Songs take us back. The memories of our past can be evoked and arranged by our favorite albums or mixes. Even pop songs that looped over the radio waves while we drove around laughing with friends or crying alone can awake nostalgia. Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield took this concept and organized the chapters of his new book, “Love Is a Mix Tape,” by analog cassette tapes holding memory-loaded tracks.
Part love story, part tragedy and part cultural commentary, this memoir speaks to any music junkie like author Chuck Klosterman might, (oh yeah! I remember that song…) but with less wit and more heart. Sheffield begins each chapter with a labeled mix tape, which include bands from Pavement to Big Star and Whitney Houston to Hanson. He narrates the themes of his life (love, insecurity and recuperation) weaving the songs that served as his personal soundtrack into the story like musical illustrations.
As Sheffield shuffles through piles of cassettes, his memories create vignettes starring his wife Renée, who died suddenly while the two were young rock critics living in the South. Her passion for life inspired love in him – a feeling he can return to when he listens to their favorite (or least favorite) songs. Her free spirit and powerful, southern femininity encapsulate the 1990s’ image of the strong female. Women became more powerful in the work-place, and Ani DiFranco-inspired activists spoke out for their rights. Losing Renée reminds Sheffield of what was also lost in the new decade: “Remember Brittany Murphy, the funny, frizzy-haired, Mentos-loving dork in Clueless? By 2002, she was the hood ornament in 8 Mile, just another skinny starlet, an index of everything we’ve lost in that time.”
Sheffield’s easy-going, often clever prose reads like a conversation with a close friend at a coffee shop. He casually, yet humanly reminisces about the past with a smile – though it’s evident he’s cried before. Some view pop culture as a superficial element of American society, but Sheffield takes the songs of the 1990s and connects us to something real: his life story.
“I believe that when you’re making a mix, you’re making history. You ransack the vaults, you haul off all the junk you can carry, and you rewire all your ill-gotten loot into something new,” he says.
Sheffield writes his personal history, as well as the history of the 1990s, with the songs we all remember and some we’ve forgotten. Any American kid who lived through the decade of musical miscellanea would be inspired by Sheffield’s story to put on an old track and experience impressionable moments once again.
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