I received my first (and only) CD mixtape from my first girlfriend. It was filled with alternative rock with a handwritten note and tracklist on the back. I’d have trouble finding a CD player with which I could listen to the mixtape again but the meaning still holds. Mixtapes (and playlists) are the ultimate forms of affection; there is no other media that captures memories and forces the feelings out of you in the way that music does. Here, I present my own mixtape of albums, songs, and the memories that are intertwined with them:
Soul II Soul spurred the creation of infinite dance routines between me and my sister, whether we were acting out the plot of People or attempting to breakdance to Get A Life. My parents’ CD collection also included The White Stripes’ Get Behind Me Satan, Elton John’s Greatest Hits, and Weezer’s Weezer (Blue Album). My own collection included Hannah Montana by… Hannah Montana. These were some of the first albums I knew inside and out – it was a necessity to memorize the song order so I could skip to my favorite songs on the CD player.
I fell in love for the first time at age sixteen. We laid in bed during a thunderstorm, staring at the ceiling, listening to Frank Ocean’s blond in its entirety. We said “I love you” for the first time during Cuco’s Lo Que Siento. As I drove away from their house for the last time, I listened to Godspeed and sobbed, allowing the song’s weight to crush me a little bit more.
That same year, I spent an egregious amount of time on a school project researching the Satanic Panic. During this time, Lil Peep’s Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 1 came into rotation and the rest is history. I spent my days reading about the rise of Satanism and my nights having nightmares about vampires.
I used Van Halen’s Eruption to justify my self-teaching of the electric guitar. I was convinced that, after a couple of YouTube tutorials, I, too, could write a song that is entirely a guitar solo. I’m still waiting for my carpal tunnel to settle down so I can start my career as a lead soloist.
During college, I could only nap while listening to curated music – with Veins by Palace playing during every nap. If I was too awake when my special song played, I would have to push my nap back by a few minutes to rearrange the queue so Veins would play exactly when I was falling asleep.
As I listen to the first chord of Mice by Billie Martin, I am transported back to that night in Greenway D when I reluctantly gave up the aux and started levitating as a result. At Amherst, in my sterile, closet-sized first-semester dorm room, I embraced the uncomfortability of not having control over something so minute as the music that was playing.
After a tumultuous and, frankly, depressing summer of succumbing to my obsession with Daniel Caesar, Loose and two of his three different renditions of CYANIDE all made my Spotify top 5 list for the year. Next came We Find Love and Who Hurt You?, to round out my top songs of 2022 with a diverse set of Daniel Caesar’s discography.
Later that year, SZA decided to flip my life just a little bit upside down with the release of SOS. It’s not that we just put the song on repeat, but we decided to test the limits of our vocal chords with Gone Girl; we belted it at every moment we could get. It became the ultimate pregame song – before heading to the triangle, Gone Girl powered us up. After leaving Jenkins to hang out in someone’s dorm room, Gone Girl was played in the background while we talked shit. And at the very end of the night, while we giggled at the pictures we took on our point-and-shoots, Gone Girl lulled us to sleep.
At a tiny bar tucked away in Diamond Harbour, New Zealand, we discovered Confidence by Ocean Alley. Thankfully, Shazam allowed us to avoid asking the bartender what song was playing. On the tipsy walk to the ferry back to Lyttleton, Confidence became the song of the walk and a mantra for the rest of our time in the South Pacific.
My sister introduced me to Charli xcx’s brat in the car while driving to Chicago. Initially, it sounded like pure noise. Since then, I have developed an itch in my brain that only brat can scratch and it’s now my go-to album for when I need to keep a consistently fast pace. I’ve been told that I need develop a certain amount of brain rot in order to listen to brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. We’ll see if I get to that point.
Sunday mornings are for listening to On and On, Jack Johnson’s first album. I remember listening to On and On as a kid, trying to desperately understand why there was Traffic in the Sky and why you shouldn’t let your Dreams Be Dreams. It only took me 10 years to start making sense of the album, though its values have been ingrained in me since my uncle burned that CD the year after I was born.
Perhaps there’s a compelling reason as to why certain songs incite strong memories for me. Maybe it’s because music acts as a way for me to safeguard these memories, choosing to forget for a little bit longer when I skip a song and completely immerse myself in them on the rare occasion when I let the song play along with the memory.