The Official See You Next Tuesday Annotated Playlist （or, a Brief Political Memoir Told Through Song） #2
I did a lot of writing during the 2016 cycle, and I usually had almost no time to do it.
When I had to write something very emotional in under ten minutes (this happened more often than you can possibly imagine), I had a hack: a playlist called “Adele for Sadz.” I would go to the darkest spot I could find in campaign headquarters (there was a couch under the stairwell I really liked), put on my headphones, and let Adele bring up all the feelings I’d been repressing so I could write about them.
Then, when my draft was done, I’d return to my desk and go on about my day like I hadn’t just been crying in full view of dozens of people.
Campaigning is such a weird job. I still really love this song, though.
“Made in America” by JAY-Z and Kanye West feat. Frank Ocean
I was there in the room when Hillary clinched the primary in June 2016, when she accepted the nomination in August, and I was there in the Javits Center the night we lost the election too, one of the most difficult nights of my life.
After the election, I was a shell of a human being—directionless, exhausted, depressed.
All the optimism I’d ever had about America, or the goodness of people, was gone.
I returned to my home in Los Angeles a few weeks after the election, and a couple of weeks after that, I drove up the coast to visit friends in San Francisco.
I was almost there and it was pouring rain when this song came on.
I had never heard it before, and I instantly burst into tears at the Frank Ocean hook that opens the lyric: Sweet king Martin, Sweet queen Coretta, Sweet brother Malcolm, Sweet queen Betty.
Sweet Mother Mary, Sweet father Joseph, Sweet Jesus, we made it in America.
I thought of Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, and all the other activists I’d grown up idolizing—Emma Goldman, Claudette Colvin, Medgar Evers, Ernest Green, and so many more.
I thought of Congressman John Lewis, whom I had the honor of meeting and working with during the 2016 cycle.
I thought of the unimaginable losses these activists had experienced during their lives, losses far worse than what I’d endured.
I thought of their legacy, their American legacy.
That as surely as our country had produced the nightmare that began on Election Night in 2016, it produced these heroes too.
That both had to be true. My optimism wasn’t gone; it was only being tested.
I pulled over to the side of the road and wept. We made it in America.
“Freedom” by Beyoncé feat. Kendrick Lamar
Lemonade was one of those albums everyone on the campaign listened to constantly in 2016.
When Beyoncé did a surprise concert at one of our rallies in Ohio the week before the election, we felt unstoppable, like victory was within our grasp.
When Kamala Harris chose this track as her campaign anthem in 2024, it felt like perhaps we could right some of the wrongs of the past eight years, like a woman really could win the White House after all.
It was during Vice President Harris’s brief campaign that I had the idea for See You Next Tuesday.
I was feverishly writing the first pages of this novel as I volunteered as a writer for the Harris campaign.
Nearly eight years after we’d lost the election in 2016, I finally felt ready to write about politics, to share the most exciting and heartbreaking details of my career.
After the 2024 election, I feared I might not want to work on this book anymore, but it was the opposite.
I felt even more desperately committed to showing all the good people who dedicate their lives to campaigns, the possibility that good things can happen in America.
In a time surrounded by so much darkness, this novel became my light.
I’m telling these tears, “Go and fall away, fall away.” May the last one burn into flames.
“we fell in love in october” by girl in red
These last few songs are less about my personal history and more about the novel itself.
This sweetly sad song makes me think of Anya and Gabe and all the Octobers they spend together over the course of the story, falling in and out of love, learning how much they’re willing to sacrifice for their careers and for each other.
It makes me think of all my campaign crushes over the years—the silly ones, the special ones—and the way your love of country, your love of a candidate, and your love for another person can all feel like the same thing.
“Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens
The city of Chicago holds such great political memories for me—one of my first big business trips for my campaign job in 2006, President Obama’s victory speech in Grant Park in 2008, so many others—and I knew I wanted the city to play a key part in the arc of this novel.
It made so much sense as Anya’s hometown, and as the place where Anya and Gabe would eventually reunite.
This song evokes that joy for me, and how fleeting life in politics can be: All things go, all things go.
It doesn’t matter if a job is the greatest of your life or the worst; they’ll all be over on Election Day, and then it’s time to look for something new.
The people you love, and the relationships you build with them, are the only thing that stays.
“America” by Simon and Garfunkel
I grew up loving this song, and it broke my heart a little when Senator Bernie Sanders used it for one of his most memorable campaign ads during the 2016 primary.
That was an extremely difficult primary, not least because one of my best friends was working for Senator Sanders at the time, and it was horrible being on opposing sides of the campaign.
For a long time, I hated hearing this song; it always brought me back to that painful period of the campaign and of that friendship.
But in preparing to write this novel, I had a long, wonderful conversation with my friend.
We laughed about old wounds; we each appreciated how hard the other had worked, how much we both believed we were doing the right thing for the right candidate.
That conversation was so helpful to me in how I framed Anya and Gabe’s narrative, and as a small bonus, I’m also so happy I can now listen to this beautiful song again with no mixed feelings. We’ve all come to look for America.
“The Way I Loved You (Taylor’s Version)” by Taylor Swift
Longtime readers will know that I always pick a Taylor Swift era to represent the novel I’m writing; for One to Watch, it was Speak Now, and for Fang Fiction, it was Reputation.
For See You Next Tuesday, it’s Fearless: the bright optimism and big feelings of youth, the rolling sunflower fields of Americana, the heartbreaks that feel so painful we’ll never get over them—except then we do.
For me, “The Way I Loved You” is the epitome of Anya and Gabe’s love: I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain…
It’s a roller coaster kind of rush and I never knew I could feel that much, and that’s the way I loved you.
That’s the tidal wave of love I wanted to write about in this novel, the kind you couldn’t out-swim even if you wanted to—and really, why would you want to?
Life might be calmer if we never felt huge passion for our beliefs, for our work, or for the people we fall in love with, but I would never want to live that way.
Give me that roller coaster kind of rush, the kind of love that makes you feel more than you believed was possible.
That’s the way I loved campaigning, and it’s the way Anya and Gabe love each other.
Listen to the See You Next Tuesday playlist on Spotify: