In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Written in the form of a headache journal, Zach Powers’s The Migraine Diaries is both inventive and profound in its exploration of pain and endurance.
The Brooklyn Rail wrote of the book:
“Powers understands the instant obliteration of a headache and, brilliantly, juxtaposes that with the loss of a friend. Should someone ever take up [Virginia] Woolf’s challenge and assemble a literary anthology of maladies, they should look first to Powers for his descriptions of the headache.”
In her own words, here is Zach Powers’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel The Migraine Diaries:
I do most of my writing in coffee shops, so my playlists are often selected by baristas. Right now, at Simona Cafe in Bethesda, Maryland, I have no idea what song is playing. And that’s alright by me. When I focus, the music, the chatter, and the hissing gurgle of the espresso machine all blur into an ambient background. If I’m sitting with someone, and they point out the song on the radio, I have to dredge my attention up from deep inside me before I’m aware of any sound at all.
My novel The Migraine Diaries opens as the narrator experiences his first migraine at the funeral for his best friend, KJ, and follows the narrator’s life as he navigates grief and chronic illness. A number of scenes take place in a coffee shop, a slightly fictionalized version of Gallery Espresso in Savannah, Georgia, where I wrote and/or hung out almost every day for 15 years. Despite the word “diaries” in the book’s title, let me emphasize that this is fiction. Though the narrator, like me, is a migraine sufferer who spends a lot of time in coffee shops, my default move is always to take a step away from myself when I feel things getting too autobiographical. Though there are other real settings and fictionalized versions of real experiences, none of the characters are based on single individuals. Which leads me back to the character KJ.
In 2009, one of my oldest friends, Kirk, died after enduring a brain tumor for several years. A few months later, my closest friend at the time, Jeremy, died tragically. The character KJ is neither of these friends and also sorta both of them. I mention Kirk and Jeremy here because in the absence of any specific playlist I had while writing the novel, for the playlist assembled below, I tried to think of songs that somehow existed in and around my life as I remembered and as I wrote. These are songs I associate with the friends and places that inspired my writing. And, hopefully, all arranged into a half-decent mix.
“Till My Head Falls Off” by They Might Be Giants
This was the first song to pop into my head when I started thinking about my playlist. The central pivot point of The Migraine Diaries involves ibuprofen, and these lyrics open with an Advil reference. The song’s title, of course, has obvious relevance, too. More personally, TMBG is my most-played band. In high school, I had a TMBG mixtape I made a copy of for Kirk, which I’ve previously written about in the only personal essay I’ve maybe ever published.
“So Fresh, So Clean” by OutKast
Sticking with Kirk, our friendship was maintained through the early days of the internet and the messaging platforms ICQ and AIM. One of those (maybe both?) allowed you to turn on an away message when you were, well, away from your computer. One of Kirk’s regular away messages—I have always assumed it to be for when he was taking a shower, though I never confirmed this—was, simply, “So fresh, so clean.” Bonus here for Big Boi being from Savannah.
“Purple Rain” by Prince
In 2007, Prince performed the Super Bowl XLI halftime show. For those unfamiliar, it is perhaps the greatest live performance in the history of the universe. Rain threatened the whole thing, but in the moment, it seemed more likely that Prince himself had summoned the rain. We were at my friend Chris’s house (see more on Chris below) for a Super Bowl party. Jeremy, who cared nothing for football but loved Prince absolutely, watched the halftime show standing a few feet from the TV. At one point, Chris and I glanced over, and tears were just freefalling down Jeremy’s face. In retrospect, that seems like the only right reaction.
“Peek‐A‐Boo” by Siouxsie and the Banshees
In the novel, there’s a character named Chris who works at my fictional Gallery Espresso. One of my best friends, Christopher Berinato, is manager of the real Gallery. He also happens to be a music journalist, so you can always tell when he’s working because the shop’s playlist will be on point. I asked him to pick a song to include, and this is it! He reminded me of the story of when he first heard this song when he was 12: “MTV was always on, but I was into Van Halen and Bon Jovi. When I watched that video, as I stood in the middle of the room, it immediately rewired my brain.”
“Rainfall” by Apples in Stereo
The Gallery Espresso in my novel is based on its current location, but Gallery used to be around the corner in a different location, where I first met Jeremy and Chris. At the old location, a barista played this album literally every time he worked. When he moved away, I found myself missing the album, and it became a regular in my listening rotation. Bonus: the old Gallery location is now home to The Book Lady Bookstore, where they’ve been absurdly supportive of every literary thing I’ve ever done.
“GO!!!” by Flow
The anime Naruto has a prominent place in the novel, and an even more prominent place in my real life. Kirk introduced the show to me back when you had to download the fan-subtitled torrents a few days after the Japanese release of each episode. Since then I’ve consumed more hours of Naruto than any other creative work. Me, Chris, and two other writer friends, Killsey and Gino, all watched and shared weekly recaps. For the playlist, it was a tossup whether to include “GO!!!,” the show’s fourth opening theme song, or “Wind” by Akeboshi, from the original closing credits. This one pumps me up, so it got the nod. Fighting dreamers!
“Modern Romance” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
I spent my youth and young adulthood studying jazz, so I reached my mid-twenties with limited knowledge of other genres. One of my first returns to rock was this album that Jeremy lent me on CD, which I listened to so much that he let me keep it. I digitized and got rid of almost all my CDs years ago, but I still have this one.
“Heroin” by The Velvet Underground & Nico
When I have a long writing project, I choose a few books to be my daily warmup reading. The warmup might be a whole chapter or story, but sometimes just a few sentences. For The Migraine Diaries, one of my warmup books was Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, which takes its title from this song. I lent my original copy of Jesus’ Son to a friend who never returned it, but I don’t remember which friend. I hope they’re enjoying their thievery.
“Meticulous Bird” by Thao & the Get Down Stay Down
While I was writing the first draft of the novel, I was introduced to Thao by my writer pal Thaddeus Gunn. I listened to this album on repeat, and Thao became a shared favorite for me and my partner, Stephanie. Bonus: Thao is from Northern Virginia, close to where I now live, and has her own book coming out, which I’m super excited for.
“Self Portrait in Three Colors” by Charles Mingus
Somewhere in the early planning for this novel, I had the thought, I wonder if I could write a book that works like “Self Portrait in Three Colors.” The song repeats its form three times, each time adding a new melodic line, so in the third iteration there’s this perfect three-part polyphony. My novel focuses on the three main surviving friends. What might each of their melodies be, and how might the melodies interact? Now, I don’t think I really followed through on that initial thought, but I do think it influenced the braiding of the novel’s sections. At least I hope so!
“Hallelujah” by The Helio Sequence
The first thing I ever published was a paragraph-long review of this album for a print publication I can no longer remember the name of. I got the gig through Kirk, who knew the editor. I don’t think it was particularly good or insightful writing, but it introduced me to this song, which I still listen to, and I find the lyrics to be an excellent thematic fit for The Migraine Diaries.
“The End of the Tour” by They Might Be Giants
I mentioned making high school mix tapes, and I tried to use this as the last song on most of the mix tapes I made. I feel a sense of melancholy here, but when the electric guitar kicks in, I always air-strum along. One time after a long road trip, I pulled into my parking spot exactly as this song ended. I can hear my characters listening to it in the car in the novel’s final scene. “And we’re never gonna tour again. No, we’re never gonna tour again…”
Zach Powers is the author of the novel The Migraine Diaries (JackLeg 2026), the novel First Cosmic Velocity, and the story collection Gravity Changes, winner of the Boa Short Fiction Prize. His writing has been featured by American Short Fiction, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. He serves as Executive & Artistic Director for The Writer’s Center and Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, he now lives in Arlington, Virginia.