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.
Emil Wilson’s debut graphic novel The Nightingales is a structurally inventive and emotionally unforgettable book.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“This graphic novel is stunning in every way. Wilson forgoes panels in favor of a format that is part sketchbook, part journal, and part scrapbook—a choice that gives both the visuals and the narrative room to breathe. The artwork has an intimacy and immediacy that complements the text beautifully, and the vibrant color palette communicates the joy that the relationship between Lou and Jim brings them both. . . . Absolutely gorgeous, visually and emotionally.”
In his own words, here is Emil Wilson’s Book Notes music playlist for his graphic novel The Nightingales:
My debut graphic novel, The Nightingales, is based on a true story from my family’s history. In 1985, my father invited a dying stranger and his two dogs to live with us after they had been evicted from their home. The experience brought out both the best and the worst in my family. In the book, a friendship blossoms between this man and a teenage girl inspired by my sister and, in many ways, by me. At its heart, the story is about the transformative nature of kindness, a subject that feels especially relevant right now.
Music plays a part in the story, but for this playlist I wanted to gather songs that trace the coming-of-age of my main character, a small-town misfit who grows into a spirited, self-possessed young woman. They’re songs about innocence, longing, connection, grief, hope, and the messy process of growing up.
Heaven on the Seventh Floor / Paul Nicholas
As a teenager in the 1980s, there was a party game called “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” where two kids were randomly matched and had to lock themselves in a closet to make out. Most of us just sat there awkwardly until the timer went off. As a queer kid, it was torture. This song, glittery, effervescent, and absurdly upbeat, brings me back to those odd, bittersweet days before puberty tightened its grip.
Any Way You Want It / Journey
Growing up in a small Oregon town, Journey occupied the intersection of blue-collar coolness and emotional grandeur. As a high school senior, when I imagined nuzzling my face into a girl’s neck—a phase that would soon end forever—this was the music playing in the background.
Do You Want to Funk? / Sylvester
When I first moved to New York, I dated an older gentleman who had DJed at The Saint, where the early White Parties were held. He played his reel-to-reel tapes for me, and I was struck by the marathon dance tracks, many running ten or twenty minutes without a break. During the early years of AIDS, those extended mixes became a way for gay men to lose themselves in the music for a few precious hours while the world burned outside.
Left of Center / Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega always represented a particular kind of cool to me: intelligent, observant, and utterly herself. If there’s a soundtrack for Lou, the main character of The Nightingales, as she rides her bike through town, it’s probably this song. Listening to it always makes Lou feel utterly real to me.
Stay / Oingo Boingo
My college roommate had far more evolved musical taste than I did (he was from Portland, after all), and he played Oingo Boingo’s album, Dead Man’s Party, constantly. It took me years to appreciate that this wasn’t just a bouncy pop song but something incredibly tender. Beneath Danny Elfman’s usual eccentricity is a quiet plea not to let go. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now.
I Melt with You / Modern English
Is there a better song for dancing alone in your bedroom while overwhelmed by teenage angst? The answer is No.
Love Comes Quickly / Pet Shop Boys
So much of the Pet Shop Boys’ early music feels infused with the emotional realities of queer life in the ’80s: longing, secrecy, and fleeting connection. The lyrics never mention AIDS directly, but their fragility and inevitability feel impossible to ignore. Love arrives quickly. But so does loss.
The Ghost in You / The Psychedelic Furs
There’s a scene I cut from the book because I couldn’t make it work visually. A few days before he dies, Jim (the aforementioned dying stranger) wakes in the hospital to find Lou sitting beside his bed, reading. He watches her and realizes he will never see her grow into the woman she’s destined to become. He’s grateful that she’s there, but also knows he’ll soon have to say goodbye. As we linger on his face, we watch several emotions pass across it: anger, gratitude, love, regret, and finally acceptance. Every time I hear this song, I think of that deleted scene.
Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want / The Smiths
Sure, it’s a little on the nose, but this song speaks to what’s happening with every character in the book. Each one—father, mother, children, houseguest—wants something simple but finds themselves disappointed by circumstances beyond their control. The Nightingales is about ordinary people asking for ordinary things in extraordinary circumstances. No one is trying to change the world. They’re trying to love, protect, understand, and survive.
Cloudbusting / Kate Bush
I love this song’s blend of hope and inevitability, and the way it speaks to the people who continue to shape our lives long after they’re gone (“you’re here in my head”). The singer senses that something difficult may be on the horizon, yet she never gives up hope that something good might come of it. She’s even willing to manifest that possibility if she has to (“just saying it could even make it happen…”).
Satellites / Rickie Lee Jones
This song has always made me think about the invisible forces between people: the ways we orbit toward one another, miss one another, and occasionally connect. And sometimes the people who shape us most are the ones we know for only a short time.
Find the River / R.E.M.
This song somehow makes sadness and peace feel like the same emotion. I particularly love the lyric, Watch the road and memorize / This life that pass before my eyes. The Nightingales isn’t a story about death so much as the places that kindness can carry us. Lou leaves Oregon for a new life in New York City, but the current that Jim sets in motion continues to carry her long after he’s gone.
The Downtown Lights / The Blue Nile
“The Downtown Lights” isn’t really about a city. It’s about possibility. And the version of yourself you imagine might exist somewhere else. It captures the excitement and uncertainty that comes with your first big “adult” move. That feels true of Lou as she stands on the threshold of a new life, far from her hometown.
La Petite Fille de la Mer / Vangelis
Visually, The Nightingales is told in the form of an artist’s sketchbook because that’s how memory has always felt to me. A sketchbook is a collection of observations, experiments, abandoned ideas, and moments that seem random and unrelated (but often aren’t). When I first arrived in New York, I’d wander the city with my Sony Walkman, listening to this piece. It always set my thoughts in motion, carrying me from one memory to the next.
Emil Wilson is an artist living in San Fransico, California. The Nightingales is his first graphic novel.