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July 26, 2022
Staci Greason's Playlist for Her Novel "All the Girls in Town"
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.
Staci Greason's novel All the Girls in Town is a funny fast-paced story of rock and roll revenge.
Christine Sneed wrote of the book:
"All the Girls in Town is a thrill ride of a novel-wryly funny, big-hearted, sexy and knowing. Staci Greason writes with arresting insight about the carnal joys and perennial sorrows of romantic love, but also about friendship and family and the struggle to make sense out of the confounding welter of everyday life."
In her own words, here is Staci Greason's Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel All the Girls in Town:
When I was young, and getting over yet-another bad breakup with a musician, a wise friend suggested, “Maybe, stop dating the lead singer and start your own band?” I didn’t have the musical chops, but the idea of a woman as a shadow artist stuck around and eventually morphed into my new novel, All the Girls in Town.
Dani, Red, and Sasha are three sexy, smart, slightly-messed up women who gave their love and talents without credit to help Peter and his band, The Disasters, become famous. When the women discover that Peter is more than a plagiarist, they overcome their differences and unite to seek justice.
A novel has a musical tone like a film has a soundtrack. Music is always my doorway into a piece. The first thing I had to do was hear The Disasters. I imagined their sound was a grungy indie pop/rock band with reedy gruff lead male vocals, straight-forward lyrics, a little melancholic, and a little psychedelic.
Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot hits that sweet spot. I’m a Wilco fan. I listened to the album on a loop while writing the novel’s first draft, especially focused on the truth bomb delivered in the first song: I am trying to break your heart.
In the end, Wilco didn’t make the novel’s playlist. I tried to make them fit. That’s when I realized that All the Girls in Town is a story about three women living after the heartache and what heals them.
1. “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” Nancy Sinatra
Dani is Peter’s ex-wife. He stole her lyrics, won the copyright infringement lawsuit, and then married his gorgeous, younger backup singer, Sasha, leaving Dani with only grief and a shitty Van Nuys apartment. At the suggestion of her OA sponsor, Dani takes up journaling as a way to channel her feelings. Within three pages, Peter is dead. Being a literary assassin is more addictive than sugar for Dani. Her writing morphs into a blog called just-deserts.com which draws Red and Sasha into her life.
Nancy Sinatra’s rendition of “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” featuring her plaintive vocals with an acoustic guitar strumming in the background perfectly captures the silent rage from which Dani operates.
2. “Another Little Piece of My Heart,” Janis Joplin
It’s been fifteen years since Red’s devastating breakup with Peter. When she bumps into him in an East L.A. bar, the chemistry is still undeniable. He makes her feel she’s the only one. For ten days, they screw and drink in her Echo Park house until The Disasters head out on tour.
On the road, Peter’s calls dwindle to infrequent texts. Finally, he ghosts her. That’s when Red discovers that she’s pregnant. And so is Peter’s wife, Sasha.
After she terminates her pregnancy, Red escapes to the desert of Joshua Tree, where she beats her breasts screaming with Janis, “Oh, come on, come on, come on, come on and take it, take another little piece of my heart now” - the best song ever-written about the addiction to harming yourself with another person.
3. “Love on The Brain,” Rihanna
Sasha loves. She loves animals (it’s why she’s a vegan), loves her yoga clients (God!ess), and singing backup and writing songs for The Disasters. Her love for Peter and their unborn twins is fierce.
Since Peter went out on tour, she’s having a hard time loving herself. The images on the band’s social media pages are filled with late-night parties and half-dressed women’s bodies, while Sasha sits at home with swollen ankles. Deep breathing and positive affirmations do nothing to ease her crazy craving monkey mind.
Sasha thinks, “It must be love on the brain” instead of trusting her instincts that Peter’s twisted version “leaves her black and blue.”
4. “Under My Thumb,” The Rolling Stones
Yes, The Stones are one of the greatest bands of all time. When I hear this song, I think of power plays and humiliation. Peter relishes his ability to reduce spirited women to rubble. Like any good narcissist, the rock star views people as extensions of himself. Having a musical career because of the talented women in his life seems perfectly natural. He’s the one out on stage every night, why should they get any credit?
5. “Bloody Motherfucking Asshole,” Martha Wainwright
My husband turned me onto this song which feels like a direct response to "Under My Thumb." This is a song about a woman standing up and saying “no more.” It’s about yearning to have the same experiences as male musicians who can move easily in the music industry. It’s about gender double-standards and putting up boundaries, something that Dani and Red, and eventually, Sasha will learn.
“I will not pretend. I will not put on a smile. I will not say I'm all right for you. When all I wanted was to be good. To do everything in truth. To do everything in truth.”
“You bloody mother fucking asshole.” is what my three characters would have written together.
6. “A Case of You,” Joni Mitchell
I couldn’t have a playlist about living through a difficult love without including the master poetess, Joni Mitchell. Joni’s staggering vocal range takes us the journey of a love affair. She raises our hopes with her blissful falsetto and plummets us back to earth again. What a melancholy ride. “Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine. You taste so bitter and so sweet. Oh, I could drink a case of you and darling, still I would be on my feet.” Of course, it isn’t true that filling yourself with bitterness can make you steady. Or in Red’s case, bitterness with a drinking problem. Fueled by revenge, Red loses her sanity, creates an alias, and goes to work for gullible Sasha.
7. “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” Beyonce’
“Who the fuck do you think I is?” Straight from the goddess herself, with Jack White’s insistent beat, Beyonce’s Lemonade is a grief and reckoning. The battle cry of a warrioress. “Beautiful mane, I’m the lion. Beautiful man, I know you’re lying.” It’s Sasha remembering who she is, not a victim, and what Peter could lose if he doesn’t shape up. “This is your final warning (Don’t hurt yourself,) you know I gave you lif. If, if you try this shit again gon’ lose your wife.”
8. “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” Judy Garland
After Red discovers Dani’s blog, an unlikely friendship ignites. I can listen to Judy Garland’s rich voice of experience sing almost anything. This song features an upbeat tempo but the lyrics deliver hard truths about the drama of a toxic relationship – “The broken dates - the endless waits. The lovely loving - and the hateful hates. The conversation - with the flying plates. I wish I were in love again.” Revelations lead to self-realizations. This is how Dani and Red help each other become unstuck and their lives are lightened by laughter.
9. “Pico and Sepulveda,” Lee Presson and the Nails
L.A. is a character in this book. I loved including some of her geography with the groovy ‘40s Latin-style beat of Lee Presson and the Nails. Also, how fun is this band’s name? “Doheny … Cahuenga … La Brea Tar Pits (Tar Pits!). Pico and Sepulveda.” It’s such a catchy sing-along song. When her sister Monica goes off the wagon. Dani inherits care of her moody preteen niece, Violet, and her racist stubborn forgetful dad, Jack. Driving Violet and Jack (arguing in rush hour traffic) over Mulholland (their suitcases in the trunk), Dani sings, “Pico and Sepulveda” under her breath to keep from veering off the cliff. Soon Jack is singing along. “La Brea Tar Pits where nobody’s dreams come true.”
10. “Come On,” Lucinda Williams
While working under an alias (Lynn), Red falls in love with loveable Sasha. Witnessing Sasha write Peter’s songs, without credit, and the way he ignores his wife, ignites Red’s instinct to protect the sensitive beautiful woman.
Lucinda Williams is a grounded, talented truth-teller with a steel rockstar pair. Pure grit, a ticking-time bomb, an artist whose lived through and recovered from the worst of it – I’d add her to every female power anthem.
This is a song that puts a heartbreaker back in his place. “Dude, I’m so over you. You don’t even have a clue. All you did was make me blue. You didn’t even make me, come on.”
It speaks to a good kind of anger, like in Beyonce’s song. Fuel that shakes Dani and Red into action when they discover what Peter’s horrible secret.
11. “It’ll Never Happen Again,” Lady Blackbird
To hear Lady Blackbird’s smooth timeless jazz voice is to feel blue depths of your soul. “Why can’t you be the way I want you to be?” Finally facing the stark truth about her husband, flattens Sasha.
12. “‘Til It Happens To You,” Lady Gaga
I was already writing All the Girls in Town when the #MeToo movement broke wide open, and then I read writer Jenny Lumet’s heartbreaking honest letter to music producer Russell Simmons about the night he raped her which was published in The Hollywood Reporter. I was left shaken, sobbing, and nodding my head in solidarity. Yes, this is how it happens.
“‘Til your world burns and crashes. ‘Til you’re at the end, the end of your rope. ‘Til you’re standing in my shoes. I don’t wanna hear a thing from you, from you. Cause you don’t know.”
The courage of sexual assault survivors who spoke up added fuel to my fire to finish the novel. Not everyone can speak up. Not everyone has to. I will.
13. “Shake it Out,” Florence + The Machine
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.” Florence’s encouragement to shake off the devil so that you can dance again is the theme of this All the Girls in Town. Banded together, the women are strong enough to take down Peter. Every woman deserves to be free and happy.
14. “Rebel Girl,” Bikini Kill
I love the DIY ethics of punk. In your face from the stage shouting – we will do it ourselves – is exactly the feeling I want the women in my novel to embrace. Shout it out! ‘That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood. I got news for you – she is!” Finally, the women see the beauty and strength in each other. And that’s how they move forward.
15. “Retreat!” Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Sharon Jones’ strong warning “Play with me and you'll play with fire. I can make you pay, I'll burn you up if it's my desire.” captures the tone of the war room while Dani, Red, and Sasha make a plan to take down Peter at his 40th birthday party in the Hollywood Hills. I especially love the sound of boots marching away at the end of this song. It’s also an anthem that says – this is your final warning.
16. “They Long To Be) Close to You,” The Carpenters
“On the day that you were born, the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true.” the three women sing together as they encircle Peter on stage in front of his adoring friends and paparazzi. “That is why all the girls in town, follow you. All around. Just like me, they long to be, close to you.” Each woman has questioned why? Why did she give all of herself to this horrible guy? The sweet sound of Karen Carpenter’s voice lends an eerie threat as Peter realizes he’s trapped, cornered like the animal that he is.
17. “Free Girl Now,” Tom Petty
Listening to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers offers the pure joy of rock and roll. What’s not to love in his music?
These are lyrics that make me want to get up and dance around my living room – “I remember when you were his dog. I remember you under his thumb, Yeah, baby when he would call every time you had to come. Hey baby, you’re a free girl now. Hey baby, you’re a free girl now. I remember when he was your boss. I remember him touchin’ your butt. I remember you counting your blessings. Yeah, honey you had to keep your mouth shut. Hey baby, you’re a free girl now.”
“Free Girl Now” is the perfect song to complete this novel. Dani, Red, and Sasha have real inner work to do but they have liberated themselves. They are free girls now.
Staci Greason’s literary achievements include award-winning television pilots and screenplays. Her short stories and essays have been published in Brevity, Slate, Lunch Ticket, AFLW, the Same, and the Huff Post. In her past life, she played the late Isabella Toscano Black on Days of Our Lives. Staci lives with her husband in Southern California. Visit her website at www.stacigreason.com.
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