Music is a recurring motif throughout the novel that serves to create a bond between different characters when they struggle to articulate how they feel. As Lizzie, Hugh, Caoimhe, Gibsie, and others face traumatic events, music conveys how they feel.

Lizzie and Hugh’s relationship is often punctuated by thematically appropriate music. For example, when they begin to explore their romantic feelings, they celebrate the New Year and Lizzie’s first year at Tommen by dancing to “Take ME to the Clouds Above” by LMC and U2. The song’s lyrics are about falling in love, with the speaker willing to follow the object of his desire wherever they go:

There’s a boy I know

He’s the one I dream of

Looked into my eyes

Take me to the clouds above

Lizzie immediately identifies with the song, applying its message to her growing love for Hugh: “Hugh Biggs could take me anywhere and I would go with him gladly” (534).

In another scene, Lizzie and Hugh struggle to talk about Lizzie’s infidelity and their breakup. Instead, they use music to speak for them. In the middle of the night, Lizzie plays Hugh the song “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac. Stevie Nicks, who wrote the song after her breakup with Lindsey Buckingham, described it as “a whole symbolic thing of what [Lindsey] could have been to me” (Spanos, Brittany. “‘Silver Springs’: Inside Fleetwood Mac’s Lost Breakup Anthem.” Rolling Stone, 17 Aug. 2017). The song reflects Lizzie’s devastation at her breakup with Hugh and implies that they could have been happy together. In response, Hugh plays “Go Your Own Way,” also by Fleetwood Mac. The song, written by Buckingham, expresses his feelings about the breakup with Nicks. Lines like “Loving you isn’t the right thing to do / How can I ever change things that I feel?” express Hugh’s feelings: He still loves Lizzie, but knows he should distance himself.