SUMMERTIME PUNCHLINE is my love-hate letter to a lot of things: standup comedy, hometowns, adolescence, people from our past to name a few - but I think it may just be a love-love letter to music.
Music is ultimately what bonds Eddie and Del as teens, and just the same it’s what bonded me to this manuscript. My playlist (lovingly named “4ever & evergreen”) was so, so precious to me during the drafting and editing phases. The entire playlist is quite long and has gone through a few iterations, so choosing just five to talk about was so hard. But I think if you were to boil Summertime Punchline down into its purest musical essence, this is what you’d end up with. Enjoy!
This Town (feat. Shaky Graves)
by Trixie Mattel
Pretty early into writing SUMMERTIME PUNCHLINE, I realized that Del would turn to music as a kinder, more-grounded way of telling jokes. I just then had to figure out––what the hell does Del sound like? What kind of music does she write?
I’ve been a huge fan of Trixie Mattel and became a huge fan of her music after watching Moving Parts, a documentary about thee skinny legend featuring her music as the soundtrack. Magically, divinely, while writing Summertime, Trixie released this song about her tiny hometown in Wisconsin. Holy crap, what a gift. Everything really started clicking into place once I heard This Town. I thought, Del could write this. Maybe Del did write this. I found myself more and more drawn to folk-country as a potential sound for Del; it made the most sense as folk and country are the storyteller’s genres.
To quote Trixie herself, “God don’’t give with both hands.” And that is absolutely true about writing. I took this little gift from the universe and ran with it.
Christine
by Lucy Dacus
Have you ever wanted to drink a song? Bring it deeper into yourself, store it in your cells so you can carry it with you, everywhere you go? Dacus’s sweet voice spins a harmonic lullaby, capturing the intense intimacy of teenage friendship, of deep platonic love, of growing up with someone and all at once seeing them as a fragile fifteen-year-old and a fully-formed, albeit imperfect adult.
Sam and Del’s friendship was something I gave an immense amount of thought to. Frankly, I could probably write an entire, separate book about their relationship. Starting in very early drafts, I was obsessed with this idea of a yin-and-yang best friendship for Del––one where people just did not get them. And I loved the idea of having two people who are slowly crumbling under the pressure of other people’s expectations––but in completely different ways. Sam, a baby genius whose professional success is written in the stars, and Del, her low-class beachside foil destined to own way too many novelty bongs, see through it all and into each other. There’s a soul-level knowing between Sam and Del.
Christine is exactly the type of song Del would write for Sam in a moment of deep tenderness not unlike the opening line of the song…
You’re falling asleep on my shoulder in the back of your boyfriend’s car
I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore
By Lucy Dacus
Folks may be amazed to find out I did not listen to this song at all while writing SUMMERTIME, only hearing it for the first time while in the editing phase. And when I did, I almost blacked out. Jeeeeeezzz Louise. Del, is that you????
Suga Suga
By Baby Bash
Excuse me for one moment while I wax poetically about THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Once upon a time things would happen to you in a social setting––maybe a long awaited kiss or a terrible argument or a brief but powerful hand-holding session––and then the night would end and you would have to go home and all contact with the outside world would CEASE. Everyone would get into bed and be forced to relive the emotions of the evening alone, with only the company of a tape deck, CD player, or mp3 player. It was not until the next day or maybe the next night that you’d get to see a friend and debrief. We were basically all living like Real Housewives, wherein all of the most important conversations of our lives had to happen during a two hour window and in front of a live studio audience. It was maddening!!!!! But that time away from each other, without very many distractions, made for the best fantastical daydreaming while listening to music.
When I hear Suga Suga by Baby Bash, I am immediately emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically transported back to a hot, sticky summer evening in 2007. It’s all flip phones and hanging out on the corner and low-rise jeans that dig into your love handles. Listening to this song while filling out MySpace surveys. Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of some boy.
Del and Eddie listened to this song together and made fun of it.
Del and Eddie listened to this song separately and thought about each other.
For hours.
Sex & Candy
By Marcy Playground
Spoiler Alert: This is the song.
I knew I wanted everything about Del and Eddie’s relationship to be tied up in music. This was a selfish artistic decision; I love music and I love to sing but I am by no means a musician. I really do my best work at birthday parties. I would be an excellent addition to a boys’ choir.
If I can’t be a singer/songwriter, my main character most definitely can be!
When it came to picking a keystone song for Del and Eddie’s relationship, I had to make it make sense dramaturgically––and also the song needed to objectively rule.
Sex & Candy came out in the late 90s, but was absolutely on the radio and in pop culture during the 00s. It's sexy and intoxicatingly rhythmic, the type of song that makes you want to writhe around on top of a friend and make bold decisions, but it’s also self-aware, if not almost goofy. The lyrics are fun and hot.
It was while watching an episode of True Blood, in the year of our Lord 2021, that I was reminded of this song’s existence. You can’t not sing along. You can’t not want to toss yourself onto a stripper pole in the middle of a vampire club. Another great aha moment.
Then. Delfina Silva-Miller wants one thing: to leave behind Evergreen, New Jersey and never look back. Despite her adoring grandmother’s best efforts, Del can’t bear to live another moment at the whims of her deadbeat dad (so cliché) and her ever-temperamental crush, Eddie Rodriguez (humiliating).
Now. If there’s one thing Del knows how to do, it’s spin her bad luck into a killer joke. After years of hard work, she’s finally landed a coveted spot at a huge comedy festival, molding the often tragic raw material of her life into comedic gold. But when Del loses her job, boyfriend, and apartment in the span of a few hours, she’s forced to pack her bags and return to the home she swore off at eighteen.
Del is determined not to let her history with Evergreen distract her. She has 45 days to perfect a new comedy set and march into her new life. Instead, she marches right into Eddie Rodriguez. But he’s nothing like the boy she left behind ten years ago.
As the festival draws closer, Del is faced with the terrifying possibility that everything she’s ever wanted isn’t as far away as it once seemed.
Vividly evoking the boardwalks and beaches of the Jersey Shore, Summertime Punchline is a hilarious, vulnerable, and sweeping love story celebrating the complicated relationships—romantic and not—that impact our lives, for better or worse.
Romance Comedy | Women's Fiction [Avon, On Sale: May 21, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063329584 / eISBN: 9780063329591]
Betty Corrello is a writer and comedian from Philadelphia. Despite her hardened exterior, she is biologically 95% marshmallow. Betty blames this on the abundance of water in her astrological chart. Her greatest passion is writing stories where opposites attract, but love is chosen. When she's not writing, she can be found fretting about niche historical events most have forgotten––or petting her very tiny dog.
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