Love In A Mixtape

“I know people for whom music is just background noise. They don’t listen to it. They just consume it. These people have never made a mix-tape for anyone.” ~ Rob Sheffield

I have always been a late bloomer. In everything. By the time I got around to dating guys, I was knee-deep in college. Yeah. I know.

So even though I grew up sitting beside a radio, waiting for the song I requested to come on, right hand hovering anxiously over the record button, I was way past the age of the mixtape by the time any of it actually mattered.

And while CDs hold more songs and don’t tangle up on the rewind or the fast-forward, they just don’t have the same romantic feel as a mixtape. So even now, when I meet someone new and start to fall for them a little, I like to tell them that I am making them a mixtape, even though technically that’s not at all what it is.

Once, crushing like crazy on a pre-nursing classmate and not feeling brave enough to tell him so face-to-face, I burned ONE song on a CD and gave it to him, convinced that he would listen to it and know exactly how I was feeling, convinced that that was all it would take. At the time, it felt thrilling and scary and really really brave and honest, especially for a girl like me. I cringe thinking about it now, because I had read all the signals wrong and “nothing good ever came our way”, but that was truly the first mixtape I ever gave anyone, so it is absolutely worth noting.

For Valentine’s Day 2012, the guy I had started seeing joked that we should have an anti-Valentine’s Day, since we were both recovering from fresh break-ups respectively. I loved the idea, and so we agreed to make each other break-up mixes. For his, I included a picture of a candy heart on the cover that read: “Your money’s on the dresser.”

I thought it was just the right amount of hilarious.

The break-up mixtape he gave me was terrible, as I recall. I listened to it on the car ride home that night and just hated all of the songs he’d chosen. “Holy cow. This guy doesn’t get me at all,” I remember thinking, my disappointment growing with every song that came on. The whole thing felt so unthought-through. Later, he would confess that he had completely forgotten about making the break-up mix until a few hours before our anti-date, and that instead of sticking to the theme like we’d planned, he had quickly chosen songs based on what he thought I would like — which, I guess for him, meant that I was strictly into folksy female songwriters.

He guessed very wrong.

I, on the other hand, had meticulously chosen all his songs days in advance, carefully curating a select 35 of them into a playlist on iTunes I called the “Break Up Mix”, before whittling that list down to the 18 I eventually burned onto his disc, listening to each song again and again and again before deciding if it did or did not fit in nicely with the others.

Is it any surprise that we didn’t last very long?

Choosing songs for someone I love, however, is a whole other production. Weeks of planning. Hours and hours of listening and looking and scouring the internet for the perfect last song. Feeling the absolute neurosis of knowing there is so much I could possibly say, and that I only have 80 minutes to say it. And which songs to choose, and so fucking many, and also which version — acoustic? live? studio? Do I sacrifice length of time over how a different version of the same song made me shiver the first time I listened to it and how I need you to shiver too?

Will you understand?

Will you understand?

Will you understand?

That for me, this isn’t just a mixtape. It’s a goddamned love letter.

That in all of the songs, I am pouring out so much of myself to make it for you. That I am being so vulnerable and brave here. That I thought about you the whole time. The whole fucking time, dude. That I care like so much crazy what you will think and what you will hear, and are you ready? That I wring my hands over the messages they will send. That you are not me, that you are not me, that things get misconstrued.

I worry that if you listen to it, you might hear that I love you, know just how much of my heart is on the line.

That you will find where you are. Where we are. Where I am, with you.

My favorite mixtape ever (from Will):

1. City and Colour — We Found Each Other In The Dark
2. The Black Keys — Everlasting Light
3. The Smashing Pumpkins — Thirty-Three
4. Amos Lee — Arms Of A Woman
5. Cecilio & Kapono — About You
6. Michael Bublé — Fever
7. Ray LaMontagne & Damien Rice — To Love Somebody
8. James Morrison — Love Is Hard
9. Mumford & Sons — The Banjolin Song
10. The Beatles — Something
11. Neil Diamond — Harvest Moon
12. Adele — Make You Feel My Love
13. Amos Lee — Sweet Pea
14. Lady Danville — Bed 42
15. Paolo Nutini — Loving You
16. Ray LaMontagne — Hold You In My Arms
17. Jimmy Eat World — Kill
18. Jamie Cullum — Love Ain’t Gonna Let You Down
19. Paolo Nutini — Last Request
20. Coldplay — ‘Till Kingdom Come