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Official Soundtrack For "A Body Held Still By Fear And Loathing"

BY: A.A. REDD

So last week, we asked D.A. Alston to curate a Spotify playlist for her novel The Unlikely Tale of The Royal Elite Squad and she dropped off an incredible list of tracks. This week, A.A. Redd does the same for her book of poetry, A Body Held Still By Fear And Loathing. The playlist features songs from Sia, Frank Ocean, Tame Impala and Frederic Chopin.

Brand New - "Sowing Season (Yeah)"

This has been one of my favorite songs for nearly a decade. Brand New merged their own lyrics with some lines from Rudyard Kipling’s “If” to paint a sorrowful soundscape, resulting in an ode to watching your life destruct before you and being forced to reassemble it under the worst circumstances. Both “Learning Curve” and “Underground” share the themes of failure and struggling to recover from it, and the same somber tone.

Frederic Chopin - "Nocturne no. 2 Opus 9"

I fell in love with Chopin in middle school because his music embodies the era of classical music he lived through. It is utterly romantic in every sense of the word and it manages to do that with only a passionate piano to carry the listener from gentle start to sweeping finish. Some of the poems in this book are about toxic love, but quite a few are just love poems, like “Honeyed” and “Overboard.” When reading those, the lilting keys of Chopin would be the best accompaniment in my opinion.

Chaos Chaos - "Do You Feel It"

“Dependency Dance” was what drove me to choose this song. Toxic love is something I can’t seem to stop writing about. This is one of those songs that broke my heart as soon as I heard it, because the relationship it portrays is blisteringly desperate and incredibly fragile, something that feels very familiar to me.

Motion City Soundtrack - "Everything Is Alright"

Last year, a lot of things started to make sense after I was diagnosed with OCD. One of those things was why I loved and identified with this song so much. Justin Pierre, the lead singer, penned the song about his own struggle with severe OCD. I’m starting to feel more comfortable writing about my disorders and other neurodivergencies (“Split” and “Dissociation Dreams” are two poems that deal solely with those topics) and that’s partly thanks to music like this.

You can listen to the entire soundtrack below or on Spotify.


A Body Held Still By Fear And Loathing is available now on Amazon, Kindle, B&N and Vital Narrative.