I made you this mix tape for Valentine's Day

If all I had to tell you about who I am was a few songs from the 90s, these are the things I would share with you. Afterwards, we could be Valentine’s.

To Be With You by Mr. Big

I structured this like every mix tape in the history of the world, making my intentions clear right from the start. I want to be with you. In part because it’s Valentine’s Day, and in part because this song by Mr. Big makes anyone who hears it want to take up dating, even if they’ve sworn it off for the year or the decade, or the lifetime or whatever. Because, “Why be alone, when we can be together baby?” We’ll take a cruise to Alaska to see the northern lights and get drunk midday on fruity drinks and dance poorly to poorly played music.

Round Here by Counting Crows

Okay, now that we’ve to the preliminaries of the two of us being together, let’s “step out the front door like a ghost into a fog where no one notices a contrast to white on white.” Look, if all I have to express myself is the vehicle of music recorded in the 1990’s I’m using Round Here every time. I love jumping up and down and singing along to Mr. Jones in bars to this day, but this is the song that best captured things for me. Maybe it’s because teens often commit suicide, maybe it’s because Adam Duritz makes legitimate attempts at constructing artistically rendered lines, but this song has always made a part of my soul weep, or at least prod at the question of life.

What a Good Boy by Barenaked Ladies

I briefly got off the topic of the two of us being together. The beauty of this song is that it’s going to remind us of our birth. And, as any lover knows, the great strangeness is how long you usually go without ever knowing that you were meant for each other. How is it possible that two souls that were meant to be as intertwined as ivy upon a wall were ever unknown to one another? Anyway, “Be with me tonight.” I love the part of the song where he talks about chickening out and sitting down to write about it instead. It’s part of the impulse to write—a desire to withdraw from the world of experiences into the life of the mind.

How Do you Talk to an Angel by The Heights

Okay, nearly every other song on this list I would still turn up and “sing” along with and feel no shame. However, this may be the one exception. That said, all it takes is the first chords to be played, and I’m immediately remembering the girl I had an insane crush on when this song came out. Mind you, I never talked to her, but that’s what makes a crush so great. Imagine how great this person could be? No really, imagine, because that’s all you can do. Make sure the details you fill in make them worthy of it. This is pre-Facebook, back when crushes were innocent things that you spent hours in your room listening to “How Do you Talk to an Angel” and staring at the ceiling. They were purer days.

Glycerine

Oh, man. As soon as this song starts I’m immediately transported back to having long hair. But also, I’m transported back to watching him sing intently into the microphone during the video. And yeah, this song is awesome.

Lightning Crashes by Live

In case the world has forgotten, we all loved this song. And, if you’re listening to the first little bit of this song, you’ve probably already remembered why. Because it is fantastic! You can’t tell me you’re not going to sing along, “I can feel it coming back again!” Me too. Passion. Romance. Life. Death. This song. This song right here! Shi- yeah.  You can just skip straight to the 4:05 mark if you want to get after it!

Crash Into Me by Dave Mathews Band

You can’t have a playlist from the 90’s and not have a DMB song on it. I remember recording this video off television and watching it in the living room, on the pillow, as was normal I’m sure for most boys of that age, and my older brother came out and said that though he questioned the majority of my musical tastes he thought this song would still be getting played years from that date. He was right, but really, I was right for recording it off television It’s weird, yes, the things we remember? Also, enough of being loving this Valentine’s Day, DMB is going to get back to the basics: voyeurism. “I stare at you wear nothing, but you wear it so well.”

Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind

I just blogged about this song two days ago, so I’ll take the liberty of quoting one of the most intelligent people I know, me: file not found. Okay, most of the way through school I was this very quiet and shy person, and eventually everyone got used to me being this quiet and shy person and occasionally ignored the fact that I was talking to reassure themselves that I was quiet and shy. I am not, as it turns out, always quiet and shy. I just think too much sometimes. The fact that I loved this song and danced around to it was a pretty good indication of that other aspect of my personality, which loves late nights, travel, laughter and games… and you, Valentine.

Time Ago

I don’t remember this song being hugely popular, but I do remember it being about as good as a song could get that was written about Heathcliff and the English Moors. Is that what this song was about? Oh, I’m being told it’s not a song written about one of the Bronte sisters. Apparently it’s a really emotive song about losing your virginity and reflecting back on it years later. This changes everything…except its essential and undeniable greatness, and I love the turn to the singer being all by himself at the end. From dust we came and to dust we will return, my friend, all we’ve got are these little illuminations in between, flecks of light on water.

One Headlight by The Wallflowers

I remember really liking the Wallflowers before it became really cool to not like The Wallflowers. I also remember this girl I had a crazy crush on telling me that her class was studying this song as poetry and thinking that college was this really amazing place where you could sit outside and talk to girls that you had a crush on without feeling like everyone was judging you, and, oh yeah, the poetry thing too.

Near you Always by Jewel

My unabashed love of Jewel is most prevalent in this song. She melts my heart, which wasn’t even iced over. That’s how hot this song is. And yes, I did actually put it on multiple mix tapes for girls back then, but I’m sure everyone did that with their go to songs. “Your hands are in my hair, but my heart is in your teeth, baby. It makes me, want to make you near me, always.” The real point is that this mix tape was being derailed by rock songs, and we needed something to remind us that it is a Valentine’s Day playlist. If this song didn’t do that go back to complaining about how this is a Hallmark holiday designed to make us feel bad about ourselves instead of a celebration of Jewel’s music and the human capacity for idiocy and love that it really is.

Raining in Baltimore

This is the part of the mix tape, CD, playlist, where we break up. Maybe we’re from different socioeconomic ranges, or of different races, or our parents really don’t like each other. Every great love story needs some people who are actively trying to stop the great love story from happening, so that we can later kiss in the rain or run after each other at airports. Also, this song is f-ing spot on, and I now live almost exactly where it takes place and am from California. This song is aesthetically just a gorgeous piece of music and songwriting.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Deep Blue Something

As I noted a few days ago, the main thing I remember about this song is my sister driving us to school while playing it nearly every morning, and I remember that the car had a slight leak and smelled of mildew. I like that the memory of this song is in this really enclosed space that I don’t associate with anything else, just this hermetically sealed environment. We can handle this break up mix tape. We’ll work it out.

Stay by Lisa Loeb

This time I will just quote myself on why this song definitely belongs here:

The internet cat meme was nowhere near being birthed and what does this amazing video start with, a cat? Why? Because cats are an endless source of entertainment and curiosity and were worshiped, rightfully so, as gods in Egypt. Who knew that in 1994 more than anyone? Lisa Loeb. And before there was Sarah Pailin, and Tina Fey mocking Sarah Pailin, and Zooey Deschanel being quirky there was Lisa Loeb, wearing glasses and hip little dress, making them look sexy or intellectual or just downright cool in 1994.

And, oh yeah, besides that. In 1994 I was years and years still away from dating someone, and yet, somehow, some way, I understood that Lisa Loeb had already captured the complexities of what it meant to want someone and not really have them, or to not realize how it really takes letting something go to really understand what it meant to you. All she needed to do was get to that lengthy bridge to rip the heart from my chest. And by that, as usual, obviously I mean cry. Come back, Lisa Loeb! Okay, good, you're just hanging in the doorway for a minute. I was worried for a second there.

A Long December by Counting Crows

An alternative to this whole enterprise could have easily just been me posting the album, “August and Everything After,” which was unquestionably the best album released in the 90’s. And yes, I’m aware that A Long December appears on Recovering the Satellites. “And all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.” Yeah, I’ve been there, Adam Duritz. Whenever I’m listening to the Counting Crows I’m reminded of the essential loneliness of life, the mooring in our heads: the inescapability of being us, which is occasionally exhausting in its unrelentingness. Just once wouldn’t it be nice to see something from someone else’s mind, a sunset, a piazza, the ocean. Let’s all just go out to CA and make this work in a commune of some sort.

The Old Apartment by The Barenaked Ladies

Okay, now that we’re totally broken up mix tape, I’m going to do the honorable thing and break into your house and try and discover how you could have possibly moved on without me. Relatedly, I remember being at a concert a few weeks after I’d broken up with my girlfriend and hearing this song, and thinking how great of a concept the whole song is, and sneaking off with this girl I’d met with friends and enjoying the concert from closer and nothing but some polite flirting, I think she had a boyfriend, but realizing in that moment, “Oh, this is a thing you can do multiple times. I might actually be capable of dating someone again, but in fooling multiple people into thinking I am charming and laughing and having fun evenings with people who were stranger’s minutes before.”

No Need to Argue by The Cranberries

I loved this CD in the early 90s, and I loved this song the most. You love it too. This sad part of our relationship is lasting a long time mix tape. Apparently I’ve always been a bit morose, and it wasn’t an affectation I developed later in life to seem more intellectually competent.

The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe

 Sadly, I wasn’t in college yet when this epically sad song came out. However, I could imagine what it would be like. It would pretty much be just like this song--lots of sorrow and angst and slowly played guitars and emotions. Sad, sad emotions running amok. Why did we think we were so smart 1997? We were so young and fragile, like baby birds trying to fly that first time out of the nest. Wait, did the song just speed up? Did it just speed up? Are people taking drugs in college? Are we sad about it? Oh man, I can’t wait for all this angst to begin 1997. Man, I’ve never had a relationship, but I bet they are just like that, slipping through ice and then having to sing about it with gravel in our voice to get rid of the rage that we feel at ourselves for taking something so fragile and beautiful and turning it all into shi- like we always knew we would.

Nobody Knows by The Tony Rich Project

The album cover is light years ahead of its time in just being the quintessence of cool, which is a good start. And then the song starts and you can feel 1996’s heart breaking. In the early portions of the song it’s easy to think on all those foolish people who didn’t know how much you ached for them in your soul of souls. However, by the end of the song when he’s hitting a dusty road in search of love, you begin to realize that he’s not really looking for a real love but regretting all the things he didn’t say, the person that he couldn’t be. That dusty road isn’t leading to a person. It’s leading to a journey of self-discovery, which is hopefully filled with some beautiful people, some laughs, some late nights, and eventually, you know, death. 

I Believe by Blessed Union of Souls

Let’s remember, mix tape Valentine that there are things bigger than you and I. We’re about to head into the new Millenium where football players will be gay and people will still be nominally racist but will feel bad about it, and try to raise their kids to be different, so let’s have this song lead the way. Or, you know, we could listen to most major religions, Jesus and stuff, and go around  loving people who are poor and less fortunate and in need because it winds up being both a good thing to do, but a deep and powerful experience that is transformative internally and gives a rudderless life some purpose. Valentine’s Day is bigger than our love.

All I Want is You by U2

But honestly, we’re so brief, Valentine. We are but flecks of ash tapped from a cigarette sailing briefly against the vast outline of the night skies. And, of all the languages we could have spoken, and individuals we could have been if our parents had formed us but a moment sooner, we are here, right now, you and I, staring into one another’s eyes, and even if the best of things fade, my God, to have had such moments will keep me light for eternities to come.

Motorcyle Drive By by Third Eye Blind

My favorite song of the decade:

If ever a long period of time in your life passes and you start wondering about things like meaning, God, whether love can ever be truly selfless, if the oven is still on, whether the plants have been watered, if the Egyptians really built those pyramids or whether it was a crew of industrious aliens, if animals have souls and will be a part of any sort of afterlife, if the afterlife is anything that a human could conceive of, if you find yourself worrying about dark matter and a big hole being torn in the universe like a cheap sheet from Target, whether the people you love/like will live as long as you'd like, if it's been too long since you've stared into water or at an undiluted sky, if you look as good or as bad as you suspect you might in those jeans, if anyone notices or cares that you always iron your shirts, if you are in fact in sound mental health, if this is the year that winter never arrives, if you find yourself worrying about lead, leaks, monthly budgets, the future of humanity writ large in light of things like nuclear weapons and man's inherent evil, if humankind, because you're gender inclusive like that, will turn a corner and become something else, the Yellowstone volcano, asteroids, missing a movie just because Rotten Tomatoes gave it a low score, whether people of the opposite sex still notice you, the shape of your dog's kidneys after some strange stool samples, water quality, flight patterns of birds affected by the construction of cell phone towers, strip mining, stripping as it pertains to getting appointed in Poland, nearly extinct beetles, new varieties of beetles, overly long or slightly misshaped fingernails, explaining death to a child, whether you can continue to work at your job, at your relationships, if you worry about plaster and e-waste and parking attendants, it's probably time to sit down, shut up, and listen to some Motorcycle Drive By, and think, I think it might turn out all right, maybe not forever, but probably at least for the night. Happy Valentine's Day!