I’m pretty excited about that mention of working on a class playlist of songs that hold potential purposeful/accidental references to TGG, because that’s a lot of what I do in my free time! I have upwards of 50 playlists composed based on shows I like, and a large majority of them are specifically focused on singular characters. So, I’ve already started looking for songs and I thought I might share a bit of my thought process here for my first blog post!
Here are my initial picks! I’ll go through my thought process for each song. A disclaimer that this is mostly for fun, so they’re not going to be perfect choices by any stretch of the word.
- Money from Cabaret –
- There’s a lot of interesting similarities between Cabaret and TGG as a whole, and this particular song just happens to be one of my favorites. It’s essentially about how the wealthy can use their money to escape their problems. I particularly like the repetition of “If you happen to be rich,” which implies that the people being spoken about come from generational wealth that they didn’t have to earn themselves. As for Cabaret and TGG as a whole- it’s something I’m interested in going more in depth to in a future blog post. Briefly, though: they both concern political apathy (particularly by the wealthy and careless), heavily feature escapism, feature a main female character who serves as a foil to the cynical main male character, and frequently prove their own points in a meta sense. (Meaning, they advise against being carelessly opulent and ignoring real problems, but many fans only focus on the glamorous parts of the stories.) There are many similarities beyond this, too, but I’ve already gone on too long.
- Stalker’s Tango –
- I’m biased in adding this, because I will find any reason to put Autoheart’s music on my playlists. That acknowledged, though, I see this song as being through the lens of Gatsby, obsessing over Daisy while not actually seeing her, as the whole song is about the singer themself and not the subject of their affection. The line “It’s not that complicated, no matter what they say | You’ll never meet another me” could be Gatsby telling Daisy that she’s never loved anyone else, simplifying her relationship with Tom into nothing, even though Daisy herself knows that she did love Tom at some point.
- At Least I Have Nothing –
- So, I only put this song on this playlist as a physical reminder to myself that this was the Saint Motel album cover that reminds me of the eyes of TJ Eckleburg. I don’t think this is on purpose, and I couldn’t find anything online relating the two, but I thought it was fun regardless. The eyes on the cover of the vinyl edition even move! It’s a great album even if this comparison is a total stretch.
- She Lit a Fire –
- A less intense song about following a girl around after being charmed by her. I’d like to look for more songs that don’t have to do with Gatsby and Daisy- but of course songs about yearning for beautiful girls are aplenty. I’ll be keeping my eye out though. I don’t feel very strongly about this pick either, and it’ll probably end up getting taken off the playlist, but when I put it on I was amused by the comparison of “She lit a fire” to Daisy’s lit green lantern, as well as how she communicates with Gatsby from across the canal using the light from her room.