Throughout August, the FYA Book Clubs swooned and cried their way through Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park. In celebration of this painfully beautiful novel, we decided to award it the highest tribute possible: a mixtape.
I’ll be honest, this playlist pretty much wrote itself thanks to the musical references peppering the pages. Eleanor and Park’s relationship unfolds over a soundtrack of ’80s new wave and punk, and this mixtape is a catalog of every single band or song mentioned in the novel, in chronological order. It’s also, hopefully, a portrait of first love… and first heartbreak.
So grab some tissue and a copy of Watchmen and let the music whisk you away to a school bus seat in 1986.
- “God Save the Queen” – Sex Pistols
- “Assimilate” – Skinny Puppy
- “Kung Fu Fighting” – Carl Douglas
- “Something I Learned Today” – Hüsker Dü
- “How Soon Is Now?” – The Smiths
- “Romeo and Juliet” – Dire Straits
- “This Charming Man” – The Smiths
- 8. Holiday in Cambodia – Dead Kennedys
- “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – Joy Divison
- “Rise Above” – Black Flag
- “867-5309/Jenny” – Tommy Tutone
- “Forever Young” – Alphaville
- “Summer of ’69” – Bryan Adams
- “Bad” – U2
- “In Between Days” – The Cure
- “Cruel Summer” – Bananarama
- “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” – Simon & Garfunkel
- “Helter Skelter” – The Beatles
- “Rio” – Duran Duran
- “Who’s Johnny” – El DeBarge
- “Bitchin’ Camaro” – The Dead Milkmen
- “Alison” – Elvis Costello
- “Steppin’ Out” – Joe Jackson
- “Roadrunner” – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
- “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” – The Smiths
(Just close your eyes and pretend that Spotify is a Walkman.)
