—Bonnie “Prince” Billie, “Death to Everyone”
Will Oldham (who records under various monikers) was one of the first “indie” artists I ever listened to. I didn’t know anything about Will Oldham, and this was before googling was a regular feature of everyday life, so I thought there was really someone named Bonnie “Prince” Billie who lived in a remote cabin and recorded totally lo-fi, totally absorbing weird-ass music. No one else can pull off lyrical anachronism the way BPB does without it being cringy or just plain dorky. “At home on Wednesday morn / Astride my horny horn / You’ll be in glory born / And I will be a beast for thee” are actual words he sings in a song, and that song is good. You don’t hate him even a little bit by the end. I don’t know if I See a Darkness was a classic soundtrack for people who were deeply depressed in the early 2000s, but it should have been. “Death to Everyone” sounds like a song you’d hear while riding the carousal at an existentialist carnival. Wheeeeeee!
Pretty Dead Things—Radiohead, “Karma Police”
If pushed, by myself, right now, to say who my favorite all-time band was, I would say Radiohead, but I didn’t listen to them until college. I finally found Radiohead, along with Bob Marley, by checking out a physical CD at the local library. I listened to Amnesiac that way and then illegally burned it to the new iBook I’d gotten for school. After that, I LimeWired their back catalog and have never stopped listening. Though the story of this essay is more one of irony than karma per se, “Karma Police” still feels like the right choice, and the video kind of fits too.
Romantic Destinations—Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, “Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World”
Near the tail end of the Costa Rica trip, I remember my traveling companions were sprawled in the grass waiting for a bus when I heard an almost inhumanly beautiful voice singing a song that seemed sort of familiar but also not. I asked Vanessa what she was listening to, and I bought the whole Facing Future album when I got back home. I listened to that album forward and backward for two solid years. When I visited Hawai‘i for the first time recently, I was able to sing along, phonetically at least, to “Henehene Kou ʻAka” when I heard another group of musicians playing it. Also, I saw (green) sea turtles in the wild, and they are phenomenal.
WITH MEN
The Trouble with Loving Poets—Lhasa de Sela, “Fool’s Gold”
The poet/musician who inspired this essay was an early adopter of YouTube, and it was even stranger back then to be involved with someone fielding praise from global randos. He recorded a cover of this song and emailed it to me around the time our interest in each other was burning out, and it’s one of the few good things that came of that affair. The original is a great song. I dated a lot of musicians, as well as a few writers, and I always thought it would be funny to make a “Dudes I’ve Fucked” playlist. This is not that, but there would be a lot of . . . decent music on the DIF playlist.
Hung Up—Latto, “Big Energy”
No explanation necessary.
Bonus track: Empress Of, “Woman Is a Word.” The guy with the “pronounced downward bend” had excellent taste in many things and thought I’d really like this song. I do.
Dumped—The Low Set, “Mothman”
As noted above, I dated a lot of musicians, and one of the other fun things I did after I quit dating was join a band to prove to myself that I could be in a band. It’s not that hard. The band was called The Low Set, which was an inside joke (with myself) about my breasts. My bandmates Levi and Peter had actual talent, while I had a spare bedroom we could practice in, a keyboard, and more jokes. I occasionally “sang” one of our songs because I wanted to write the lyrics. “Mothman” is one such song, about the West Virginia cryptid.
WITH US
HPV and the Burden of Knowledge—Jesus Christ Superstar, “Strange Thing / Mystifying”
I’m not really a musicals person, but Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera, and as someone completely unqualified to judge such things, I think Ted Neeley’s and Carl Anderson’s vocal performances in JCS are among the best of the last century. Featuring one of several jazz arguments between Judas and Jesus, “Strange Thing” is about Mary Magdalene, and while it is less impressive than their epic showdown at the Last Supper, it is easier to stream. Neeley’s “Gethsemane” is crazy good, but Judas/Anderson is the true star of the show—he gets the final word and goes to heaven in a fringed jumpsuit. What does any of this have to do with an essay about the ethics of STD disclosure? Guilt! Righteousness! Struggle! Betrayal! Sacrifice! Absolution! I’m a person who has convoluted moral arguments in my head a lot. Jesus and Judas operatically sparring about theology just kind of jives with me. Also, I wonder if Mary Magdalene had HPV.
All the Dead Dogs—Taylor Dayne, “Tell It to My Heart”
Was it really love or just a game? RIP Taylor and Dayne.
Original Syntax—Modest Mouse, “Bury Me with It”
Modest Mouse has extremely playful lyrics that I greatly appreciate. There’s a certain Onion-headline turn in almost every line of thought they start down. Isaac Brock’s vocals are also delightfully deranged and once gave me hope that I could sing lyrically sophisticated punk rock songs if I just hid the mediocrity of my voice behind gads of prosodic distortion. As you already know from above, only part of that dream was realized. I love “Bury Me with It” to death; it’s a “fuck it” theme song about not fighting till the end but instead taking your leave when all the fun has already left town. (It reminds me of my favorite Tim Kreider cartoon, “What’s Your Plan When the Shit Hits the Fan,” where Tim is raising a glass of champagne while saying, “To die.”) “I just don’t need none of that Mad Max bullshit” is one of my favorite lines to yell out loud, along with the later, more condensed, “Oh, shit now!” Primary thematic connection to essay: language play amid disaster.
WITH HOME
Even in Death—Sufjan Stevens, “Casimir Pulaski Day”
“Casimir Pulaski Day” has one of the best opening lines of any song ever, and if you disagree, you are wrong. It goes, “Goldenrod and the 4H stone, the things I brought you when I found out you had cancer of the bone.” The way the line melodically, rhythmically, and sonically settles—almost whimsically—moving from such tender, inadequate gestures to devastation . . . it’s remarkable songwriting. Every time I listen to “Casimir Pulaski Day,” I think about all those kids we lost growing up, especially Brian, and I am sad.
Song and Dance Men, Part 1—Air, “Venus”
If marijuana is a gateway drug, then perhaps trip-hop is the path you skip down to reach that first gate. The two go very, very well together, and if you add sex as a third thing on top of them, you are pretty much at peak pleasure. My stoned days are way behind me, but the intensity of affection bound up in Air’s entire Talkie Walkie album is instantly alive when I hear the opening bars of any song on that record.
Bonus tracks: Other sounds of the summer were anything by Bjork, Beck, or Daft Punk, MIA’s Arular, Gorillaz’ Feel Good Inc., System of a Down’s Mezmerize, the Postal Service, Kings of Leon, and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”
Hymn—“Abide with Me”
Indisputably the best hymn, a claim I will fight you on, in Jesus’s name. I spent a long time looking for a version that sounded right (no organ, not in a cathedral) and settled on this one, even though they skip the last verse, which happens to be the best verse because you get to taunt death.
Bonus track: Blur, “Tender,” which we listened to on repeat during the Arizona trip. We also wrote an original commemorative song about our journey, perhaps most notable for slant rhyming ’zona with Yoder.
There you have it! Rock on, friends.
Elizabeth Zaleski is the author of The Trouble with Loving Poets and Other Essays on Failure. Elizabeth grew up in rural northeast Ohio, in Amish country. After living and traveling all over the US, she now lives in slightly less rural northeast Ohio, outside Akron. She works as an editor and is the curator of Great Farts of Literature. Quitting piano at age fourteen is one of her only regrets, and she still plays like an eighth grader.