How iTunes Killed the Mix Tape: The Effect of Mp3s on Teenage Romance

No, I'm not talking about copyrights and piracy. I'm talking about one of the favorite pastimes of adolescents in the last decade of the 20th century - the mix tape - in relation to another favorite pastime of adolescents - relationship drama.

The art of the mix tape was one that we all spent a great deal of time and effort to perfect. The product of this skill was as much a tool as a gift; it was a way to convey meaning through an audio collage of words that we didn't dare say ourselves. There were a myriad of messages, but the most frequent themes were - without a doubt - all about the birds and the bees. There was the mating call of the "I want to impress you" tape, the early relationship "I want you to tell me you love me" tape (as heavy and as subtle as a brick) and the thrilling, doomed "we are both taken but have the hots for each other...so I am sending you this tortured ode to our forbidden love" tape. We got a great deal of mileage out of audio cassettes back then, and what has come to replace it today? Playlists? Please. Pardon me - I'm all choked up with underwhelming admiration. Drag and drop just doesn't cut it when it comes to impressing me.

At the risk of sounding like a "kids today!" joke, the fact that we did not have the ability to purchase a single track by itself meant that music included on a mix was part of a commitment that one had made to each particular artist. Unless it had been directly recorded from the radio (or even, in some cases, from the television), the method for procuring music involved a trip to a record shop, wandering up and down aisles, shuffling through stacks of tapes, hunting down 45's with rare B-sides, or picking up concert bootlegs. Thus, under the surface message of love or friendship or lust was a statement of personality as evidenced by the kind of music we owned. It was a resume; a snapshot of ourselves (as we wanted to be seen), a self-portrait that we hoped would be understood and valued. And indeed, mix tapes have outlasted relationships and remained favorite possessions long after the gift-giver was dumped unceremoniously for the new Flavor of the Month.

But it wasn't all strategy - it was also a labor of love. Making a mix was fun. It was a great way to spend an evening in for those of us who were dateless. In the construction of a mix, much attention was given to flair, finesse, and choreography. The more obscure or deep a song was, the more cool points you earned. One also had to dance the line between musical courtship and sappiness - a tape that had too many ballads was an emotional version of Tourette's syndrome that was to be avoided at all costs. And of course there was the crowning glory, and the mark that separated the amateurs from the true music aficionados - fitting in the perfect end piece that was thirty-five seconds long or whatever was left at the end of the tape. Where is that genius, now? Where is the case art, the painstakingly hand-lettered track list? Where's the effort?

Even burning a CD seemed somehow, to me, a little sterile and flat. Oh sure, you could try and be cool and design a jewel case cover or - if you were a really BIG geek - print an image directly onto the CD. But there was just something intimate about that little cassette that a CD could not match. Pocket sized, tangible, tactile. Even the rattle of the spools was friendly. And a tape that had been munched by the unforgiving maw of a wayward cassette player then painstakingly rescued, untangled and rewound (with a #2 pencil) was all the more precious and loved. I still have a tape that an old boyfriend made for me more than fifteen years ago - sixty minutes of pretentious music snob talent. Pure gold. He was a lying, cheating, conceited jerk, but I still have his tape - and I still listen to it. Then there was the tape that this other poor soul made me that wound up in the dustbin almost immediately (he was dumped not too long after, as well). The only thing on it that I even remember today was DJ Love and Special Sauce. That, my friend, is not the kind of obituary that you want to proceed you after you're history.

Now, I'm not trying to knock the convenience of music files. It's all that and a bag of chips. I have a large library myself that I take great pride in. But when mix tapes went the way of the dinosaur, so did a small but thrilling intricacy in the pleasure of youthful infatuation. I'm sure that there are plenty of new rituals that teens have dreamt up, ones that an ancient hag like myself is completely oblivious to. I hope so, anyway. Still, my precious keepsakes of pop music recorded on an all-but-obsolete medium instantly immerse me in memories of men who I loved, hated, loved to hate, and/or hated to love.

So let's all have a moment of silence for the mix tape. Gone the way of plastic covered furniture and perms, it's one of those anachronisms that probably won't make a retro comeback (unlike nerd glasses and skinny jeans, two fashions that should have stayed in the vault if you ask me). And I accept that. Life goes on.

But if the powers that be ever take requests for the next fad revival, I will be front row center with a blank tape in one hand and some scratch-n-sniff stickers in the other.