A very memorable mixtape

This is an article I wrote for this months requests on Lomography - thought it might make you all laugh!

I have never been one to shy away from telling the world embarrassing things I have done because, well those things are what make me who I am. And I like to make people laugh. This makes me simultaneously laugh and blush every time I think about it. When I was 16 I made a mixtape for a boy and the front cover looked something like this:-

There is no great story behind it, just the usual really – girl meets boy, girl falls madly in love with boy, boy likes girl’s friend for ages, girl is sad, boy eventually changes his mind (outwardly, though I suspect not inwardly), girl is happy, girl and boy start a relationship (a first for the both of them) which lasts a year, boy then changes his mind back to the aforementioned friend on and off and ends up dumping girl not once, not twice but THREE TIMES! After the third dumping girl makes the above tape and gives it to boy in a last ditch attempt to win over boy. Attempt fails. Track listing from the tape continues to make girl laugh for the rest of her days! I am that girl and here is that track listing.

1. Cheaptrick – The Flame

Not particularly a special song for the couple but if anyone knew the lyrics then they would totally get this.

2. Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi

Somehow I managed to use this political environmental protest song as a soppy love story simply because of the line “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”.

3. LeAnn Rimes – How do I live without you?

This one does seem fairly self-explanatory.

4. Lonestar – Amazed

This is not really a song about splitting up, but it was “our song” from our first date, right up to the end. I couldn’t listen to it again until I was about 22 – fact.

5. Elaine Page – I Know Him So Well

Perhaps most embarrassingly I whacked this classic show tune from the musical “Chess” onto the tape. We had never seen this, I just liked the song and listened to it a lot post break-up.

6. Dido – Thank You

I put this on because I wanted to thank him for the best time of my life. I was wrong about this however as my life has just got better and better ever since.

7. Dire Straits – Romeo and Juliet

This song is not really about splitting up but it does feature the lyrics “I can’t do anything except be in love with you” and “all I do is miss you and the way we used to be”. Plus I am a huge DS fan.

8. Janet Jackson – Got ‘til It’s Gone

Referring back to track 2, this is perhaps the most hilarious song on the tape. It samples the line “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” which Janet sings, and then a male rapper raps the line “Joni Mitchell never lies”! I remember choosing this and track 2 to remind him that he might have lost more than he realises!! Haha!

9. Gabrielle – Out of Reach

I had been watching a lot of Bridget Jones Diary around this time and I felt like this song summed up how I felt perfectly!!

10. On My Own

Again another show tune from a musical I have never seen – Les Miserables. I chose this for the line “in the darkness, I feel his arms around me”.

And that is all the embarrassment I can share because I unfortunately no longer have the tape. I compiled these tracks using a combination of reading my journal from the time, my own embarrassing memory and texting my friends who advised me not to give him the tape in the first place! Perhaps the worst part of this whole situation is that I couldn’t get even 10 tracks from the tape, so the other night I decided to Facebook message said boy and ask him if he remembered it! He did, and he remembered tracks 6 and 7 which I had forgotten. Maybe he still listens to the tape, and when he hears the lines “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”, his eyes glaze over and he realises you really don’t. Just maybe.