Lisbon Is A Mix Tape

A playlist / tribute to one of my fav books of all time

In 2012, I grabbed the book Love Is A Mix Tape from the table at the front of Lubbock’s only (at the time) real book store, the South Plains Mall Barnes & Noble. The blue and green cover displayed a stack of cartoon cassette tapes, and I liked cassette tapes—and I was in the mood to be a bit of a romantic. Rob Sheffield, the author, recounts his real first marriage to his dream girl Renée, whom he lost unexpectedly to a pulmonary embolism after just a few years together—a premise as heartbreaking as it is cinematic and, I felt, was almost too good to be true, right? But as I sped through the book that summer, I was almost pissed off at how much it lived up to any expectation I could’ve had for it. Each chapter is loosely based around a tape either Rob, Renée, or someone adjacent had made, and his essays perfectly refracted my own worship of the mix tape medium. The life-saving belief that our hearts and lives can be mapped, for a few moments, to a sequence of songs.

This last week, in the shade of a sago palm in a sprawling villa in Lagos, Portugal, I put down Love Is A Mix Tape after 4 pages, sobbing on the lawn. I probably picked it back up at the wrong time, granted—I thought maybe bringing it on this trip, which I’d jokingly been calling my “Eat Slay Love” trip, would be grounding, or revelatory, or both. Something to shock my system into believing in love again, the way I used to. Instead, it was more than I could bear. (Sara, my childhood best friend and the bride of the destination wedding, lovingly chided me for thinking this kind of book would be a good idea, and nudged me to trade it in for Wild, the other one I’d packed.)

Regardless, Love Is A Mix Tape has been on my mind. I hadn’t made a playlist in a while, and, this last week, the time was right: leaving Lagos and arriving in Lisbon, weighed down by the deepest sadness of my life, awash with wedding festivities and the most beautiful people and seafood you could fathom, inspired Playlist #258. I always give my playlists loving names, but this one didn’t need one—the songs speak for themselves, tracks I trust to hold me, break me open, save me, and travel beyond me to exactly who they’re meant to find. So, without further ado, here’s my Lisbon playlist.

“St. Jupiter” - Ruston Kelly

I usually try to cast a wide-ish net when opening a playlist, but you may have to indulge me on this one. Ruston’s voice is a little much this album cycle: emboldened by his success in pop punk covers, he’s fully in his Tom Delonge era, and I know it’s a bit brash to toss that at you straightaway—but it’s goddamn relevant, okay? It’s been a long fuckin’ summer, indeed.

“Time Ain’t Accidental” - Jess Williamson

Cast a vision of a future moment where the hurt’s still there, the uncertainty still stings, the loss is incalculable—but there’s flower petals still, and pools, and a hint of something other than the void. That’s where Miss Jess takes us in this song. It’s where I want to be.

“Love Who We Are Meant To” - Feist

In one of my actual favorite guitar arrangements I’ve ever heard, Feist aces the impossible task of softening lost love’s crushing weight. “Drafting as I drift,” she nearly whispers; “I cannot write nor reckon it / So will I let it wreck me / Or wreck my dream of family?” I didn’t know such musings could feel beautiful, until I heard her sing them.

“Pray It Away” - Hannah Georgas ft. Matt Berninger

This one was a filler. But not a skipper!! I’ve recently been listening to Georgas’ 2020 album All That Emotion when I need to get calm. The original, Matt-less version of this song is on it, but he just adds exactly what it needs, I think.

“Tin Man” - Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, Jon Randall

I’ll be honest, I don’t know who the two dudes are, but this album, The Marfa Tapes, is STACKED with bangers. Like my girl Miranda, I can vouch that “If you ever felt one breakin' / you'd never want a heart.”

“Charm You - Blondshell Version” - Blondshell & Samia

PHEW okay enough sad sack shit! Let’s make some water boogie to a Kesha song! I didn’t *want* to like Samia because…fine, I’ll be honest…of how she looks. But that’s a me problem, obviously, because when I hear somebody else sing her better songs, it’s obvious that she really does have songwriting chops. And hey, you: I don’t wanna charm you.

“Slugs” - Slow Pulp

This song is meant to act as a little (albeit pensive) breather before the emotionally brutal rest of the playlist. Slow Pulp rules, and I can’t wait for their upcoming album.

“Independence Day” - Palehound

First of all. I’m a massive sucker for drop tunings. So I was immediately sold on this song, before I even heard the brilliant lyrics or crashing chorus. Frontperson El Kempner employs the Springsteenesque tautology of casual and urgent, a quick path to my heart, ripping me open and sewing me back together with imagery of my favorite holiday. (This is quickly becoming one of my favorite new songs of 2023.)

“Stampede” - Jess Williamson

Miss Jess reappears for one of the deep stabs of the playlist. Where her first contribution shows us the future, this one descends into the past. The endless prairie. The flatlands where we became ourselves. This song is a prayer to there, and yes, to you. I was right there, baby, tellin’ ‘em all how good you are.

“For Me This Is Heaven” - Jimmy Eat World

“If I can’t let myself be happy now, then when?” Jimmy (that’s what I call him in my head) asks. Then why does he sound so lost? These are questions that get beautifully explored, but not answered, in the song. The twinkly guitars ask to wrap me up, and, as I have for 15 years, I let them.

“Delta Dawn” - Tanya Tucker

I like to use old country as an anchor in a playlist. Keeps things grounded without compromising any real emotion. Tear ‘em up, Tanya.

“lily” - Kara Jackson

Okay, we’re back up in the clouds again, courtesy of Jackson’s chorus of winds: her guitar, her woodwinds, her breathy, rich voice. It’s a gentle rise, sharpened ever so slightly by the tale of love and loss she tells.

“Good Grief” - Hayley Williams

I’ve struggled to eat this whole Portugal trip. When I do, it’s mostly for sustenance. My stomach holds the rage and grief my eyes don’t have the tears for. “There’s no such thing as good grief,” sang my hero, in the darkness of her heartbreak. “I haven’t eaten in three weeks.”

“Unknown / Nth” - Hozier

If the guitar was the only voice on this track, I’d still feel the song’s meaning so deeply, so painfully, that I’d never recover. Unfortunately for my poor heart, Hozier’s words drive home the ache of all that’s been broken and lost. This is the one I’ve REALLY been crying to—at first it was Feist, and then “Stampede,” but now this one’s having its turn.

“You know the distance never made a difference to me / I swam a lake of fire, I'd have walked across the floor of any sea / Ignored the vastness between all that can be seen / And all that we believe / So I thought you were like an angel to me.”

At least I will never regret that I didn’t try harder.

But how could I not have? You were like an angel to me. My heart in your teeth.

“Do you know I could break beneath the weight / Of the goodness, love, I still carry for you / That I’d walk so far just to take / The injury of finally knowing you?”

I lay on my back on the bench under all the disparate tree species of Lisbon’s botanic garden, a shifting green tapestry that couldn’t have been lovelier, moved by a breeze whose temperature couldn’t have been more perfect, and the tears streamed down my cheekbones toward my earbuds, drenching the song.

It was you. It was always just you.

“Gush - Live” - bdrmm

Sonically, it’s a comedown from the Hozier joint. Lyrically, it feels like a missive, one I can listen to whenever I need to hear it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

The shoegaze was a whole thing, and I think it’s ruined for me. Ruined, but that doesn’t mean I can’t touch it, hold it up to the light, wrap it around me like a hoodie. It may be ruined but that doesn’t mean it’s not still mine.

“The Window” - Ratboys

Okay wait I lied, this is the cry-er for me right now. It’s the kind of up-tempo gut-wrencher that I’ve always had a thing for. It just came out and it feels like it’s right on time. I couldn’t not end the playlist this way:

“I don't regret a single day / And you're so beautiful”

I’d be remiss to call it a goodbye. It’s not, because it’s to a person who can never quite leave. It’s a blessing, against all odds, for the lingering leaver.

I saw you through the window of time, standing back in that misty plain Jess sang about. The one where we’re just kids. And I wave, and I feel you, and I feel you gone, but I don’t regret a single day. Despite all you’ve done, you’re still so beautiful.

Before I put away Love Is A Mix Tape, after the first flurry of tears subsided, I noticed the epigraph:

I wasted all your precious time
I wasted it all on you.

—Pavement

May it ever be so.