Six top novels that reference pop music

Robert Haller holds an MFA in fiction from the New School in New York City. He lives in upstate New York. Another Life is his first novel.

At LitHub he tagged "six novels that reference pop music in interesting, effective ways," including:

Zadie Smith, Swing Time

In Swing Time Zadie Smith employs an unnamed narrator who grew up in public housing in North London in the 1970s and 80s. During her childhood she falls in love with tap dancing and meets her best friend Tracey at a dance class; the two girls spend their time together watching old musicals on VHS—Fred and Ginger, Judy Garland. Numbers from these musicals make up the soundtrack to their childhood friendship. An early pivotal scene in the novel comes when the two girls see Michael Jackson’s Thriller video on TV for the first time, and are introduced to a new way to dance. As they grow up, the two girls’ friendship is severed, and in college, the narrator substitutes dancing to show tunes to the then contemporary music of Gang Starr, Nas, and NWA. As an adult, Smith’s narrator gets a job as a personal assistant to a pop superstar named Aimee who bears some resemblance to Madonna. During the interview, Aimee asks the narrator who her favorite singers are, and the narrator lists Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan. “Real singers,” she says, before stopping herself.

A novel that deals with memory, loss and the way people change, the narrator’s vast and divergent music taste can be seen as one way Smith illuminates her character’s conflicted feelings towards her past.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue