In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Lizzie Buehler’s novel The Obsessed is a thought-provoking and immersive debut.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“A thought-provoking [meditation] on romantic love, one-sided relationships, and academia. . . Buehler offers intriguing insights into the many ways parasocial relationships take shape—not only with celebrities, but also strangers, fictional characters, and even idealized lovers. Fans of Elif Batuman’s The Idiot will find much of interest.”
In her own words, here is Lizzie Buehler’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel The Obsessed:
Sadly I’m not the kind of writer who can listen to music while working (I wish I were—I’ve tried!), but that doesn’t mean that music is disconnected from my writing process. I write to explore the texture of different emotions, and listening to music is another way to access those textures.
I wrote The Obsessed in my twenties, and now that it’s about to come out, I’m in my early thirties. When I was writing the book, I felt like it was expressing some sort of truth about the struggle to understand oneself in young adulthood—I was channeling all my uncertainty about myself into Astrid’s character. But now that I’m a bit older and have a better sense of what I want and where I am going, I feel like an older sister looking at Astrid, rather than her peer. When I was writing the book, I knew that Astrid overinterpreted the symbolism of events in her life, but she and I were both clouded enough by the pain and ecstasy of emotion to understand just how transient her feelings are. (What can I say? Astrid is a late bloomer after my own heart.)
Here are some songs that I listened to a lot during the years I was writing The Obsessed. They’re mostly dramatic proclamations of emotion, and I can imagine Astrid walking around Cambridge while listening to them. These songs encapsulate a lot of Astrid’s angst—her feeling that what she’s experiencing is incomparably dramatic and consequential, when really, everything is going to turn out okay. She’s alternating between feeling like the saddest girl in the world, like no one else has ever felt the way she does (except the characters of her favorite books!), and savoring the intensity of her emotions, enjoying how it makes her feel like a character in her own novel.
Paper Bag, by Fiona Apple
If Astrid got another tattoo, I think it would be of this lyric from “Paper Bag”:
He said “it’s all in your head”
And I said “so’s everything” but he didn’t get it
This is the ultimate song about limerence and gets at the spiritual undercurrent of my novel.
The first time I listened to this song, I felt like I was witness to someone unlocking the answers to all the universe’s questions. It feels profound and timeless and makes me happy to be a part of the grandness of humanity.
Peach Plum Pear, by Joanna Newsom
The first time I listened to this song, I cried. I also cried the second and third and fourth time I listened to it. I think that at least half of people who hear “Peach Plum Pear” will be unable to get past Newsom’s unique voice, which I know is controversial, but if you do, then you’ll get to hear a perfect encapsulation of bittersweetness and nostalgia in musical form. This song makes me feel like an old man or woman looking back on the events of my life.
Deadly Valentine, by Charlotte Gainsbourg
Sylvia Says, by Charlotte Gainsbourg
Sexy French electro-pop that makes you feel powerful in your sadness, by Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter! (Speaking of Serge Gainsbourg, “Bonnie and Clyde” is another song I love and an amazing piece of history and literature and music combined.)
The Magic, by Joan as Police Woman
Less electronic, less French, but evocative of the same sense of wounded power as the Charlotte Gainsbourg songs.
Oh to Be in Love, by Kate Bush
I remember going for long walks during the early weeks of lockdown in 2020, listening to the entirety of Kate Bush’s discography. This is one of my favorites (sung in another possibly-controversial voice that I love).
Always Forever, by Cults
Another sad-girl song that says a lot in its simplicity. I taught myself how to play this on the piano at one point and would sing along. I’m sure my rendition sounded a lot worse than the original, but it was fun!
Beautiful Rivers and Mountains, by Shin Joong Hyun and the Men
I feel bad for not including more non-English-language music in this playlist, because the world is so big and sticking to English is so self-limiting! Astrid knows this all too well. Anyway, this is super cool psychedelic rock from the 1970s in protest of the military dictator Park Chung Hee. After the song came out, the police arrested Shin and cut his long hair, because long hair was illegal for men under the dictatorship.
Stand Up, by Kim Kwang-seok
A beautiful song of gentle resilience by perhaps the most beloved Korean folk singer.
Мой калашников, by Face
This song has nothing to do, tonally or emotionally, with the rest of the playlist (it’s Russian rap about machine guns), but I thought it would be unfair to leave it out because it’s actually mentioned in The Obsessed. Astrid loves languages, she loves listening to sounds that don’t exist in English, and she doesn’t care if the lyrics are incomprehensible to her. Listening to trashy pop music in languages she doesn’t speak allows her to envision an alternate universe where she is from the same place as the song. This kind of music allows her to daydream in the writerly and self-narrativizing manner that she loves most.
Lizzie Buehler is the translator of The Disaster Tourist (winner of the CWA Dagger for crime fiction in translation), Art on Fire, and Table for One by Yun Ko-eun, and Korean Teachers by Seo Su-jin. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and has studied comparative literature at Harvard and Princeton. The Obsessed is her debut novel.