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September 30, 2020
Emily Gray Tedrowe's Playlist for Her Novel "The Talented Miss Farwell"
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, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Emily Gray Tedrowe's third novel The Talented Miss Farwell is both compelling and darkly comic, and her protagonist Becky Farwell is unforgettable.
CrimeReads wrote of the book:
"Sharp, darkly comedic, and full of fascinating facts about the art world."
In her own words, here is Emily Gray Tedrowe's Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Talented Miss Farwell:
Stream the playlist at Spotify
One of the touchstones for The Talented Miss Farwell is country music. The novel’s main character, Becky, loves it and so do I. And I’m not talking about hipster country, alt-country, or some indie mashup with Johnny Cash. I’m talking about straight-up uncool contemporary country music, where women are making some of the best songs out there, in every register from tender to scorched-earth.
The Talented Miss Farwell, inspired by a true story, tells the story of a female con artist who pulled off the largest municipal fraud in American history. Here’s a playlist that celebrates Becky Farwell’s ballsiness and hints at the damage she’ll do when she goes for what she wants. I like to think she’d turn the volume up on any one of these songs.
“Why Not Me?” The Judds
This song actually appears in The Talented Miss Farwell, in a key scene where Becky meets Ingrid, who will become, despite Becky’s best efforts, a lifelong friend. The two women are smart and hard-working, and have more in common than either of them think. When they happen to attend a Judds concert together, both as huge fans of the mother-daughter act, a mutual suspicion turns into shared enjoyment. Music can make that happen, as we all know. Becky, allergic to any kind of visible emotion, is nonetheless moved by “Why Not Me?” echoing around a stadium full of women who, like Ingrid, ask of men—and of the world—“why not me?”
“Nothin' Better to Do,” Leann Rimes
“Nobody hurt, nobody harmed, nobody’s business but my own.” This line from the song’s bridge sums up Becky’s attitude about what she calls, privately, her “Activity.” Most people would call it stealing. But as with the protagonist of Rimes’ blistering song, Becky believes in doing what’s necessary… especially if that means getting ahead of the men who think she’s nothing but a pretty face.
“Fastest Girl in Town,” Miranda Lambert
The speaker in Lambert’s barn-burner knows how to switch allegiances on a dime, a tactic Becky instinctively uses when she’s learned all she needs to know from a certain (male) gate-keeper of the art world. “If he pulls us over / I’ll turn on the charm / You’ll be in the slammer / And I’ll be on his arm.”
“The Man,” Taylor Swift
I’m cheating a little with this pick, because of course Swift isn’t country any more, not in the way she was when I fell for her as the captivating young singer-songwriter of “Tim McGraw” and “Teardrops on My Guitar.” Cut to: her super-stardom phase, beyond the claims of genre. But I think Taylor is country at heart, still and always, if that means standout writing and unrepentant emotionality. Here Swift laments, upends, and satirizes the gendered double standards that exist even when you’re at the top. Becky can relate, to say the least. (PS: pairs well with Maddie & Tae’s genius “Girl in a Country Song.”)
“Boondocks” Little Big Town
I defy anyone to listen to this song’s harmonized lengthy outro and not enjoy it. Well, if that happens don’t let me know—it will bum me out. This song is feel-good love-where-you’re-from defiance, a trope country music specializes in. What made me choose it for this playlist is the way Becky too, loves where she’s from—her small town in rural Illinois. There’s conflict there since of course the place and people she loves are also the ones she’s damaging (and then repairing, then damaging and repairing) through her theft. But love is hardly rational, and home is home: two concepts country music knows something about.
“Pretty Little Mustang,” Mickey Guyton
On Genius.com, Guyton says that this song sprung from her experience working in Nordstrom’s lingerie department, and her dismay that so many women voiced so many insecurities about their bodies. She wanted to put joyful confidence into a song to assuage their doubts. And while Becky is hardly insecure (she has the opposite problem), she uses dressing up in the way that Guyton celebrates it here: for strength, for self-love, for armoring up in a world where women are constantly judged on appearance.
“Independence Day,” Martina McBride
If you know country music, you know “Independence Day,” of course. And while this song doesn’t fit perfectly into my playlist—it tells a harrowing story of domestic violence and retribution that doesn’t have anything to do with Becky—there are reasons I felt that it should be here. The first is McBride’s uncompromising vocal, which in my mind chimes with Becky’s loneliness and desperation when she is afraid of getting caught. The other factor is the song’s insistence on a woman’s self-determination at all costs, and while Becky’s situation is not as grim as the characters in “Independence Day,” my protagonist does risk all for her own independence. (Fun fact: after 9/11, when the odious Sean Hannity began to play this song on his show repeatedly and jingoistically, songwriter Gretchen Peters fought him on it but lost the legal battle. So she collected royalties every time he played it, and donated them to causes that work to prevent violence against women.)
“Follow Your Arrow,” Kacey Musgraves
“You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t / So you might as well just do whatever you want.” This could easily be Becky’s own rallying cry, having grown up in a time and place where the options for smart ambitious girls were limited at best. One of the things Becky fights against are others’ expectations of how she should act, dress, be. What her life should look like. There’s only one path for an arrow to fly, and Becky follows her own with a heat-seeking intensity.
“Not Ready to Make Nice,” The Chicks
This song has such a specific and excellent back story (the band responding with a glorious fury to their getting dropped by mainstream country radio after “we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas”) that its place on this list is uneasy. And yet it’s here for the fierceness of the lyrics, the rising build of the crescendo, and as a marker of women artists who refuse to go quietly or just “shut up and sing.” But mainly because it’s a song I can vividly see Becky playing over and over, in her car, driving around and singing along: “Not ready make nice / Not ready to back down / I’m still mad as hell and I don’t have time / To go round and round and round.”
“Going Out Like That,” Reba McEntire
How could I not include a Reba song on this list, and not only because she (sort of) appears in The Talented Miss Farwell? When Becky meets Mac Palliser, the art world impresario who will become her mentor, he mistakes her name for Reba and then—alluding to the similarity of her petite red-haired appearance—hums a little Reba McEntire right in the middle of an international art expo. Becky is stunned, her worlds colliding. From that moment in the art scene she’ll be known as Reba, not Becky, a double life and persona that births the killer deal-maker she was born to be. “Going Out Like That” is one of my favorite McEntire songs, and its refrain—“but she ain’t going out like that”—is one I can imagine Becky (excuse me, Reba) muttering to herself as the stakes get higher and the feds close in.
Emily Gray Tedrowe is the author of two previous novels, Blue Stars and Commuters. She earned a PhD in literature from New York University and a BA from Princeton University. She has received an Illinois Arts Council award as well as fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. A frequent book reviewer for USA Today and other publications, Tedrowe also writes essays, interviews, and short stories. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
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