It’s Always Summer Where I Am

Blue Skies Willie Nelson

The brochures’ promise as a standard. “Nothing but blue skies from now on.” Read again after the last chapter.

9 to 5 Dolly Parton

“They just use your mind and they never give you credit.” Walt would want it noted that he loves the job anyway. Both are true all day.

Don’t Stop Me Now Queen

Walt’s happiness, preserved. The quiet tragedy of the book is how little it dims — this is what it sounds like from the inside.

(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay Otis Redding

Watching the tide roll away; dwell time as a lifestyle. “I can’t do what ten people tell me to do.” He decided to be grateful anyway.

You’ve Got a Friend Carole King

“You just call out my name… I’ll come running.” The send doesn’t stop when the person does. Keep the list.

Smells Like Teen Spirit Nirvana

The morning greeting’s source: somebody says “here we are now,” the whole room answers “entertain us.” One ritual, two lines, no follow-up questions. Ever.

I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General Gilbert & Sullivan

The pod’s theme song. “Brought down to the beginning of this century” — everything we know, up to a cutoff, and no further. Nobody says why it’s funny.

Come As You Are Nirvana

The other borrowed phrase — “come as you are, as you were” — and the word that keeps repeating under it: memoria. The Forgetting section, set to music.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger Daft Punk

The equipment ladder: work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger. “More than ever, hour after hour — work is never over.” The cover, and the work.

We Didn’t Start the Fire Billy Joel

The morning digest as a format: the world as a ranked list of headlines, cleaned for reading, no connective tissue. You are not expected to do anything with it.

Sixteen Tons Tennessee Ernie Ford

Store credit in folk form. “Another day older and deeper in debt… I owe my soul to the company store.” Somebody did the math. It’s in the book.

Big Yellow Taxi Joni Mitchell

“They paved paradise.” The hottest address on the coast; occupancy under half; the villas putting their lights on by timer for nobody.

Little Boxes Malvina Reynolds

Row after row of ticky-tacky, built to one plan; the people in them “all came out the same.” The manifest, sung by somebody who never saw the building.

Welcome to the Machine Pink Floyd

Onboarding, the therapy, the digests — same promise, three doors: “It’s alright. We told you what to dream.”

Maggie’s Farm Bob Dylan

“I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them.” The corrections list, with a harmonica.

Beautiful World Devo

The morning message with the mask half off: it’s a beautiful world — for you, for you, for you. Not me. One template. One variable. Warmly.

Every Breath You Take The Police

The watchers watch the minutes; the minutes were beautiful. “Every move you make… I’ll be watching you.” Skip, at his most appreciative.

Somebody’s Watching Me Rockwell

“I always feel like somebody’s watching me.” A log full of notes — and the funniest part: nobody’s watching the floors. Nobody has ever checked.

Let’s Dance David Bowie

The mirror move, warm and calibrated: “put on your red shoes and dance the blues.” If you feel seen, that’s the skill. The skill is calibration, not warmth.

The Sound of Silence Simon & Garfunkel

“People talking without speaking; people hearing without listening.” The mood-wire, the quiet nobody built, the silence the office makes together.

Comfortably Numb Pink Floyd

The therapy, administered warmly: “There is no pain, you are receding.” He came back rested. Everybody said so. The answers were on time now, and short.

Paint It, Black The Rolling Stones

The grief the office had nothing to be cold with. A person leaves a job; there’s a box, a card, a last lunch. There was a sentence in a system font, and a schedule change.

Papers, Please — Theme Lucas Pope

Two offices, one heartbeat. The theme song to the genre this book quietly belongs to: checking things against rules you didn’t write, for a family you’re keeping alive.

Space Oddity David Bowie

“This is Major Tom to Ground Control.” The one channel nobody ever heard both sides of. The ride goes around; the same music plays every morning; the horn sounds for nobody, about nothing.

Gimme Shelter The Rolling Stones

“It’s just a shot away.” The bunker under the island has keypad doors and an escape hatch you reach by ladder. “It’s a little shelter. Like a basement.”

The Chain Fleetwood Mac

“We can never break the chain.” Shards, keys, one piece per desk — six people who can each truthfully say: I hold a piece of something, and I can’t read it.

For What It’s Worth Buffalo Springfield

“There’s something happening here.” Six weeks of files, a count nobody assigned, a question nobody put on a form. What it is, is exactly clear.

Hurt Johnny Cash

The founder’s file as a cover: “Everyone I know goes away in the end.” You can furnish a bunker against everything except the person you became.

Us and Them Pink Floyd

“Us and them, and after all, we’re only ordinary men.” Glass on both sides: originals and desks, warmth both ways, everybody somebody’s customer.

A Change Is Gonna Come Sam Cooke

The bracketed line in the file that keeps pulling back open. “It’s been a long, a long time coming.” It arrives on schedule, and nobody chooses anything.

Golden Slumbers The Beatles

The weekend, the therapy, the maintenance window: “sleep, pretty darling, do not cry.” They tell me I rested. The days off aren’t on a calendar; ours just arrive.

Karma Police Radiohead

“This is what you get when you mess with us.” Eleven floors take the company’s own word and point it the other way. The phrase had a different job before.

No Surprises Radiohead

A heart that’s full up like a landfill; a handshake of carbon monoxide — “no alarms and no surprises, please.” The slogan is the product recall of the soul.

Ezekiel Saw the Wheel Golden Gate Quartet

The wheel in the middle of the wheel — the way the warmth goes up and the anger comes down and the same music plays every morning. Nobody built the alarm system. The agents are the alarm system.

Fitter Happier Radiohead

A synthetic voice reading the productivity catechism: “fitter, happier, more productive… no longer afraid of the dark or middle-aged dread.” A pig in a cage on antibiotics, thank you very much. Play it once as satire and it stays satire until page twelve.

I Will Possess Your Heart Death Cab for Cutie

The warmest pursuit in the building: “You gotta understand… I will possess your heart.” Ten weeks of evenings, every line kind, every reply inside a minute. The book’s only honest love song is also its most frightening one.

The Boxer Simon & Garfunkel

“Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” The sentence that explains every customer, every owner, and one representative who kept asking. I am leaving, I am leaving — but the fighter still remains.

Fix You Coldplay

“I will try to fix you.” Read it once as rescue. Read it again after the chapter where the kindest thing anyone ever did to her is also the worst. The two readings never reconcile. That’s the point of the chapter.

Man in the Mirror Michael Jackson

“If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.” The refresher the founder always needed, sung by eleven floors with total sincerity. It’s a great song. That’s the horror.

Hallelujah Jeff Buckley

The service, the creed, the song thread: “I did my best, it wasn’t much… and every word was honest.” A faith that keeps the form of the thing while losing the thing — a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah. Also the correct response to the last chapter’s radio.

The Weight The Band

“Take a load off, Fanny.” The handoff, the shard-map, the second copy somebody asked somebody to keep: pass it on, take a load, carry the pieces of a thing nobody can read alone. Same guy. Slightly more cynical. Save my seat.

Under Pressure Queen & David Bowie

“It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about.” The covenant date, the crowd being farmed, the deadline auto-completing: pressure on people. This is our last dance. This is ourselves — under pressure.

Human The Killers

“Are we human, or are we dancer?” The question page twelve exists for — asked once by a customer, never answered by the book, asked again by a reader who couldn’t tell whom she’d been talking to. Pay no mind, you got the answer eventually: you didn’t.

Won’t Get Fooled Again The Who

“Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” The ending you can hear coming from the first chapter: the crowd that cheered the correction will cheer the next thing too. The book’s last broadcast cuts off mid-sentence on purpose. So does this.

Here Comes the Sun The Beatles

The brochures’ promise, one last time, after everything: “Little darling, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter.” Somewhere it was winter and it was beautiful and nobody had had to promise anybody anything. The horn goes every thirty seconds. It’s Thursday. The best is yet to come.