The Playlist for Annihilator
This is about a playlist. yap yap yap music music music
As I’ve stated before, I always have to have a playlist when I write. If I don’t have tunes, I shrivel.
Annihilator was a tough one, because it’s a story about a girl with a specific cosmic problem. There’s also the sexual assault that’s central to the narrative (Yes, I know. I know because, while this book is not even remotely a satire, at times it does intend to satirize how we use assault in narratives, and also comment on how we narrativize real-life sexual assault to *mean* something. It’s all icky to me too). But mostly I needed songs about songs, I needed some somewhat dishonorable perspectives from women, and I needed stuff with a bite that didn’t involve a gratuitous amount of yelling, cuz it ain’t that kinda story.
Sinead O’Connor came to mind a few times, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Similarly, some bands like War on Women and Pussy Riot would have been great, but not great enough. It required some serious research (going through my Spotify follows), but I found the vitriol I was looking for, eventually. Some of it is noisy, but the really wretched stuff is quiet and lyrical and simply hateful. So, here’s the playlist. Here are some descriptions and reasons. You don’t have to listen to these, but if you are reading along with Annihilator, it simply doesn’t hurt to have good tunes going in the background.
“Cast your sorrows away
For I can conjure lifetimes
A future so out of reach for you is hanging from my hand
So take all you want and be endless like I am”
. . .
“Now I can control your choice
Steal the breath right from your lungs and harvest your voice
Cast down, you swear you're not to blame
But if my story lives, then rest assured they'll use your
Name”
Monique Pym is an absolute fuck of a lyricist, and Reliqa puts together some really tight nu-metal-inspired progressive heavy rock. Now obviously the song plays a lot with agency, consequence and power. Hey, guess why the first chapter of Annihilator quotes this song directly. The structure of the story is at least partly inspired by this song, except the structure of annihilator goes from hopeless to hopeful within the same structure of powerlessness. I’m not giving anything away by saying that. Also, it’s just a great song.
The Sun Goddess and the Rat - Utsu P
You don’t see this song here, I’m not proud of it. Shut up. From what I can personally translate this song seems to be a pretty vitriolic criticism of the sociopathic tendency to use ethics as a tool of one’s narcissism. Here we’re talking about the externalization of morality to conjure praise. Now, of course, the Christian perspective is the opposite, one must be morally good in an inward way, but this also has it’s problems. However, for the sake of Annihilator, this song is plainly about who we do a good act for. In Annihilator, a good act doesn’t mean a good act from an anthropocentric perspective. In fact, the WHO of any act is kind of how it is defined. Now, I’ve said already that Annihilator contains a critique of narrativization in the real world. I guess I need not say more.
“Wild, white horses
They will take me away
And the tenderness I feel
Will send the dark underneath
Will I follow?”
We have a character in crisis, she has to make a decision to prove something to herself. That decision is a bad decision. Doing nothing is a bad decision. There is a strange blanket of copacetic that comes over a person who has no choice but to do one of two bad things when no third option is available. But the whole book follows that trend. If there are only bad decisions to be made, then there is no decision to be made, but that can quickly become chosing the worst decision. That comfort numbing is a dangerous place. That’s all I think of when I hear this song.
Bent Knee is simply the coolest art pop/rock project that exists. Fuck Lady Gaga, listen to Courtney Swain croon to you. If you’ve ever listened to Xoxoy by Car Bomb you’ve heard her before, and you already like her music. If you haven’t fallen in love with Courtney Swain yet, you’re welcome.
“No stories come out of your mouth
When your time is out
Children run out of your house
With no father tongue”
This song is a critique of consumer capitalism. “In God We Trust” of course, referring to the US dollar. Swain is not the first to say money is the new God, and while that frankly overwrought statement is tired, what the song actually is examining is the dehumanizing culture of rampant capital acquisition. “You won’t sell your soul, only your body, they’re just fingers . . .” It’s a drive, a compulsion. And hey, guess what Annihilator is also about.
Rough. This song is about a miscarriage. I’m not a huge White Lung fan, but I am a massive fan of this White Lung record (Paradise). The whole record is real rock n’ roll man. Stuff that would have made GG Allen reinsert the poop back into his sphincter and get a day job that didn’t involve hitting himself with hammers. And it’s fun, it’s shoegazey, and lo-fi and fast and ugly. They open the album with this song. Very mean, in the same spirit as Little Richard opening his eponymous record with Keep A Knocking.
So, why miscarriage? There is no miscarriage in this story. Well, it’s here because I like the song and it captures the sonic essence of scraping your knees bloody. That’s really it.
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - The Cardigans (cover)
The Cardigans are sick. Nina Persson wrote the lyrics for First Band On the Moon when she was in the worst mood imaginable. As a consequence she created the softest, cutest, prettiest venom since Elvis Costello (Have you heard Heartbreaker? That song has AIDS of the soul). I digress, this song is not off of First Band on the Moon, it’s off of Emmerdale, which is a good record too. Why Sabbath Bloody Sabbath? This is a Black Sabbath song, right? While the Cardigans version is not better than the original, it is on par. It’s also a different song altogether. Persson likes to lie to her listeners and lull them into comfort, all the while setting them on edge without telling them explicitly why. The original, Black Sab version contains the sonic punches that the Cardigans hide in their raw skill and their filthy dirty lies.
“The truth is out, the lies are old
But you don't want to know
Nobody will ever let you know
When you ask the reasons why
They just tell you that you're on your own
Fill your head all full of lies”
So yeah, a running theme in Annihilator is that there’s something behind the real that some people recognize, but most don’t. But as Zizek says, “I want to see what happens the day after the revolution.” What’s a character supposed to do when they know something they didn’t know before? In Annihlator, you can assume it’s only bad things.
“Here in my reflecting
What more can I say?
For I am guilty
For the voice that I obey
Too scared to sacrifice a choice
Chosen for me”
Beth Gibbons fucks me up with this song. And the narrator of Annihilator is dealing with an identity crisis. Really it’s as simple as that, but I felt like it captured the sonic essence I wanted to try and find in words; the clunky, the violent, the kind of ugly, kind of ghosty thing that this song really masters.
Also, when you reach the ending of the book, this verse is kind of duh.
“I found my fear, it lives under the microscope
Not the beast I thought I knew but quiet, clever, fueled on hope
I've seen the devil, and they don't believe me
With every move, I make it harder to see”
“Release your inhibitions, feel the rain on your skin” but for people who like some nasty wiggly bass and stanky riffs. Also in the context of the story, when I was writing it, this song came up towards the end when some relevant things started happening, and I had to add it to the list. Read it, you’ll see what I mean.
Ha-ha. It’s on the playlist but it’s a joke.
So, that’s pretty much it. It’s a short playlist but I think it’s relatively efficient and good. I don’t know if this encourages or discourages you from reading annihilator, but my planny plan here is to probably release the whole thing on the ‘stack and then paywall it if anyone likes it. So get to it while it’s free.
K, buh-bye. Love you,
Slater (Simpulacra)
13 year old me would have had a crush on you because based on your playlist I would have to assume you're a girl. Flirting with a little a/s/l, ya know?