Mixtapes and the Death of Romance
I was having a conversation with my younger brother, who was complaining about not sharing certain musical tastes in common with his new girlfriend. I assured him that he wasn’t the first person to have this problem and a tried and true solution was the “Romantic mix.” This way the romantic attachment to the songs overrides the differences in aesthetic taste between the couple, and a common language is developed that carries through the relationship. If you ask me this is a crucial step in developing a strong romantic bond.
After I said all of this, he asked “What is she going to do, listen to it on a discman?” Good question. Now, when I made one of these fairly recently, it was on compact disc, but I remember at the time feeling like this was almost as archaic as a cassette (which I was making all the way up until 2005—well into the age of the ipod). I have also made playlists and snuck them onto a lady friend’s ipod, but this does not seem to carry the same weight as a tangible item that will provide the soundtrack to a budding romance.
Then the kicker: “Even if I give her a playlist, she can just take the songs she likes or knows and put them on a different playlist.” What about all the time you spend putting the order together? What about the sleeper hit—the 3rd track on side B, the open ended finale of side A? Does anybody remember laughter?
I actually feel like the death of romantic mixtapes is a far more upsetting thought than the death of the “album.” Rock and Roll began as a singles industry and maybe even works better that way, but mixes for your crush were never meant to be altered.
I have heard of people making mixes and putting them onto little key-chain usb drives, etc, and I can live with that, but is the cold, technological convenience of it all dissuading young people from putting their hearts into theses critical tokens of affection? Are romantic mixtapes on the way out? Is love dead? I would think that there is still hope, and that somewhere some 19 year-old college freshman is hearing Big Star’s “13″ or Johnny Thunders’ “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory” for the first time, but maybe its arriving via zip-file in their .edu inbox. All I can say is, those are both great songs, but there is a reason one is on side A and one is on side B. And those songs by Suicide or the Gories in between may sound weird now, but someday they will mean the world to you.
Tags: Big Star, Johnny Thunders, Suicide, the Gories
