Shades of Love, their Rhythms Connect the Dots in "A Broken People's Playlist" to Become a Healing Balm

 

By Ayomipo Akorede 

In the vibrant world of Nigerian fiction, love often wears many faces. Sometimes, it’s sweet and gooey like chocolate, and other times it’s sharp enough to cut through your stoney heart without warning. Nowhere is this duality more beautifully captured than in Chimeka Garricks’ dazzling short story collection, "A Broken People’s Playlist", where music becomes the secret sauce binding heartbreak, hope, and the human experience into one delicious, bittersweet delicacy. Still don't have a grasp? Let's go further.

Each of the twelve stories in this collection takes its name from a song. With this style, he crafts what we can only call a literary mixtape. Garricks doesn’t just toss in these song titles for vibes, he threads them deep into the fabric of his characters’ lives invariably pitching their stories with soundtracks of emotional lifeboats that reveal how they are caught between love’s bright sparks and its inevitable bruises.

Take Tonse in "Somewhere in America (There’s a Street Named After My Dad)" for instance. He’s grieving his father’s death and trying to figure out how to be a man in a world that thinks grief is a private thing best hidden under bottles of stout. As Jay-Z raps “Somewhere in America, Miley Cyrus is still twerking,” Tonse realizes the world keeps moving even while his own feels paused, stuck on the scratchy groove of his father’s absence.

Then there’s Tukwashi and Tonse in "Lost Stars", two former lovers orbiting each other with the awkwardness of people who have shared secrets they wish they could forget. For Tukwashi, Adam Levine’s lyrics “Who are we? Just a speck of dust within the galaxy?” hits her like hard, reminding her how small and lost love can feel after it implodes.

Ejiro, in "Careless Whisper", discovers his wife’s affair, and suddenly George Michael’s silky voice crooning “I’m never gonna dance again, guilty feet have got no rhythm,” sounds less like a pop classic and more like a personal insult hurled through his bluetooth speakers. In the messy dance between love and betrayal, Ejiro’s life becomes a giant two-step he’d rather not be dancing at all.

Humour bubbles up even amid heartbreak, like in "I Put a Spell on You", where Boma, feeling as jilted as he is, hires a "spell-caster" to make his cheating wife Nengi fall back in love with him. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins sings “Because you’re mine,” and Boma nods in grim agreement, proving that sometimes music fuels not only healing but slightly unhinged revenge plots.

Obinna in "Song for Someone" faces the ultimate heartbreak—a terminal illness—and clings to U2’s gentle line “If there is a light, don’t let it go out.” For him, music is a final gentle breeze against life’s harsh winds, creating moments of peace when words fail.

And love isn’t just complicated by illness, it’s often battered by Nigeria’s cultural realities. Safiya and Uche, in "Against All Odds", are a Muslim woman and Christian man battling more than just relationship drama; they’re fighting family, faith, and societal expectations. Phil Collins asks, “How could I just let you walk away, just let you leave without a trace?” and Safiya wonders if it’s possible to carry both love and loyalty without cracking under the weight.

Perhaps the ultimate testimony to music’s role as both wound and balm lies with Kalu in "Nothing Compares 2 U". Older, lonelier, and stuck in a house too silent for comfort, he keeps hearing Sinéad O’Connor wail “It’s been so lonely without you here, like a bird without a song.” For Kalu, the song is both a wound he can’t stop scratching and the only salve that makes the ache bearable.

Garricks’ characters, scattered across Port Harcourt’s bustling streets and hushed living rooms, keep finding that when love wounds you and trust Nigerian fiction to ensure it often does, music becomes the only thing that makes the pain a little less sharp. Whether it’s Oliver Mtukudzi gently strumming in "The Place Where Rivers Meet", or Gnarls Barkley wondering if he’s “Crazy,” each song becomes a  private confessional, a rhythm helping these broken people piece themselves together one note at a time.