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A review by jadesara15
Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
4.0
3.5
When I was in middle school, my friend Kelly and I would burn each other CDs on her family’s ancient desktop computer. I am a little fuzzy on the songs, but I know quite a few featured the live Broadway production of Wicked (a musical we both loved), while others were all unreleased Taylor Swift songs (“I’d Lie”, anyone?) or emo hits (All Time Low, Mayday Parade, Hey Sunday). We’d scribble the tracklist in Sharpie and write little notes to one another, adorned with doodles of hearts and stars. It was an act of love, of effort, of wanting to share a piece of ourselves with the other person. I still have a few buried in a desk drawer in my childhood bedroom.
This is what Rob Sheffield understands more than anything: that music can be a way of reaching another person, even one long gone. His book is centered on his late wife, Renee, and their love story, but (perhaps more than that) it is centered on their mutual love of music. It is about how a song can become engraved with memory, how a song can capture a moment in music like amber.
There is a playlist on my Spotify, now, that is entitled “It’s Okay to Miss Her.” It’s all songs that remind me of my mom. Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Carole King. When I listen to it, it almost fills the room with her. Sheffield has playlists like this for his late wife, and he shares them all here. He also shares memories. He lets us into intimate moments that maybe we don’t deserve but that I know will stick with me for quite some time. He also shares his grief. Sheffield captures well the shock of losing someone so young so instantly. He writes without hesitation and you can palpably feel his grief. One of my favorite chapters was about Jackie Kennedy and how she he found a kinship with her, in their shared widowhood, in their shared messy grief.
I do think the first half of the book is a little weak. The initial chapters about Sheffield’s childhood exploration of music didn’t exactly stick the landing, and I sometimes felt strange about the way he wrote about women generally. But the last half makes it all worth it. i love to read people who write about what they love and you can truly tell that Sheffield loves his wife and that he loves music. In the end, the memoir feels like a mixtape of its own—messy and personal and full of memory.
When I was in middle school, my friend Kelly and I would burn each other CDs on her family’s ancient desktop computer. I am a little fuzzy on the songs, but I know quite a few featured the live Broadway production of Wicked (a musical we both loved), while others were all unreleased Taylor Swift songs (“I’d Lie”, anyone?) or emo hits (All Time Low, Mayday Parade, Hey Sunday). We’d scribble the tracklist in Sharpie and write little notes to one another, adorned with doodles of hearts and stars. It was an act of love, of effort, of wanting to share a piece of ourselves with the other person. I still have a few buried in a desk drawer in my childhood bedroom.
This is what Rob Sheffield understands more than anything: that music can be a way of reaching another person, even one long gone. His book is centered on his late wife, Renee, and their love story, but (perhaps more than that) it is centered on their mutual love of music. It is about how a song can become engraved with memory, how a song can capture a moment in music like amber.
There is a playlist on my Spotify, now, that is entitled “It’s Okay to Miss Her.” It’s all songs that remind me of my mom. Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Carole King. When I listen to it, it almost fills the room with her. Sheffield has playlists like this for his late wife, and he shares them all here. He also shares memories. He lets us into intimate moments that maybe we don’t deserve but that I know will stick with me for quite some time. He also shares his grief. Sheffield captures well the shock of losing someone so young so instantly. He writes without hesitation and you can palpably feel his grief. One of my favorite chapters was about Jackie Kennedy and how she he found a kinship with her, in their shared widowhood, in their shared messy grief.
I do think the first half of the book is a little weak. The initial chapters about Sheffield’s childhood exploration of music didn’t exactly stick the landing, and I sometimes felt strange about the way he wrote about women generally. But the last half makes it all worth it. i love to read people who write about what they love and you can truly tell that Sheffield loves his wife and that he loves music. In the end, the memoir feels like a mixtape of its own—messy and personal and full of memory.