After some calculation, I’ve determined I spent about eight hours of my weekend making a CD. Not actually recording music, or anything cool like that – just scouring my iTunes for the perfect 15 songs for the perfect mixed CD. My friend and I are exchanging discs in an attempt to get an idea of what kind of music the other likes, i.e. if their taste sucks. There’s a lot on the line.
Making the CD opened the floodgates on a whole stream of probing questions. First of all, do people even make mixed CDs anymore? The last time I did was this summer, for a road trip to Colorado with my best friend. She had just broken up with her longtime boyfriend, so I made mixes with names like “We Hate Men” and “I’m a Girl and I’m Sad.” Avril Lavigne, Stevie Nicks and Gwen Stefani were our soul sisters, and we sang along with an emotional fervor never before found on the vast plains of Nebraska. I also made one called “Funky Stuff” for the equally inevitable and unruly stretches when we were all hyped up on corn nuts and Icees.
On the receiving end, I think the last time I got a mix was senior year of high school, when a guy made me a compilation of his favorite Stone Temple Pilots songs. iTunes didn’t recognize the tracks, so it wasn’t until I started buying STP albums on my own that I realized the songs I had been raving about weren’t the same ones he had been. In my early days, I can remember exchanging CDs in middle school hallways, e.g. “Summer Mix 2007!!!!” and “Emily’s Favs.” I still have them, labeled in that loopy, oversized teenage-girl handwriting we all know and hate.
Anyway, making this particular mix took forever for a few reasons. First, apart from the occasional and generally embarrassing single, I mostly listen to albums, rather than playlists. I buy records off Amazon and plug them into the old iTunes. I’m not a big fan of the shuffle feature. Someone once compared it to watching a movie – you don’t just buy all the best scenes, right? You sit down for the whole thing. That’s how I tend to think about records.
And since I believe albums should be thoughtfully and deliberately arranged, I drove myself crazy trying to figure out how to organize my songs. At first I went by lyrical content – open with an existentialist, loner sentiment, introduce a love interest, develop relationship problems, bask in an angst-ridden breakup and circle back to marginally content self-sustainment. But since I was supposed to be distilling my musical preferences, it was too hard to limit the selection to subject matter. Then, being the musical activist I am, I had the notion to alternate my favorite bands (almost all men) with my favorite female artists, thus bestowing a male and female perspective on all of life’s most pressing issues. That was a dumb idea. One woman’s broken heart is another man’s freedom cry. I finally settled on a technique I’m more than a little satisfied with: musical styling. The mix starts with hard, industrial rock, transitions to garage grunge, follows with groovy blues and ends with ’90s indie/alternative. It’s downright dreamy.
Making the CD also took all Saturday night and part of Sunday because I had to listen to it in its entirety every time I thought I perfected the order, including small breaks in between so as to not memorize the progression and thus anticipate the next song. I wanted to experience it like my friend will. Except he probably won’t listen to it while eating popcorn with his pants off in my bed. I also realized, whilst rummaging through all my favorite artists for all my favorite songs, that all the best songs don’t necessarily make the best CD.
Incidentally, it’s nice to get a mix. There’s something special about lying down with headphones and music that someone has curated exclusively for you. Wollaston’s sells blank discs for about four bucks – just saying.
-Emily Huizenga can be reached at [email protected]
