Happy Valentine’s Day Love/Hate Mix Tapes

Posted by: Alex

Happy Valentine’s Day, friends, family, lovers, and acquaintances! I used to believe that the best way to express feelings to another person was through a mix tape. These days I’m more partial to bottles of wine and some alone time, but I still love a good mix. My friends and I exchange them regularly, to this day, and I like to make them for myself to get pumped up when I’m doing things I don’t want to do, such as going to the first day of a job or shopping at the Mall of America.

Just seeing the sign outside makes me uneasy.

I have always been a big fan of Valentine’s Day. My mom considered it an extremely important holiday in our household. She not only made us my very favorite cookies ever (sugar cookies with the unhealthiest pink frosting you’ve ever tasted, and they are amazing), but she would give us gifts. I got a used Nintendo once. Yeah. You heard me right. My mom loved me THAT MUCH. Even when I was single (read: most all of my life), I considered it an opportunity to treasure the people that I love. When I was in college, my best single friends and I all went to one another’s crappy part-time jobs to drop off candy and “screw Valentine’s Day” type mixes. Another year, my best friend and I drove around and dropped off little Valentine’s Day cards to all of our other friends, including a boy who had recently been heartbroken, and eventually became my husband. And that man, everyone, is President Barack Obama.

Here we are at senior prom.

So I wanted to kick it back old school and make some Valentine’s Day mixes. The only difference now is that instead of being on a cassette tape with the Side A and Side B tracks neatly written out, they are on Spotify and there are graphics. And you can only listen to them on your computer and not in your awesome ride. And they are now called “playlists.” But other than that, identical. Now, I’m not saying I’m Positive Polly all the time, people. There were definitely years in my 20’s when all I wanted to do was listen to some depressing alt-rock and cry into my wine glass while watching reruns of That 70’s Show. For that reason, I have made two playlists. The first one is happy and cheery and celebrates love – it is entitled Love is the Best! The second is geared more towards those of us that have recently ended a relationship and/or could care less about this stupid holiday. It is entitled Fuck Love. You can listen to one, or both, or neither. Really, it’s up to you.

I was definitely not going for the cool factor with these mixes. I was thinking of songs from over the years that I have equated with love and romance and those that I’ve listened to during heartbreak and rejection. Semisonic’s Singing In My Sleep was basically the pinnacle of romance to me when I was 17. And Ani Difranco’s Untouchable Face….I don’t even want to reminisce about how many times I probably cried and screamed “fuck you!” into the air along with Ani as a teenager. I probably also said, “She totally wrote this about me” an absurd amount of times. I’ve also included a bunch that I would blare in my car and sing along to obsessively in the present, like Taylor Swift’s We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Because I totally do not listen to KDWB for my entire drive home and do just that. That would be stupid.

However you celebrate this day – with your boyfriend, a dozen roses, and a romantic comedy or with your best girlfriend, 2 bottles of wine, and a DVR full of The Bachelor, Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours. xoxo