Love is a Mixtape

Queen—“Crazy Little Thing Called Love”

Janelle Monáe (feat. Miguel)—“Primetime”

Daft Punk (feat. Paul Williams)—“Touch”

Lorde—“400 Lux”

Talking Heads—“This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)”

The xx—“Heart Skipped A Beat”

Regina Spektor—“Braille”

Elton John—“Your Song”

The Temptations—“My Girl”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs—“Hysteric”

Frou Frou—“Let Go”

Adele—“Daydreamer”

Lauryn Hill (feat. D’Angelo)—“Nothing Even Matters”

The Postal Service—“Grow Old With Me”

It was amidst the teased hair, ripped jeans, and Madonna fever of the ’80s that the homemade mixtape achieved widespread popularity and became a staple of American youth culture. Nowadays, however, there is little need to make a personal playlist. Services like Songza or Spotify instantly provide one for any occasion, from “A Profoundly Funky Dance Party” to “A City Driving Adventure.” Yet a handmade playlist succeeds profoundly at something many are constantly trying to achieve on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and countless other platforms: sharing ourselves so that we may be understood. As Rolling Stone contributing editor and author Rob Sheffield writes in his memoir from which this piece gets its title, “The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with—nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life.”

It is arguably this ability of mixtapes to effectively convey what is difficult to put into words that has popularized its function as a love letter. As with a love letter, one must express his or her affections without the guarantee of being understood or reciprocated. The particular importance placed on music as a form of personal expression adds to the anxiety, for each song selection puts one’s tastes out in the open to be judged by the person whose opinion he or she cares about the most. Perhaps people take the risk and jump into that void because it is precisely in that vulnerable space that meaningful connection can occur. The act of creating a mixtape is a manifestation of the desire to reach that place, as each track is added in the hopes of experiencing that moment when two people realize they love the same obscure or embarrassing song.

The mixtape is to digital playlists what letters have become to emails: the outdated, unfashionable older sibling. Putting one together is often a long and challenging process. Mixtape-makers must sift through countless songs to compile the set that comes closest to voicing exactly what he or she wants to express. Then comes the headache of trying out one configuration after another until the perfect combination emerges. Finally: the act of physical creation, whether it involves recording songs on a cassette, burning files onto a CD, or even adding a drawing or personal message to the packaging. Time-consuming as this may be, the struggle is what valorizes the process—it provides the opportunity to value the means rather than focus purely on the ends.

Choosing songs for a romantic mixtape can be a particularly tricky task. Thankfully, executed well, the love song’s greatest gift is its ability to utilize the tools of melody and lyric to capture the powerful and fleeting emotions of love. A love song can be like a Taylor Swift track, allowing listeners to indulge in the fantasy of love without the premature burden of grandiose promises of forever, carelessly jumping around together screaming “Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone.” Songs like Adele’s “Daydreamer” and Lauryn Hill’s duet with D’Angelo, “Nothing Even Matters,” depict a romance in which so many want to believe and can—at least for the duration of the song. These are the songs that capture the time when a romance is budding, for when Adele sings about how love changes everything about her life or Hill and D’Angelo express their passion for each other, they tap into the hope new lovers have for the future.

Other songs exist outside the dream world and paint a portrait of imperfect love. Lorde’s “400 Lux” grounds the development of relationships in reality. In it she sings, “We’re never done with killing time / Can I kill it with you?” While exposing the banality of life, she also conveys the simple beauty of sharing those mundane moments with someone else. The xx cogently capture the vulnerability of asking for this kind of love. When the straightforward lyrics of “Heart Skipped A Beat” like “sometimes, I still need you” pierce through their delicate soundscapes, the juxtaposition of the words’ simplicity and the production’s complexity is startling. The intimacy that the lyrics of both Lorde and The xx request of the listener may be intimidating at the onset of a relationship. However, the inclusion of these types of songs on mixtapes expose deeper parts of relationships, parts that may only become relatable once experienced.

The mixtape derives its power from its capacity to include all these experiences of love, every three to five minute block representing different gradations of a relationship. The listening process is often hued with nostalgia, as each song reminds the listeners of both the memories that inspired the track’s selection and the ones that came after sharing it. In this way, a mixtape can become a permanent record of the trajectory of one's feelings and can remain so even after the end of a relationship. These emotions may never be accessible again, but their essence remains forever within the 70 to 80 minutes of music that was once put together and shared in the name of love.

“I let my tape rock ’til my tape popped.”—The Notorious B.I.G.