In the eighties, much time was spent making mixtapes. If there was a special party, you made a mixtape. If you went on holiday, you made a road-trip mixtape. If you loved someone, you made a mixtape (and gave it to them if you had the guts…).
There was an art to making a great mixtape – song selection, perfect timing between stopping and starting songs, and a balanced A side and B side. I don’t care what the Gen Ys, Gen Zs and Millennials (who use/d CDs, MP3s and Spotify playlists) say – they will never know the true glory of a mixtape.
This week, my Top Ten Tuesday thoughts are tuned to mixtapes.
01. I wish I had the energy to do more literary mix tapes. I’ve done a handful, they’re always fun but they are time-consuming (I get distracted by my music collection and go off on all sorts of tangents).
02. Rory has managed to do quite a few literary mixtapes – check them out.
03. Electric Literature asks authors to share the songs behind their books. Wouldn’t it be ace if authors included a mixtape section at the end of their books?
In my TBR stack –
04. Tape by Steven Camden
05. The Words of Every Song by Liz Moore
06. 31 Songs by Nick Hornby
07. How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly
My favourite mixtapes –
08. My brother gave my husband and I a honeymoon mix – we went to the US and the A side was East Coast and the B side was West Coast. The tape began with one of my favourites –
09. A few years later, my brother made me a labour mixtape to take to hospital when I had my first baby. It started with Billy Ocean’s When The Going Gets Tough and included this classic –
10. My friend (who will remain nameless) wanted to send a boy I knew a mixtape. I tried to gently say that I didn’t think it was a goer. Friend didn’t listen. Friend sent mixtape that opened with this –
Don’t need to tell the ending to the story but to this day, every time that song comes on the radio, I call her and say, “Quick, put on Smooth FM!” – and she quite rightly tells me to bugger off 😀
11. And lastly, file this mixtape cushion under ‘Need’ (as opposed to ‘Want’).