As someone who came of age in the 90s, mixtapes hold a special place for me. But these days, playlists are the new mixtape.
When he asked me to share some of my favorite music, I immediately turned to my ancient Spotify account where playlists catalogue my children’s early years, my unhappy marriage, divorce, rediscovering me and the creating of the newest chapters of my career. There are playlists for writing and others for when I just need to walk without thinking. And there are deeper ones too, dedicated to moments in time.
I selected a playlist that captured so much of what I felt from the time we were together until the 2010s and shared it. Then I shared another more recent playlist of music that helped me focus while editing. Each brought into focus a moment of time for me.
I wasn’t sure how much of the music he’d recognize. When we were together decades ago, his love of techno music was his one great flaw. Would my mix of alternative, grunge, ska, rap and rock that spanned 80s metal, 90s grunge, 00s rap and more recent pop be interesting to him?
In some ways, this felt like the most intimate thing I could share — a look into who I was and who I am that cannot be conveyed in words alone. From Meredith Brooks’ 90s hit Bitch to Walk the Moon’s Shut Up and Dance, the range of my musical interests was a window into my soul — one he’d peeked through before so long ago. One of the playlists went further though, containing two songs that reminded me of him — my song for him when we were together, and the song that became his after our breakup. We never had a song that was just ours.
Then something unexpected happened: I learned that our musical tastes were far more aligned than I ever knew.
“How did we not know,” I asked him one morning, when we were talking about how while he was listening to techno on a bus tour around England, I was sitting shoulder to shoulder with him listening to AC/DC — which apparently was a favorite of his too.
“We had so many other things happening then,” he said. And he was right. We were two teenagers whose atypical childhoods had left us strangely aligned even as we navigated things our peers couldn’t begin to understand. In lives of chaos, we were carefully held constants for each other, albeit for a small window of time.
A week later, I asked him to make me a playlist. He agreed, but then days passed. More than a week. Finally he said he was nearly done. “I had to really think about it. These are songs that have or do make me think of you at different points in life.”
Guns N Roses, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Cure … the playlist was heartfelt and raw — a love letter to who we were and who we are now.
The songs told the story of two people deeply in love who didn’t make it the first time around, but still missed each other and thought of each other often. I found myself listening to it more and more. “What songs stand out to you?” he asked. And I mentioned a few, but noted the one that felt most like us in all the good times. “That’s our song, isn’t it?” He asked. I agreed, smiling at the irony that decades later there was a song that we could call ours.
Back in the 80s and 90s, the sharing of music was a greater commitment. I remember sitting in front of my dual tape deck, my finger hovering above the record button as I waited for the radio station to play just the right song. That was how we did it then in the 80s and early 90s, creating mixes of music for our friends and those we hoped would be more than friends. Now it only takes a few clicks, to create a playlist.
But the emotional labor of choosing songs for another takes so much more than clicks. It’s a delicate dance of listening, reading lyrics, choosing tone and forming a story in song. It’s digging deep to find the right melodies for the right time.
That’s what I did last summer. He was going through a rough time, so I wanted to create something that would be both familiar and reassuring. A few songs from a shared playlist. A few that I love. One that seems to speak directly from my heart to his.
By then, we weren’t talking anymore — not because the love disappeared, but because again it wasn’t the right time. And yet, I have a feeling he found it, listened and heard my soul speaking to his — just as mixed tapes did for teens when we were kids.
Of course, playlists have their flaws too. Unlike the tangibility of a tape, a playlist can be hidden or deleted. It can be taken away, becoming a blur of what was.
But the magic of music transcends. You can throw up walls and close doors, hide the photo albums and even take blurry snapshots of old photos but the melody goes on. And those songs, the ones that really spoke to two people who’ve never stopped loving each other, persist.
