This Is 50.
Here’s to hitting your goals. Here’s to milestones. Here’s to throwing a big party to celebrate it all.
Damn, I’ve gotten sentimental about this project the past few months, so I’ll spare you some of that here again, but I really can’t thank you enough for following and listening along with me on my 50 mixtape journey these past 4 years. Thank you to everyone who has supported me financially through subscriptions and BuyMeACoffee. Thank you to everyone who has supported me spiritually with kind words and conversation about the mixes. Thank you to everyone who is Kristin, who doesn’t mind when I sometimes have to sit on my laptop next to her in silence for 7 hours straight—sequencing and mixing the monthly mixtape, creating and laying out the artwork, uploading the mix to its various homes, updating the website, and writing and editing the newsletter.
Creating art is enough, but sharing the art you create is otherworldly.
Like the mixtapes? Help me spread the love by throwing a few bucks my way via BuyMeACoffee or opting to become a paid subscriber. Thanks to everyone who has already supported me this way.
And hey, if you like it, why not share the mix or this newsletter with a friend?
The Party
Created in collaboration with Evan Forde Barden, Kevin Bauer, Pat Cartelli, Austin Hall, Bill Heidrich, Mitra Jouhari, Jaime Lutz, Kristin Molloy, Justin Nawman, Curtis Retherford, Jesse Roth, and Jessica Ruby for celebrating 50 big ones.
*****
We need to find more reasons to celebrate. Nothing brings people together in joy quite like a party, so I wanted to throw one, in a way, for my fiftieth mixtape. What’s a party without music, after all? As Evan Forde Barden puts it, “I genuinely think music was conceived, first and foremost, so that humans could celebrate together, and it's not a party until people are dancing. Some songs just put the boogie in your bones. There is no better use of a mixtape project than getting everybody up on their feet and no greater joy than moving your body to a ding dang beat.”
I asked all my friends and collaborators on this project to throw out their favorite undeniable party songs—those tracks that get the party started and keep the party going until the early hours of the morning. This is the result. Welcome to The Party.
Bill Heidrich says, “Music is my antidepressant.” A good song can turn it all around, and the best djay in the world can feel like they give your night, your whole place in the world, meaning. Suddenly music isn’t just something you hear, but something you feel… something that moves you.
Mitra Jouhari fondly recalls, “Some of the happiest moments in my life took place in crowded, sweaty, dirty rooms, screaming and dancing to BOPS with my friends!!!” I’ve been in these rooms. I’m sure we all have. There’s nothing like it in the world.
On the inevitability of getting lost in the music, Kristin Molloy invokes an exchange from The Red Shoes:
“Why do you want to dance?”
“Why do you want to live?”
“Well I don’t know exactly but I must.”
“That’s my answer too.”
We must listen. We must connect. We must dance!
There’s a whole world of music that can soundtrack the perfect party. If you’re Kevin Bauer, you might pull out the storied classic like Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove” (“Your parents have partied to it, and your kids will too. This song will outlive us all and have a great time doing it.”) or De La Soul’s “Me Myself and I” (“The greatest party song of all time. No questions. No exceptions.”).
I love a bit of a deep cut banger like Delorean’s “Big Dipper,” one that the dance floor might not recognize, but will immediately latch onto.
Jessica Ruby likes to throw in a wildcard to shake things up, like the main title theme from Succession. She says, “You think it's gonna be corny when it comes up, but since there are no words and it's kind of evil and sexy, it's not! I put it on a playlist for my friend Kenzie's bachelorette weekend, and people cheered. My friends Jana and Isabel stole the move and saved a Halloween party. I hope someone plays it at my wedding and funeral.”
No matter the music, the motivation is the same: connection. Jesse Roth notes, “Music is the most important thing in the world, and sharing music is one of the most beautiful ways we can connect to other human beings.” Austin Hall echoes this sentiment, saying of this project, “It spins the very supply-reels of my heart that this project continues on! Made You A Mixtape's always-needed celebration of community has been one of the few true antidotes to our hypernormalised simulacrum of a society!”
One of my favorite parts of this whole project has been collaborating with and learning about people through the music they love. Pat Cartelli says, “I'll (probably) never get a tattoo. I'm bad with a blank canvas. Musically, I throw on whatever suits my mood and then get obsessive about what makes that music work. I get so much joy out of that chaotic beauty. When Brady asked me to be a part of this project, the canvas was no longer blank. The constraints were beautiful and it felt comforting to try to bottle up what it is I love about music into a playlist. I love seeing how the rest of you (and you reader) process the world through music.”
Curtis Retherford notes, “There's that old Brillat-Savarin quote ‘tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,’ and I feel the same way about music. The music we listen to is built up from who we meet, where we lived, and what we did at each point in our lives. We pick up new bands and artists, hold on to the ones that are dear to us, shed the old, and keep moving and living. Listening to these mixtapes has been a wonderful way to get brief glimpses into Brady and many others, to hear the music that formed them in the past or inspires them now. I love that surprise of finding something completely new from someone else's mix (Tim Maia comes to mind, but there have been so many more) and following the thread out, discovering more things to love as I go.”
My friends are really talented, interesting, brilliant individuals, and I like having a little piece of them documented in each mixtape made. I guarantee you will know them better after these 90 minutes of music they assembled for you.
But just as important as connecting with others, music gives you the opportunity to connect with yourself. Jaime Lutz says, “When I make a mixtape, I am spending a significant amount of time picking out a vibe, ordering the songs, re-ordering the songs, and sometimes? No one gives a shit. It's like that with anything you make. But the weird thing is that I bet even if you could GUARANTEE that no one would listen to your little mixes, you probably would still make them for yourself. You would still find it satisfying. And my hope is that we recognize all the little moments in our lives where we feel that satisfaction and joy and creativity, when we're doing it just as a party for ourselves.”
I’ll make mixtapes forever. I’ll share them forever. I hope you’ll stay with me to listen a while. For now, though? Let’s just enjoy the party. We are going to dance.
*****
Love you all. Hope you enjoy!
Join Me: Take a Break.
If you’ve never taken a creative hiatus just to dive back into the art as an observer and fan, maybe give it a shot? Fall in love all over again. I’ve already listened to a 24 hour playlist assembled by my favorite archival record label of under the radar gems. It’s been really nice listening to music without imagining where it can fit (although I’m going to steal half of these songs for future mixtapes, no doubt).
I have put out a brand new mixtape every month for the past four years (save one January early on), so I’m ready for a few months off. These take a lot of effort to put together and not an insignificant amount of time. I absolutely adore doing them, and I’m excited to come back to the project in June, completely refreshed. Hope that’s ok!
In the interim, I’m going to be brainstorming how to grow and better Made You A Mixtape. I’ve thought about writing a book about mixtapes in general, the project itself, physical media, and what we risk losing in the age of streaming. What do we think? Would love to pick y’all writer’s brains about organizing and writing a big project like this, publishing, etc.
RIYL: vacation, reflection, self-discovery
Check out Mississippi Records’s 24 hour playlist of their cassette series.
Long Live Physical Media
No other recs this month! Just letting the project have its moment! Look at all those mixtapes! Holy moly!
Love you all. See you in a few months! Let me know what you’re listening to, and let’s see A Show Sometime.