In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Alicia Kennedy’s memoir On Eating is a thoughtful and wise meditation on a life through the lens of food.
Hetty Lui McKinnon wrote of the book:
“If her book No Meat Required and her laser-sharp writing on her weekly newsletter hadn’t already proved it, On Eating emphatically confirms Alicia Kennedy as one of the food industry’s most thoughtful thinkers. Kennedy’s prose is alive, tactile, and at times heartbreaking, a delicious and evocative exploration of how the food we consume shapes how we view ourselves and the world around us, and vice versa. I devoured every word.”
In her own words, here is Alicia Kennedy’s Book Notes music playlist for her book On Eating:
On Eating is a memoir of my life and appetite, along with the political and cultural stories around the food. It has a 75-song “soundtrack” and these are 11 selections that correlate to different times (I’ve always thought 11 songs is the right number for an album). I have a DJ past, and the soundtrack was a way for me to add new layers of subtext to the writing. The reasons the songs are on the soundtrack are often so much more intimate than the text could be, by virtue of the restraints of food memoir. I like that even though I’m being so much more personal in this book than in any of my other writing, that there’s more to dig into between the lines if you listen along.
“Born at the Right Time,” Paul Simon
In transparency, I originally wanted to start the soundtrack with “You Can Call Me Al” because it was such an important music video in my childhood: It taught me what “funny” is, and I’ve returned to Graceland in my older years as it’s only gained relevance to me. But I didn’t want anyone to think they actually could call me Al—a possibility, given my first name—so I went with this tune, which is probably a more perfect origin.
“If,” Janet Jackson
The Janet. Tour at Jones Beach was my first-ever concert when I was 9 years old. We were seated in the nose bleeds but I’ll never forget when I found out my uncle got us tickets: I let out a huge scream. I listened to the cassette on my TalkBoy while daydreaming in the backyard. Janet is always my pop star par excellence.
“Discoball World,” David Garza
I don’t think there’s a song that better represents my tween years because I loved it and the whole album so much, and the lyrics gave me a picture of adulthood that I wanted. “Coffee eyes,” “vodka vases”—I’m still one of the world’s biggest Davíd Garza fans, I’m pretty sure. My tween years were defined by an obsession with dude singer-songwriters wielding guitars, but he’s special.
“Moments Have You,” John Fruscinate
John Frusciante’s To Record Only Water for Ten Days is one of my favorite albums of all time and soundtracked the summer of 2002 for me, when I was 16. I saw the video for “Going Inside” on TV but couldn’t remember his name so I scrolled for hours on some website that listed every musician ever looking for this long last name that began with “F,” and then I had to reform my hatred of the Chili Peppers. Frusciante solo is peak: Him and the Mars Volta were on heavy rotation in my car CD player through college.
“Teenage Dreams,” Nada Surf
It’s a little bit of a joke to anyone who knows me that I’m a Nada Surf superfan. I see them whenever they play in New York; I’ve driven to Asbury Park, New Jersey, to see lead singer Matthew Caws solo; I listen to every album as it comes out and commit them to heart. Caws’s lyrics are, I’m afraid, like prescient self-help to me, guiding me as I get older. “Teenage Dreams” spurred me along in a weird and wild vegan microbakery detour in my mid-twenties—it lasted just a year but has defined the trajectory of my life ever since.
“I Am the Past,” Eleanor Friedberger
A big breakup really marks my late transition into a fun, partying kind of adult life and this song, along with the whole album, was so key to processing the feelings for me. I love Friedberger’s humor, which never takes away from the real emotion. She gave a lot of shape to my new womanly existence.
“Boyfriend,” Slowdance
This was a track they used to play at an indie pop dance party called Mondo that I started to frequent in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a small room filled with ecstatic joy that introduced me to so much music and made me feel part of the world in a way I’d always dreamed of being. It also encapsulates my post-breakup feelings of wanting only newness.
“The Only Thing,” Sufjan Stevens
Carrie and Lowell helped me through my brother’s passing. One day I lit a candle for him in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and decided to walk all the way downtown to meet friends, and I passed Sufjan on the street. Or at least, I’m pretty sure I did. He’s the patron saint of that time in my life, and this song is exactly how I felt every single day—probably still how I feel.
“De Música Ligera,” Soda Stereo
My time reporting on Puerto Rico’s agriculture and culinary scenes before I ended up moving to San Juan deepened a love of rock en español forged in high school by La Ley’s MTV Unplugged, and I became obsessed with Soda Stereo’s Gustavo Cerati—a true king of rock and roll who should be known and beloved by all, regardless of whether they understand the lyrics. This is the band’s biggest song, the one any visiting artist to Argentina covers, and it makes me feel so much joy. My eventual husband would put it on any time I got stressed when we were first dating.
“L’aérotrain,” Exsonvaldes
A song that has soundtracked the last few years of my writing life with a prominent place on the playlist I put on whenever I really have to focus (called “the Vibe”). It’s in French, and I’ve found so much French-language music to love while studying the language, and as with Spanish, the love for the music may or may not be to the detriment of my actual learning.
“4 Degrees,” ANOHNI
On Eating ends by considering the future of the planet and the loss of coffee, as well as increasing water stress. It’s a dark note that I try to make hopeful in the writing. I think honesty about the true costs of climate change is needed, and I hope more artists will tackle it as beautifully as ANOHNI did here.
Alicia Kennedy is a writer from New York based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her weekly newsletter on food culture, politics, and media, “From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy,” has been mentioned by TheNew York Times, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, W, Food52, Coveteur, and Vogue Australia. Her writing has appeared in Eater, British Vogue, The Guardian, and Harper’s Bazaar. Kennedy has appeared on Good Morning America, the BBC World Service, and many more radio shows and podcasts to talk about issues of food media, culture, and meat consumption.