Mixtapes

No, that isn’t some bizarre screwing up of the title up there, but rather helpfully explaining that this is a mixtape about mixtapes. I’m not entirely sure what made me come up with this one, but it seemed like a good idea at the time at least. Mixtapes are generally underappreciated I think, so this is my own little tribute to them. Or something. At the very least it’s a small collection of good songs by good artists. Which should be enough to pacify most people.

It’s a pretty short mix (clocks in around half hour) largely because there aren’t a great deal of songs that are actually about mixtapes, or deal with them at all. Of course you guys probably could rattle off a ton more that I’ve missed, but these are the ones I came up with and enjoyed, so we’ll make do with the short run time.

MP3 – Singing In My Sleep (expired)

This was the song that originally gave me the idea for this. After I really started appreciating this song I started looking for more songs that deal with mixtapes, which is what you’re looking at here. It’s only fitting that it goes first, particularly given that Semisonic’s ‘Feeling Strangely Fine’, the album it’s taken from, was the first full album I actually bought. I loved it back when it came out and I still think it’s a great piece of work today, even if the band themselves are long gone. Pretty much the ultimate song about exactly what a mixtape should convey (“Got your tape and it changed my mind / Heard your voice in between the lines”). It’s a mildly cautionary tale about the risks of possibly falling more for the concept of the girl making the mixtape (“Now I’m falling in love too fast / With you or the songs you chose”) than the girl herself. It’s a great song though, and representitive of a great band at their prime. Dan even throws in a joke in “pray to Sony my soul to keep”. It’s just a shame that Sony didn’t actually listen and dropped the band a few years later.

MP3 Jack’s Mannequin – The Mixed Tape (expired)

Yes, Jack’s Mannequin is a “side project” of Something Corporate. I know that neither of these bands will ever be considered “cool”. Nor do I really care. I like Something Corporate a lot. I also like Jack’s Mannequin too. Both bands produce catchy piano rock songs and Andrew McMahon can write some awesome lyrics, so I’m really not bothered about whether the scenester kids like them or not. Anyways, now that I’ve finished being all defensive, we’ll get to the song. It’s about making a mixtape for someone he has broken up with to say the things he was never actually able to at the time. It’s a tad bitter, possibly like the mixtape itself, but is a nice change from the concept of the “fall in love” mixtape which seems to be the most common one referenced.

MP3 – Death By Mixtape (expired)

Oh boy, this one fits me perfectly. I’m not familiar with The Lashes beyond this song, but I soon will be if they have more songs like this. It’s all about a relationship going wrong (“I can’t seem to push you away / Even though you don’t like me the mixtapes aren’t the way”), seemingly because he is more “in love with the idea of finding the one” than actually keeping the relationship alive. It’s all collapsed and he doesn’t want to just be friends (“Sitting in your car getting angry / How can I just be your friend? / I save handshakes for people I hate”) which is making the whole thing far more unpleasant than it really should be, but he can’t really help it.

MP3 – Headphones (expired)

Falling asleep to a mixtape from someone. It’s quiet. It’s abstract. It’s Bjork. What do you expect?

MP3 – Make Me A Mixtape (expired)

This one is about the most amusing song relating to mixtapes I was able to find. The guy wants the girl to make him a mixtape. Which is fair enough, but then he starts rattling off what he wants on it. He starts with more general things (“Something old and something new / Something I said or that we did / That reminds me of you”), but then starts listing artists that he’d like included like Husker Du, The Cars and Duran Duran. All of this is entirely without irony, the guy seemingly not realising that this destroys the idea of the personal mixtape that he wanted in the first place. Makes for an entertaining song for us though.

MP3 – Mixtape = Love (expired)

Pretty much the perfect song for summing up exactly what a mixtape is all about. “I dubbed the tunes in perfect form / To say what I could never voice / And hope you hear right past these songs” just about covers what mixtapes are generally used for, at least ones of a personal nature anyway.

MP3 – Birthday Cake (expired)

Everytime that I hear The Jim Yoshii Pile-Up, I insist to myself that I’m going to get more of their songs, but never seem to get around to actually doing it. Every song I’ve heard seems to be great though, so I don’t know what seems to keep me from doing it. ‘Birthday Cake’ is no exception to that. The song itself covers far more than just mixtapes, but the singer giving a tape to his partner for her birthday is what the chorus covers, so it qualifies for here. It’s also about the most bitter song about going to the effort of making the tape too. “I put a file in your birthday cake because a cheap cliche and a half hearted gesture is what you asked for this year / I spent a day on that damned mixtape / I should have known that you’d have Nick Drake” is hardly the most positive promotion of them, is it? No matter though, I’m still using it as the grand finale as it’s just a wonderful, wonderful sounding song to end with.

The downtime..

So the site was offline for the best part of 12 hours yesterday, which was incredibly annoying. Apologies if you tried to access in that time and were greeted by the lovely WordPress error message. Unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it as the problem was with the host and apparently it takes Yahoo 12 hours to restart a damn server. Anyways, we’re back now and everything is fine, so hopefully it won’t be happening again anytime soon.