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March 18, 2020
Kevin Nguyen's Playlist for His Novel "New Waves"
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, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Kevin Nguyen's novel New Waves is smart, funny, and poignant, a brilliant debut.
The New York Times wrote of the book:
"[New Waves] cleverly conjures a modern Gatsby-and-Nick-Carraway dynamic between the narrator, Lucas, and his co-worker Margo. . . . [Kevin Nguyen] captures beautifully the subtle strains of being disenfranchised, poor and lonely in New York"
In his own words, here is Kevin Nguyen's Book Notes music playlist for his novel New Waves:
“Plastic Love” - Mariya Takeuchi
The two central characters of New Waves, Lucas and Margo, meet each other on a music forum called PORK, which is loosely based off a real-life, very exclusive internet community called OINK. (I say “loosely based” because I was never invited to OINK.) In the book, their obsession is late ‘70s/early ‘80s Japanese funk, soul, and disco—retroactively dubbed “city pop.”
In many ways, “Plastic Love” is the ultimate city pop song, which is to say: it’s extremely popular, today, on YouTube. Through some alchemy of algorithms, anime, nostalgia, and teenagers, there’s been a revitalized interest in the city pop genre over the past three years. The term didn’t exist when the book takes place, in 2009, so the inclusion of it in New Waves is a knowing anachronism. I mean, the internet collapses time and space. Why can’t fiction?
“Tong Poo” - Yellow Magic Orchestra
The more enduring side of city pop—or at least what gets lumped in with the very imprecise definition of it—is Yellow Magic Orchestra, an early electronic outfit helmed by Haruomi Hosono, and would later send Ryuichi Sakamoto off into the world. The band’s influence on modern pop music, especially how they pioneered the use of synths and drum machines, can be felt today. YMO never quite made a splash in the US, but they were popular enough at home to be dubbed “the Beatles of Japan.” “Tong Poo,” in particular, is a cosmic bop.
I tried to write the book with some distance from my own experience, but like the book’s point-of-view character Lucas, I was obsessed with bossa nova in middle school. I’d picked up hints of it from growing up near Framingham, MA, an odd town with a big-hearted Brazilian diaspora, but really discovered the genre later through forums, nascent music blogs, and the library, which allowed me to borrow ten CDs at a time. I’d take them home, rip them immediately, and return them for another ten.
“It Is What It Is” - Blood Orange
Every Blood Orange record feels like a mixtape—lots of nostalgia and pastiche, wrapped up in self-delusion and beautiful pop hooks. I love “It Is What It Is” for its commitment to being one big, petty mood.
I don’t listen to much electronic music (maybe because the idea of rave, even in my imagination, is a nightmare) but I’ve always loved The Field for their aggressively hypnotic qualities—and because it’s the most boring, repetitive idea of what EDM can be. There were late nights when I was revising the book when I’d just listen to “Everyday” on loop, letting it slowly drive me mad. After some time, probably repetition number 28, you just give into it.
“Everything Is Embarrassing” - Sky Ferreira
I briefly played with the idea of naming the book Everything Is Embarrassing, partly because it would’ve been a fitting title, partly because I listen to this song approximately once a day, every day.
“Chamber of Reflection” - Mac DeMarco
The melody of “Chamber of Reflection” comes from a Shigeo Sekito song called “The Word II,” a sad piano ditty that was written, largely, to sell keyboards in the ‘70s. I wouldn’t call DeMarco an appropriator—he’s extremely reverential of the material, and speaks often about the artists that influenced him (Haruomi Hosono, in particular). But this is how music persists through generations of listeners, a mutation of its former self, to lift the voice of a crooning dirtbag.
Kevin Nguyen is the features editor at The Verge and was previously a senior editor at GQ. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
also at Largehearted Boy:
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Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for Lady Lazarus
Book Notes (2015 - ) (authors create music playlists for their book)
Book Notes (2012 - 2014) (authors create music playlists for their book)
Book Notes (2005 - 2011) (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlist essays
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
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Flash Dancers (authors pair original flash fiction with a song
guest book reviews
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Books of the Week (recommended new books, magazines, and comics)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Short Cuts (writers pair a song with their short story or essay)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film's soundtracks)
weekly music release lists
