I’ve always liked making playlists. When I was younger, in the days before CDs, I remember having a pile of blank cassette tapes my dad got for me sitting on my desk. My boombox or walkman was always tuned to the local pop radio station. I’d sit there for a while just waiting for my favorite songs to come on, just so I could hit record and get them on my blank tape. I’d fill up all the tapes my dad got for me, then take even more time writing out the names of all the songs and artists who they belonged to. I remember carrying them around with me everywhere I went. Eventually, the CD boomed and my dad bought me a Sony CD player. I would carry around a giant case with all my CDs in them. Then when computers and software like Real Player and such came out, and when burning discs were a thing, it felt so nice to save all of my music from discs onto my computer, and then make playlists of all my favorite songs to burn onto discs.
These physical mixtapes (or CDs) were so cool–at least to me–because it made it so much easier to share the music I liked with my friends. Plus, I just really liked compiling my favorite songs together in different ways to create a unique listening experience. I always tried to theme my mixes or at least have songs of the same genre in their own playlists. With the onset of advanced technology like the iPod–which I’ll be first to admit, I didn’t get one until like…the 3rd or 4th generation came out cause I was too attached to my CD player–and iTunes and file sharing or Youtube, it’s fairly easy to send and share playlists with people.
But of course, these playlists lose their novelty as mixtapes (or CDs), since they are not really material, just simply 0s and 1s flying through hardwire.
This doesn’t discourage me though. 8tracks is an awesome site that lets me make playlists real easy and share them with people, and I kind of like it. Today I felt a bit nostalgic about summer. It hasn’t come yet where I live, but that anticipatory feeling you get in the pit of your stomach that is only enhanced by past summer memories and your future expectations of what this summer’s going to be like, was just eating me alive. So I made a playlist to crave my hunger for that summer wanderlust.
You can listen to it here: