This is my favorite post I’ve written. As one of my favorite albums of all time, Alessia Cara’s In The Meantime is a superb example of fun production and excellent, heart-piercing lyricism. It explores many topics that can be found in contemporary literary fiction: anxiety, relationships, loneliness, time. To revisit both the album and books I’ve read, I decided to pair each song on In The Meantime with a book that I find similar.
I only chose books that I’ve read, so there may be some novels out there that better represent what Cara is trying to say. Hopefully I come across those in the future. I had so much fun with this project, and I’d like to write more like this with more albums eventually. But without further ado, here are my comparisons!
Unboxing Intro / Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney
“Cloudy blue sky over me / Echoes of old news lingering / They’re deafening, no point in anything / Nothing and everything matters.” Alessia Cara
“…In my deepest essence I am just an artefact of my culture, just a little bubble winking at the brim of our civilisation. And when it’s gone, I’ll be gone. Not that I think I mind.” Sally Rooney
In the opening track of the album, Alessia Cara briefly considers the situation and mindset that she has found herself in. The last line is a slap to the face: “Have I almost hit the bottom?” This song reminds me of the existential crises that Alice and Eileen have in all their emails to each other; one sentence in the sender’s message sends the other friend into a frenzy. They discuss everything: right-wing politics, sexuality, friendship, the novel, Jesus, beauty, and more. Alice and Eileen seem to agree that “nothing and everything matters.”
Box In The Ocean / The Trackers, Charles Frazier
“All these explosive emotions I’m holdin’ / But you’ll never know ‘em, ‘cause I put ‘em in a box in the ocean.” Alessia Cara
“From the moment she had entered the room, Eve acted as if she were onstage, every movement meant to convey some nuance about the character she was playing…She seemed used to having people watch her, and she wanted to put on a good show…” Charles Frazier
In track two, Alessia Cara lets her listeners in on some difficult truths she holds (“I don’t think I could live up to the mother that my mother was”, for example.) She admits, though, that she usually keeps these thoughts to herself, hiding them away in a “box in the ocean.” The star of Charles Frazier’s The Trackers, Eve Long, does the same. She runs away from her husband and her life without a goodbye, and narrator Val is sent to find her. Val learns much about Eve’s true life and personality, more than she has ever shared with her own husband. She is more complex than most people that know her could ever truly understand, perhaps like Alessia Cara.
Bluebird / The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
“I loved you, but I couldn’t keep you / I was broken, ‘til I learned I didn’t need you.” Alessia Cara
“But, like anyone in love, Madeleine believed that her own relationship was different from every other relationship, immune from typical problems.” Jeffrey Eugenides
Track three is a recognition: that you can love someone and still need to let them go. Spoilers ahead — Madeleine, The Marriage Plot’s main character, comes to this realization when it’s almost too late. The book is supposed to be a love triangle, but the main driving force is Madeleine’s relationship with her boyfriend Leonard. Readers see the exciting highs and the devastating lows of this relationship; listeners don’t see all of this in the song “Bluebird,” but they can feel it in the words that Alessia Cara directs to her past lover. (“I miss you, I do, but I wasn’t for you.”)
Lie To Me / The Bee Sting, Paul Murray
“And they love to say I’m crazy / Suspicious and insecure / But, baby, can you blame me? / You know I’ve been hurt before.” Alessia Cara
“It struck him therefore that to love someone meant to be opened up to a radically heightened level of suffering.” Paul Murray
While both the song and the book are undeniably about infidelity, I would say that they both carry so much more. As the title suggests, “Lie To Me” is about the lies and half-truths that people tell each other; in The Bee Sting, the plot relies on everything that isn’t said within a family. Can people that consider themselves close ever fully know each other? Alessia Cara and Paul Murray say no.
Shapeshifter / Rules of Civility, Amor Towles
“Don’t know if I wanna get you back or get you back someday / Don’t know if I’m even mad or just sad you couldn’t stay, yeah / Go figure, team switcher, it’s a shame / Did I get fooled or are you a fool just like me?” Alessia Cara
“I suppose we don’t rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give people the liberty of fashioning themselves in the moment — a span of time that is so much more manageable, stageable, controllable than is a lifetime.” Amor Towles
The three main characters of the book — Katey Kontent, Eve Ross, and Tinker Grey — are all shapeshifters. In late 1930s New York, they have to be in order to get by. They think they know each other well, but they don’t even know the most basic information about each other. I’m struck by how well every lyric of “Shapeshifter” applies to Katey, Eve, and Tinker; the most accurate one might be “We were never two, my dear, we were three.” The characters’ relationships — Katey and Eve, Katey and Tinker, Eve and Tinker — are all burdened by the missing person in this fascinating novel.
Fishbowl / The Rachel Incident, Caroline O’Donoghue
“I wanna hide and I wanna breathe, I wanna be good again (yeah, yeah, yeah) / I wanna live and do anything without needing to phone a friend.” Alessia Cara
“I was twenty and I needed two things: to be in love and to be taken seriously.” Caroline O’Donoghue
I could have chosen any twenty-something-year-old-coming-of-age novel to pair with “Fishbowl.” Every one of those characters deals with crippling anxiety, feeling stuck in a fishbowl and unable to swim to the surface. In the book, Rachel struggles with friendship, romance, money, and family. Despite these tough topics, it’s hilarious. Alessia Cara teases herself in the song, too, not wanting to take herself too seriously: “I wanna run and I wanna scream, but I wanna go to bed.”
I Miss You, Don’t Call Me / Normal People, Sally Rooney
“Oh, I miss you, don’t call me / I’m the one who’s under your thumb / You’re the one I’ll never unlove.” Alessia Cara
“All these years, they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions.” Sally Rooney
This might be (in my opinion) the most beautiful song on the album. It’s about the back-and-forth in your head, knowing you shouldn’t want someone but wanting them anyway. And what book captures this dynamic better than Normal People? Connell and Marianne are like Alessia Cara and her lover; they love each other so much that they hurt each other (as Cara says, “You’re the bruise I’ll never learn from.”) Both song and book confront the feeling head-on and well.
Middle Ground / Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
“I don’t need a man and all that jazz / But come to think of butterflies and starry-eyes, I don’t remember hating it.” Alessia Cara
“A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is something to think of, and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions.” Jane Austen
The love story of Lizzie Bennett and Mr. Darcy is one for the ages, though we all know it didn’t start out that way. In “Middle Ground,” Alessia Cara takes the stance that Lizzie first took; she doesn’t trust love or falling into it, but if it were to come her way, she’ll talk a stab at it. We don’t know if Cara finds love in the end, but thankfully, Lizzie does.
Somebody Else / Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Coco Mellors
“No between the lines, it’s black and white / I’m by myself, and you’re somebody else.” Alessia Cara
Spoiler! “And there it was, the feeling she had been trying to deny…Eleanor got this version of Frank, the sober, thoughtful man who took her suggestions, while Cleo had endured the drunken predecessor like a fool.” Coco Mellors
Cleo and Frank’s relationship rocks their worlds in good ways and bad. By the end of the book, they’ve separated, and Frank in particular is somebody else. Listening to “Somebody Else,” you can hear the half-hearted anger in Cara’s voice; this is the feeling that plagues Cleo and Frank as their relationship disintegrates. I have pretty different feelings about the song and the book. I absolutely adore the song, while the book is upsetting to me. I can’t explain why, but I’d recommend both!
Drama Queen / The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
“Always on my toes / It’s not romantic, it’s problematic.” Alessia Cara
“…It was not until the first year of her marriage had closed that she took the alarm. It was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights out one by one.” Henry James
Isabel thinks she has finally met her match in Gilbert Osmond after turning down the marriage proposals of two other men. But it doesn’t take long for her to discover that Osmond isn’t the man she thought she was marrying. Alessia Cara insists, “You’re not in love me anymore…you’re just in love with the drama.” It’s perhaps not drama that Osmond has grown to love instead of Isabel; in fact, it’s not anything. I would argue he doesn’t even love his daughter. While “Drama Queen” is teasing and upbeat, The Portrait of a Lady is almost depressing, though they explore a similar situation.
Clockwork / The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
“Can’t run from what I’m made of, but why can’t I / Identify with parts that I’m supposed to recognize?” Alessia Cara
“We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.” Donna Tartt
Like the whole album, really, “Clockwork” is a meditation on time. The same can be said of The Goldfinch, which follows one character throughout his entire life, examining each of his decisions and motivations. Alessia Cara and Theo Decker wonder if they’re doing the right thing with the time they’ve been given. While Cara’s situation might be less dramatic, the two of them share a lot of similarities.
Best Days / Writers & Lovers, Lily King
“What if my best days are the days I’ve left behind? / And what if the rest stays the same for all my life?” Alessia Cara
“I look into my eyes, but they aren’t really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They’re the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder…” Lily King
“Best Days” is a tough song to listen to because it’s one that you don’t want to relate to, but you’re afraid that you do. As protagonist/former golf prodigy/waitress/writer Casey grows older, she’s worried that she’s wasting time, but she doesn’t know how to stop wasting time in her current situation. In the song, Alessia Cara references the album’s title: “You live and then you die / But the hardest pill to swallow is the meantime.” Casey’s stuck in the meantime, trying to find a way to make it worthwhile.
Sweet Dream / Big Swiss, Jen Beagin
“Is it too much to ask for a sweet dream? / Need a step back from my feelings / Life is not so bad when I’m sleeping.” Alessia Cara
“The straitjacket explained her passivity, her inability to defend herself, to take action, to make plans, to dream—” Jen Beagin
For Alessia Cara, insomnia is more than just the inability to sleep; it means she’s trapped with her thoughts all the time, unable to shut off her brain and the “scary thoughts” that inevitably pierce through. The song is funny and witty, as is Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss. In both, we’re stuck inside the narrators’ heads, unable to shy away from their brutally honest thoughts.
Find My Boy / The Seven Year Slip, Ashley Poston
“I’ve had a couple loves didn’t go my way / I’m running out of luck and time to waste / I don’t understand, I can’t seem to find my boy.” Alessia Cara
“You have to try on a lot of shoes until you find some you like walking in.” Ashley Poston
In the book, narrator Clementine finds her boy — then loses him. Then finds him again, then loses him again. There’s magic in The Seven Year Slip; Alessia Cara doesn’t expect magic magic, but she hopes for magic anyway. We don’t know if she finds it, but Clementine certainly does. Both the song and the book are upbeat and fun, even with the stressful subject matter.
Voice In My Head / Beach Read, Emily Henry
“Stretchin’ myself thin, breakin’ my own heart / I’d jump right out if I could, never out of the woods / I’m stuck with me after all / I just wish I could shake the burdens off.” Alessia Cara
“This is how life feels too often. Like you’re doing everything you can to survive only to be sabotaged by something beyond your control, maybe even some darker part of yourself.” Emily Henry
There’s a thrilling love story right in front of Beach Read’s main character January, yet for most of the book, she tries to ignore it. She’s stuck in her head, thinking of all the things that have gone wrong in her life and all the things that have the potential to go wrong. In “Voice in My Head” (one of my favorites on the album), Alessia Cara curses that voice, wishing she could turn it off and live outside of her brain. It’s an upbeat song, giving us hope; January gives in to her love story, giving us a happy ending.
Slow Lie / Age of Vice, Deepti Kapoor
“Don’t you go lose yourself and build a glass house / On the wrong things, on the wrong things / I can picture you still on the hill / It’s always the ones who said that they’ll never change.” Alessia Cara
“For a moment he can take a flight of fancy — scandalous, unbearable to hold it for more than second…that he has a normal life, a life where he is in control.” Deepti Kapoor
“Slow Lie” is a love story gone wrong. It hints that someone promised something to Alessia Cara and broke that promise, even after insisting that to do so would be out of the question. Age of Vice is an expansive novel that shows every side of its many characters. In particular, there are two characters who share a unique love — it’s doomed, but they ignore that until it’s too late. Both song and book are painfully human and honest.
You Let Me Down / Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
“You’re only mine when I am on my feet / You’re elusive, and it kills me / Inconclusive, never-ending / Oh, I / I love you but you let me down.” Alessia Cara
“And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them…while the two of them were still with the void in which the sum of everything they’d ever said or done, every pain they’d inflicted, every joy they’d shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind.” Jonathan Franzen
Patty and Walter’s relationship in Freedom is one of the most complicated relationships I’ve ever read. They both understand and weigh it differently, and the book takes it on the wildest rollercoaster. They love each other, but they constantly let each other down. In “You Let Me Down,” Alessia Cara seems ready to pull the plug on her relationship, understanding that it has run its course and that she must move on. It’s different for Patty and Walter; their history is so complex, and the book explores that perfectly.
Apartment Song / America Fantastica, Tim O’Brien
“I know I’m a bummer, got no lover, but the color / Of the sky tonight’s so nice I don’t mind (hey, hey) / Slid under the cover, change my number, feels like summer / Under kitchen light, it’s nice I don’t mind…” Alessia Cara
“Reality is a monster.” Tim O’Brien
Both “Apartment Song” and America Fantastica are about accepting where one is. Alessia Cara admits that she knows her joy is fleeting, but she will welcome it anyway, for as long as it cares to remain. Boyd Halverson starts the book with revenge on his mind and ends it with comfortable acceptance. It’s like a sigh of relief.
Thanks for reading! For fun, here’s my ranking of In The Meantime (to the best of my ability — this was incredibly difficult):
Somebody Else
I Miss You, Don’t Call Me
Middle Ground
Voice in My Head
Drama Queen
Bluebird
You Let Me Down
Slow Lie
Apartment Song
Sweet Dream
Box In The Ocean
Fishbowl
Clockwork
Lie To Me
Best Days
Shapeshifter
Find My Boy
Unboxing Intro