What's a roadtrip without a soundtrack?
Blogs and extras are bonus content to supplement the work in our issues. We asked Zac Hing, author of Body in Issue 22 and Roadtrip in Issue 24, to tell us about his roadtrip playlist.
What's a roadtrip without a soundtrack? Singing along, hands out the window, sun flashing past through the trees or sparkling off the sea, headed toward some kind of exciting destination—in my own experience, roadtrips are always joyous events.
But my story is a little sad—it’s about being unhappy with your life, about leaving things behind, even if you don’t want to. It’s also a story I wrote some time ago, and returning to edit it for Headland, as well as to put together this playlist, I found myself in a nostalgic and kind of melancholic mood.
Therefore, I really felt like putting together something more like a breakup playlist—a playlist for lonely night drives, for when things are a bit depressing, for those times when you’re missing people you love but haven’t spoken to in far too long.
1. Anything—Adrienne Lenker
There’s a brief moment, in the story, and the imagined history of this relationship (to me at least) where our two characters are happy, or almost happy—even if the protagonist is unable to look it in the eye. I think this song captures those quiet happy moments of togetherness. I think even a breakup playlist deserves some happy songs.
2. Shoulders—Fazerdaze
I remember James, a very close friend of mine, taking me to a Fazerdaze concert at Meow in Pōneke in 2017, right after Morningside was released. I remember him singing Lucky Girl at the top of his lungs a lot that year. I miss him a lot. Fazerdaze is very nostalgic to me for that reason, even though it’s not only her old music that I like: her latest album Soft Power is also very good. I pick this song specifically for the playlist due to the line “I'm trying not to try so hard for you”—the way happiness gets tied up in anxiety, trying to be someone different for love.
3. Kimochi Warui (When? When? When? When? When? When? When?)—Car Seat Headrest
But this story is also about someone who seemingly has never been very happy. This song is about that listless never-ending feeling, wanting things to be different not only in love but in life. The title, Kimochi Warui, is a Japanese phrase that can be translated variously (as Mr Headrest intones on the track): “I feel sick, I don’t feel well, what a disgusting feeling. I don’t like this feeling… how disgusting… this feeling sucks.” I discovered the song when I was going through a similar period. I think having music that matches your own feelings can make you feel better. Even if you have a feeling that makes you sick to your stomach.
4. hostage master—Lil Ugly Mane
A different friend, Jack, introduced me to Lil Ugly Mane. “Caught between the cities and the lights, I don't think we have the right to be alive.” Jack used to talk about the concept of liminality a lot, in a semi-joking manner, which was notorious only for the two of us. hostage master feels like a song about that inbetween-ness, the space of the roads that connect places, which serve no other purpose than to be passed through and forgotten.
5. haunt me (x 3)—Teen Suicide
But sometimes things get caught in those in-between places, and they can’t escape. Relationships, for example, as in the case of the story. Or people. Stuck between life and death, you might turn into a ghost, and our protagonist is thinking about ghosts a lot. This is another track that I listened to a lot in 2017.
6. God Turn Me Into a Flower—Weyes Blood
As with Kimochi Warui—a song about wanting to be something else, wanting to be transformed, by yourself, by God, by love, by anything. I imagine Weyes Blood’s haunting humming soundtracking the perspective of a satellite, alone, drifting in black heaven, following the movement of the car down that pearl necklace of the road lit by streetlights.
7. Oceans—Womb
I think about this song whenever I'm looking up at the moon, or alone beside the sea. Jack took me to a Womb gig in 2023. When the jangling guitar of this track started playing, she excitedly turned to me and said this was her favourite song of theirs. Since then it’s become mine too. She’s another friend I miss a lot. “How come I feel so far from you?” That guitar always makes me feel like I’m moving forward, leaving something important behind. If you take away nothing else from this playlist, go listen to Womb. Their latest album is appropriately titled One is Always Heading Somewhere. I think they are one of the best bands in Aotearoa at the moment.
8. Never Meant—American Football
This one could be included for obvious reasons, but I’m adding it because it has always made me think about autumn. For me I think it’s perfect for the other miniature roadtrip inside the story, when they visit the boyfriend’s parents, and he tells our protagonist about the French name for the autumn red-brown colour. I also guess our protagonist might think, in the future, that everything said and did was never meant, but I don’t believe that’s true—of this story, and about any relationship.
9. Hard Drive—Cassandra Jenkins
I like this song a lot. It comes at the end because my story could almost have been titled Hard Drive as well but also because, unlike the story, it’s hopeful, as a lot of Cassandra Jenkins’ music is. I like to imagine that, after the story, the characters might learn how to put themselves back together. Maybe the protagonist will take another drive, alone, remembering to leave room for grace this time.
A lot of the time when I write, I aspire to create the same kind of feeling as particular songs. None of these songs directly inspired Roadtrip, as it was written almost five years ago, but it has been fun (and sad, but in a good way) to return to the story, and to my own past, and try to imagine which songs resonate there. I hope that for you as a reader listening to the playlist and reading the story can create a new emotion.
