How I Met Your Mother: Um...I made you a mix tape

In order to give you fair warning about what is coming next, I started dating during the mix tape era. Yes, we gave cassette tapes to each other filled with music we thought the other person would enjoy. Sometimes we even made them for ourselves — for a road trip, or to collect all our favorite songs by New Order in one place.

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

There were advantages to mix tapes. A friend might share a song from a band you never heard of before, like ‘Caravan of Love’ by the Housemartins. On a good mix tape, there would be a mix of genres and sounds, juxtaposing Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings’ between The Cure and The Smiths is good for your soul. But best of all, you could use a mix tape to woo someone you liked.

During the late eighties and early nineties there was no shortage of love songs you could use to express how you felt. We often missed the subtleties of the lyrics (you might not want to start your proclamation of love off with Bon Jovi’s ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’) or none to delicately hammered the point home (‘Crazy for You’ — Madonna).

“Hey I made a tape for you.” I said to my future wife one afternoon.

“What?” She grew up in Brazil as a missionary kid and often American culture escaped her.

“A tape, I made one for you. Its got songs on it.” I thrust the tape at her hoping she would take it.

“What’s on it?” She still would not hold her hand out.

“Music I like and that I thought you might like.” By now I was waving the tape in the air, at this point if a bird had swooped down and taken it I would have been happy.

“Like New Order and The Cure?”

Christian pop in the early eighties had been all I listened to before College. If you do not know what that was like click here, here and here. I discovered lots of music I had never heard before when I moved into the dorm at the Moody Bible Institute, most of it definitely not Christian. The first non-Christian music I bought was a Bruce Hornsby tape. Hearing me singing in the college kitchen were we both worked, she knew what I listened to.

“Umm…no…yes, but just one New Order song…Every Little Counts..and Michael Penn…you know,” here I started singing. “What if I was Romero in black jeans, what if I was Heathcliffe it’s no myth…”

“Is that the only line you know?”

“No…” I started at the top. “So, she says its time she goes…”

“My roommate isn’t going to like this is she.”

“No.” I held the tape out, knuckles white with tension. “Take it.”

She took one hand out of her pockets and with her thumb and two fingers took the tape from me. You might think I was handing her contraband. I smiled at her and she flared flared her eyebrows in return. She put the tape in her back pocket.

This tape was loaded! It was a masterpiece of music and subtle communication regarding my feelings for her. Today my jkids do not understand the craftsmanship and angst involved in assembling and creating a mix tape for that special person.

First was the length of the tape. Cassette tapes came in different lengths of time and you needed one appropriate for your level of feelings. Most songs are less than five minutes meaning a normal cassette let you record four to five songs per side for a total of forty-five minutes. This was OK for the initial proclamation of affection. On the other hand, some tapes gave you forty-five minutes per side, allowing a grand total of between sixteen to twenty songs. These tapes were meant for more mature relationships, allowing deeper dives into risky and unknown material. Asking the person you had known for three weeks to listen to b-sides of BoDeans albums might be a bit much.

Following in importance was the name of the cassette. You never wanted to name the tape “I like you and these songs express my feelings for you, can we get married?” But, the generic “mix tape” did not communicate the gravity of the gift. What made your mix tape stand out from the other mix tapes they had if you named yours “Songs I like.”

There were other aspects to be pondered as well. Did you write the names down or did you let the listener discover the songs through the experience of listening to the tape? Did you even give them the cover or just the tape? Did you use a simple black Maxwell cassette, one of the more stylish see through cassettes, or a vividly colored off brand?

The last aspect was the arrangement of the songs. A few schools of thought dominated the discussion. I preferred having my strongest material first. If she only listened to the first side or even the first three songs, I needed my Air Supply song in there. My roommate believed in building the tension and including his profession of affection as the first song on the second side. (No, we did not ever hold in-depth discussions about this at night in our dorm room…I swear.) Our mutual friend Sam simply randomly assembled his songs and trusted to fate or luck.

“Did you like the tape?” I asked while a small bead of sweat rolled down my neck.

“Yeah, I listened to most of it while doing homework before Jess came back to the room.” She smiled at me and shifted her backpack to the other shoulder. I struggled to stay next to her as we walked through the crowded hallways between classes.

“Any favorites?” This was a key question. If she mentioned on of the songs, I had something to build on. Otherwise, the tape had been a dud.

“Um…..” the pause about killed me. “Who did the “Listen To Her Eyes” song? Why didn’t you write the names of the songs on the cover?”

“Did I forget? That song is by The Choir…they have a new record coming out soon.”

“And that one with two beats is weird. I liked that corny song about “Love is all that I need” song.”

Bryan Adams for the win! I highfived myself mentally. He was always the right choice over Chicago or Reo Speedwagon.

“This is my class,” she paused in the doorway. “Meet you for lunch?”

“Sure, I’ll look for ya.”

She smiled at me and pivoted into her classroom. Never underestimate the power of the mix tape.