Deep Cuts

Brickley’s novel focuses on a specific cultural era that begins around the time of the September 11 attacks (9/11) and ends with the 2008 financial crisis and the election of United States President Barack Obama. While the novel references a diversity of eras in American pop music, it also tracks subtle shifts in cultural attitudes, allowing protagonist Percy Marks’s aesthetic tastes to draw a line from No Doubt’s “Total Hate ‘95” to OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” to Panda Bear’s “Comfy in Nautica.” It is contextually important to consider how the social events that serve as the background for the beginning of the novel influence Percy’s choices and aesthetic sensibilities.

At the start of the novel, Percy and her friends are still living through the end of the album era, relying on CD wallets to store their favorite albums. The opening years of the 2000s carried over cultural trends from the 1990s, allowing teen pop acts like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys to maintain their positions at the top of the record charts. However, it was also around this time that the Internet became increasingly accessible to the general public, allowing for the rise of file-sharing networks like Napster, where users could easily download individual song tracks for free instead of having to buy albums.