I made you a mixtape
Art, hobby and therapy. All rolled into one.
Long before Spotify, or Apple Music playlists was the mix tape. The lore of the mix tape is vast. It was a process. A hobby. An art form. It took dedication and focus. It was a valid answer to the question, “What did you do this weekend?”. Because sometimes it took all weekend to get it just right.
Making one for your crush.
Dying when your crush made one for you.
Trying to tape songs from the radio without the DJs voice.
(I counter that mostly it was Casey Kasem’s voice because that was the only time you could really count on hearing the songs you were looking to record. Who agrees?)
But what I don’t read much about are the mixed tapes we made for ourselves. The mood mixtapes.
Happy.
Fire up! (The prequel to Pump up, obviously.)
Driving.
Sad.
All valid choices.
Before you even began you had to be prepared. That meant either going to the store and buying blank tapes. Hoping for the fun colorful ones but settling for the plain black. Usually, the c60 because the c90 was too expensive.
Those numbers were the length of recording time. So while it isn’t often discussed, mixtape making involved math, too…
Or looking at the ones you had on hand and deciding they’d lived a good life, served their emotional purpose and it was time to record over them. This was sometimes the only choice if inspiration struck for a mixtape and there was no time to go to the store. Then it was like Sophie’s choice. Which of your masterpieces could you live without? After careful thought, you’d pull the tape back from the corners, the tape that somehow magically prevented them from being taped over by accident.
How? No one knows.
Achieving the tape, now that was a personal process. Essentially, a mix tape was a story you wanted to tell. Some people planned out what songs they wanted. Wrote them down in a specific order and then waited for hours for those songs to come on the radio. Some people just listened to the radio and were moved by whatever songs came on and recorded them as the mood struck. These were a bit of a wild card, but you could get some real masterpieces this way. Some random song you’d completely forgotten about would come on and BAM! The missing piece you didn’t know you needed.
(Side note: was there anything worse than deciding to paint your nails while you waited for the songs you wanted to play—a real audio treasure hunt. They always came on when your nails were wet and you had to risk a smudge to get the song.)
Once you had your mixtape created, you wrote out the song list on the insert. And another decision needed to be made: Did you use the tiny lines, or did you go rogue and write as big and artfully as you could? Did you doodle alongside the song titles? Did you use cursive or print? Bubble letters or dot? If it was a gift, did you write a note or let the songs speak for themselves? No note was obviously the most dramatic way to go.
You were essentially handing someone a tape and saying, “this is how I feel” and then having to face them again after they listened to it. Talk about putting it all on the line. And to be on the receiving end of that? Also, a huge emotional responsibility.
What if it was trash?
Or cheesy?
Or just bad music?
How did you face them the next day in study hall?
How did you handle the fall out of either scenario?
Umm, duh. By making ANOTHER Mixtape.
Either sad or celebratory it was sort of a win-win situation.
Sad? There was a plethora of sad eighties songs to include.
Love Bites by Def Leppard --no brainer.
You Give Love a Bad Name by Bon Jovi--This was more of an F you than a feel your feelings song, but that worked sometimes, too.
Could Have Been by Tiffany—this was a personal favorite of mine that made it on many a tape.
Look Away by Chicago—talk about dramatic.
Don’t know what you got, ‘til it’s gone by Cinderella--Even the tough guys loved this one.
Every Rose has its thorn--Poison. Oh, that dramatic sigh at the intro.
All out of Love Air Supply -really anything from Air Supply. Those dudes were sad.
Where do Broken Hearts Go by Whitney Houston--I really think she was asking for herself.
Hands to Heaven by Breathe--This one had no upside. A heartbreaker.
I’ll be Over You by Toto--How did the band that wrote Africa also write this gut wrencher?
Alone by Heart--Every Heart ballad sounds like pleading. So full of angst. A perfect fit.
How am I supposed to Live without You? by Michael Bolton—Nobody broke your heart like 80s Michael Bolton.
Stuck on You by Lionel Richie—like Air Supply, pretty much any Lionel Richie song applies.
Almost Over You by Sheena Easton--as you know, Sheena is my most under rated 80s artist.
See how genre bending that list is? How eclectic? How emotional? I was a kickass mixtape maker, if I humbly do say so myself.
Eventually, the duel tape deck made it so you could record from one tape to another. And then the CD/cassette boom box so you could record from CD to tape. All making things much easier. Then there were the dark years of burning CDs from websites like Limewire that could crash your entire computer.
And now we’ve come to the easiest way yet-the playlist.
Now I can make a playlist in under twenty minutes, just by clicking through my library.
And sure, it’s convenient and more efficient. But where’s the commitment? The artistry? The hours spent alone mulling over the meaning of life and love while you waited for your songs to play.
Hell, sometimes you fixed your own broken heart before the tape was complete.
The solution to that?
Rewind and start again.
This time with a happy mix.
Celebrate Good Times-Come on!
