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matildaeg 's review for:
Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield
This is another one I read because Harry Styles likes it, and I gotta ask - Harry, you good??? I don't usually write very negative reviews but I have thoughts on this.
I'm giving it a 2 because there were parts I liked: discussion of how music exists in mixes vs albums, the role music plays in human relationships, discussion of big and complex grief, talk about Pavement in the 90s because I love them.
But there are also problems. Firstly, the way he writes about women, JESUS. Quite a lot of sexism, veiled and obvious.
Glaring example: "Like all girl bands, they spent all their time thinking up cool band names and cool song titles and cool ideas for matching outfits, with only occasional efforts to actually play songs. When Cindy and Katherine had their big falling out over a b-o-y (what else?)" excuse me what? if that's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it doesn't hit. and this was published in 2007!!!
Implicit examples: theme of the manic pixie dream girl, talks a lot about crushing on women and their appearance/'image' more than anything else, calls feminism a fad, writes a page about Renée getting fat, suggestion that women in bands are the image and the men are the real musicians/writers. It's a bit odd to be honest, very unexpected.
Also found that the talk about music wasn't really detailed to have any meaning if you didn't already know the music which is a shame. And I didn't really get the emotional hit which. I don't feel like it does justice to either Renée or Rob as a memoir, and could have maybe been a longread rather than a book and covered all the important things he wants to talk about.
Disappointed really as I thought I'd really like this, but it's not for me.
I'm giving it a 2 because there were parts I liked: discussion of how music exists in mixes vs albums, the role music plays in human relationships, discussion of big and complex grief, talk about Pavement in the 90s because I love them.
But there are also problems. Firstly, the way he writes about women, JESUS. Quite a lot of sexism, veiled and obvious.
Glaring example: "Like all girl bands, they spent all their time thinking up cool band names and cool song titles and cool ideas for matching outfits, with only occasional efforts to actually play songs. When Cindy and Katherine had their big falling out over a b-o-y (what else?)" excuse me what? if that's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it doesn't hit. and this was published in 2007!!!
Implicit examples: theme of the manic pixie dream girl, talks a lot about crushing on women and their appearance/'image' more than anything else, calls feminism a fad, writes a page about Renée getting fat, suggestion that women in bands are the image and the men are the real musicians/writers. It's a bit odd to be honest, very unexpected.
Also found that the talk about music wasn't really detailed to have any meaning if you didn't already know the music which is a shame. And I didn't really get the emotional hit which. I don't feel like it does justice to either Renée or Rob as a memoir, and could have maybe been a longread rather than a book and covered all the important things he wants to talk about.
Disappointed really as I thought I'd really like this, but it's not for me.