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Love is a Mix Tape

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 13,891 ratings · 1,783 reviews

In this stunning memoir, Rob Sheffield, a veteran rock and pop culture critic and staff writer for Rolling Stone magazine, tells the story of his musical coming of age, and how rock music, the first love of his life, led him to his second, a girl named Renee. Rob and Renee's life together - they wed after graduate school, both became music journalists, and were married onl...more

Hardcover, 224 pages

Published January 2nd 2007 by Crown (first published January 1st 2007)

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Jan 26, 2011 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, mmxi, maurice, for-realz, rubbernecking

This review’s content may be confusing, annoying, trite or downright laughable to persons not born between 1965 and 1978. Hell, it may be all of that and more to just about anyone. Consider yourself warned.

Put your thinking caps on ‘cuz I’ve got some trippin’ down memory lane for you:
Where were you when you first heard ‘A Day in the Life’? What about ‘Wild World’? What did you think when you finally understood the meaning of ‘She Bop’? What does ‘My Heart Will Go On’ mean to you? Do you know whe...more

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Nov 09, 2007 Heather rated it 5 of 5 stars

Love Is A Mix Tape just absolutely knocked my socks off.

I devoured this book in one weekend and enjoyed every single page, heartily. This is ostensibly a book about mix tapes, and looking back at a life spent seeing the world in a series of 45-minute vignettes (then, of course, you flip the tape over). Rob Sheffield has penned an honest (yet wildly entertaining) book that affected me more deeply than any book I've read in recent memory, woven throughout with a genuine and bleeding love for music...more Love Is A Mix Tape just absolutely knocked my socks off.

I devoured this book in one weekend and enjoyed every single page, heartily. This is ostensibly a book about mix tapes, and looking back at a life spent seeing the world in a series of 45-minute vignettes (then, of course, you flip the tape over). Rob Sheffield has penned an honest (yet wildly entertaining) book that affected me more deeply than any book I've read in recent memory, woven throughout with a genuine and bleeding love for music. It's electric.

The meta-theme of the book is great love, great loss, and the soundtrack: his relationship and marriage to Renee, a girl who he says was "in the middle of everything, living her big, messy, epic life, and none of us who loved her will ever catch up with her." Rob loved Renee, and chronicles that here beautifully from their first meeting to her sudden death at 31.

Parts of the book are evisceratingly intimate. Sometimes I felt almost too close to his darkest and most intimate moments, and it's hard to phrase this right but -- because I knew so much of the music that weaves throughout their stories, I almost felt like I had a personal stake. I kept thinking that it was surprising to find a story so real and honest and intimate when I initially picked this up because, duh, it's about mix tapes.

If you don't like reading about other people's love stories, you should still 100% read this book. Renee was his muse, but his passion (and hers) is thoroughly and unabashedly music -- and there is some absolutely fantastic stuff in here. He writes of their relationship, "We had nothing in common, except we both loved music. It was the first connection we had, and we depended on it to keep us together. We did a lot of work to meet in the middle. Music brought us together." They were both music writers and radio DJs, they fell in love hard and married young. They made lots and lots of fabulous mix tapes, and each chapter begins with a reprinted tracklist from one cassette from that era in their lives.

This is a man after my own heart. How could I do anything but love a man who starts chapter 14 with: "Every time I have a crush on a woman, I have the same fantasy: I imagine the two of us as a synth-pop duo." He goes on to elaborate how she is in the front ("tossing her hair, a saucy little firecracker"), stealing the show and he is hidden in the back behind his Roland JP8000 keyboard, "lavishing all my computer blue love on her."He even lists all the best band names he's come up with for their synth-pop duo: Metropolitan Floors, Indulgence, Angela Dust.

And you should hear him wax poetic about mix tapes. Be still my heart. Rob writes, "There are all kinds of mix tapes. There is always a reason to make one." He then gives his examples:
The Party Tape
I Want You
We're Doing It? Awesome!
You Like Music, I Like Music, I Can Tell We're Going To Be Friends
You Broke My Heart And Made Me Cry and Here Are Twenty or Thirty Songs About It
The Road Trip
Good Songs From Bad Albums I Never Want To Play Again

. . . and many more. "There are millions of songs in the world," he writes, "and millions of ways to connect them into mixes. Making the connections is part of the fun of being a fan." The book starts with Sheffield pulling out a box of old tapes and all throughout the book --from his childhood school dance recollections, to the first mixes he can remember making for Renee, to the ones that accompanied him in the dark days and months following her death-- the mix tapes and the songs are as much characters in this story as the actual people are.

Since each of us have our own completely sovereign and self-focused memories surrounding our favorite bands and favorite songs (the unique feelings, smells, companions, activities associated with them), there is something that I just find so ebullient about "seeing" all these bands and songs through the unique rubric of their lives. A MUST-READ.(less)

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Jul 08, 2009 Emilia P rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: just the really cool kids

Shelves: real-books, to-re-read

Oh man, shucks.
I loved this book.
I could say that the story arc could have been stronger or that he could have talked about mixtapes more (even though he talked about them a lot, I never get sick of it). But I won't. I don't care about those things.

I care that I basically love this book way too much. There are many reasons.

1) I am a sucker for exercises in love and grief, which a lot of this book is--his wife died suddenly after they were married for like 5 years, and most of the book is about h...more

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Emilia P Can I give this book six stars? Good heavens, it is the best. I re-read it, to see if it changed since I got into a music-influenced relationship. Bas...more
Jul 08, 2009 05:34pm

Christine I want to be your friend based on this review alone. Starting the book now. Thank you.
Sep 24, 2012 08:15pm

Feb 04, 2010 JSou rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographies-memoirs, i-own-you

I didn't really know what this book was about until I started flipping through it last night. I bought it as a last minute, bargain priced add-on from Barnes & Noble, pretty much just to bump up my total to $25 so I could get free shipping. The title caught my eye since making mixtapes took up a lot of time during my teenage years. Seriously, when the iPod was first introduced, I thought it was the greatest invention since the automobile.

Anyway, I was expecting this to be a humorous, dick-li...more

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Jul 09, 2011 Buggy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: shelf-09, bio-memoir, love-story, not-so-hea

Opening line:"The playback:late night, Brooklyn, a pot of coffee, and a chair by the window. I'm listening to a mix tape from 1993."

Before I-pods and ripped CDs we all made mix tapes. I'm sure most of us over a certain age still have them safely hidden away somewhere, never quite having had the nerve to throw them out (broken cases and all) We named these tapes, gave them away to friends or lovers and assigned them different purposes. Remember the break-up tape, the I'm so infatuated with you ta...more Opening line:"The playback:late night, Brooklyn, a pot of coffee, and a chair by the window. I'm listening to a mix tape from 1993."

Before I-pods and ripped CDs we all made mix tapes. I'm sure most of us over a certain age still have them safely hidden away somewhere, never quite having had the nerve to throw them out (broken cases and all) We named these tapes, gave them away to friends or lovers and assigned them different purposes. Remember the break-up tape, the I'm so infatuated with you tape, the party tape, workout tape, road trip tape, stolen off the radio tape etc, etc. It took hours to create a mix tape, attempting to get the songs in perfect order without cutting off the last one. Now imagine, nearly 20 years later having the courage to scour through and listen to all those tapes again. The joy of rediscovery, the nostalgia, the OMG I forgot all about that song which reminds me of that party,girl,boy,car moment. You might also experience pain or sadness over that long lost love. Well this is what LOVE IS A MIX TAPE is all about.

I absolutely adored this book. Rob Sheffield style of writing is so honest, natural and funny that you'll feel like your talking with an old friend. He manages too capture the spirit of the 90's perfectly too as he tells a moving autobiographical account of his years spent with wife Renee. Anyone who lived through that time and is into pop culture will find something relatable here.

This is also a tragic love story and on the very first page we learn that Renee has died, we just don't know how or why. We then flash back to the time to before they met as Rob experiences an awkward adolescence and discovers his love of Indie rock. One night Rob meets the sweet Southern girl of his dreams and although only 25 they soon marry. It's not a perfect marriage however; they're broke most of the time, they fight, they get a dog, they drink Zima (remember Zima?) but they always listen to music as one. Rob and Renee ultimately get 7 years together and even though I knew that Renee was going to die when it actually happened I was left stunned. Sheffield depicts the ache of new love and utter helplessness of losing it beautifully and following Rob through the next grief stricken chapters was at times hard to take.

Throughout this story it is always about the music and each chapter begins with a dated mix tape complete with side A/B track listings. Some of the tapes were made by Renee others by Rob but you're sure to have a lot of moments remembering your own life's soundtrack as you journey along with the music. You might even find a couple of new favourites. Cheers. (less)

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Jan 27, 2011 Malbadeen rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: sentimental sappy headed sappy suckers

If you've lost someone that you cared deeply for you know the frustration in not being able to express who that person was to others. The on going loss that comes from meeting new people and knowing they will never know this person (this HUGE part of your life) can seem crippling at times. In some ways this book appears to be Sheffields attempt to make his wife known to us after her very early death. Personally, I don't think he succeeded. His short lived marriage to her seemed sweet in a teen a...more

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May 01, 2013 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the kind of memoir I'd like to have written (albeit without the deceased wife).

I've had a few conversations with friends in the last year or so about the long-lost art of the mix tape, which has been delivered a death-blow by the digital age. Burning a CD mix just isn't the same; for one, it doesn't take nearly as long to make a CD mix, which cheapens the sentiment attached to giving one to someone, especially when the hope is that the gesture and the songs themselves with make the reci...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Annalisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club, memoir-biography

I picked up this book because of the title. I loved the idea of the intense power of music to draw on memory and expected my own memories to mesh with the story. But I found Sheffield's mesh of music unusual, sometimes jarring, and I found myself not connecting with it as much as I'd like. It was a bittersweet memoir with a few humorous moments, but there wasn't anything unusual or memorable in his story.

Quotable moments:

But most of all, I regret turning thirteen, and staying that way for the n...more I picked up this book because of the title. I loved the idea of the intense power of music to draw on memory and expected my own memories to mesh with the story. But I found Sheffield's mesh of music unusual, sometimes jarring, and I found myself not connecting with it as much as I'd like. It was a bittersweet memoir with a few humorous moments, but there wasn't anything unusual or memorable in his story.

Quotable moments:

But most of all, I regret turning thirteen, and staying that way for the next ten years or so.

At any wedding we attend, my family is the problem table, the one everyone gradually drifts away from out of self-preservation. It's a proud family tradition. Now this was our wedding, and nobody could stop us. Giving us a crate of champagne and a dance floor was like handing a madman the keys to a 747 and saying, "Now, seriously, dude, don't crash it. Promise?"

My friends and I assumed that we would be tenured professors, which is an excellent life goal--it's like planning to be Cher.

Dog love is blind. For that matter, dog love is stupid.

As soon as they hit the stage, you could hear all the girls in the crowd ovulate in unison.

You lose a certain kind of innocence when you experience this type of kindness. You lose your right to be a jaded cynic.

I was helpless in trying to return people's kindness, but also helpless to resist it. Kindness is a scarier force than cruelty, that's for sure. Cruelty isn't that hard to understand. I had no trouble comprehending why the phone company wanted to screw me over; they just wanted to steal some money, it was nothing personal. That's the way of the world. It made me mad, but it didn't make me feel stupid. If anything, it flattered my intelligence. Accepting all that kindness, though, made me feel stupid.

The way I pictured it, all this grief would be like a winter night when you're standing outside. You'll warm up once you get used to the cold. Except after you've been out there a whole, you feel the warmth draining out of you and you realize the opposite is happening; you're getting colder and colder, as the body heat you brought outside with you seeps out of your skin. Instead of getting used to it, you get weaker the longer you endure it.

Each side of a tape goes on for forty-five minutes, and then comes to a stop, allowing a chance for somebody to discreetly change the music, whereas a mix CD has only one side. Which means it goes on for eighty minutes, and you can't turn it off halfway through without offering some sort of lame excuse, such as "Garth is singing about cocaine in this song and it's bad for the baby," or "Dave Matthews is mixing violin solos with saxophone solos and it's bad for the baby."

Sometimes great tunes happen to bad times, and when the bad time is over, not all the tunes get to move on with you.

According to the Western philosopher Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap... Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is a drug. The troubadours of our times all agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them. But the answer is simple: Love is a mix tape. (less)

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Aug 14, 2010 Shawn Sorensen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphies-auto-or-bio, humor

Now I know someone likes making mix tapes (and by extension mix cds) as much as I do. I also know someone's as crazy about the corniness and desperation of 90s music as I am about 80s music. When I embrace some of mainstream music's most desperate attempts to throw something profound into our pop culture - take Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" or Spandeau Ballet's "True" - I know author Rob Sheffield will join me in my heartfelt applause. And, like Sheffield, I think my generation of music -...more Now I know someone likes making mix tapes (and by extension mix cds) as much as I do. I also know someone's as crazy about the corniness and desperation of 90s music as I am about 80s music. When I embrace some of mainstream music's most desperate attempts to throw something profound into our pop culture - take Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" or Spandeau Ballet's "True" - I know author Rob Sheffield will join me in my heartfelt applause. And, like Sheffield, I think my generation of music - the color and creativity, the upbeat rhythms, the high-road empathy, THE FUN - is better than any other generation, especially the whiny-ness and muffled emptiness of a lot of 90s fare. We all knew life sucked. That's why we spent so much time walking like Egyptians.

The writing here is open, conversational, too-the-point and surprisingly funny. Sheffield doesn't let us get to know his wife, Renee, too well, as if he needs to keep a lot of the details to himself. Fair enough. His enthusiasm for music is not quite as limited:

"Every time I have a crush on a woman, I have the same fantasy: I imagine the two of us as a synth-pop duo. No matter who she is, or how we meet, the synth-pop duo fantasy has to work, or the crush fizzles out. I have loads of other musical fantasies about my crushes--I picture us as a Gram-and-Emmylou country harmony duo, or as guitarists in a rock band, trading off vocals like Mick and Keith. But for me, it always comes back to the synth-pop duo. The girl is up front, swishing her skirt, tossing her hair, a saucy little firecracker. I'm the boy in the back, hidden behind my Roland JP8000 keyboard."

Sheffield works literary wonders in describing the depth of his love for Renee, which gives the book a aching, vulnerable depth while he describes his appreciation for what is sometimes lighter and funnier musical choices, like Chaka Khan's "I Feel for You" or Tone Loc's "Funky Cold Medina". On the other hand, Renee is a lighter, funnier person, someone who frequently celebrates life or makes those around her feel more comfortable.

In the end, I think of this as a brave book. Brave in how Sheffield remembers Renee, brave for being so unabashedly enthusiastic about the music we hear on our radios. I didn't know most of the songs, and I want a more detailed, chronological description of their relationship. In short, I wanted to get into this book more. The author had me at "Hello". (less)

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Jan 16, 2008 Rory rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs-and-bios

I didn't like this as much as others have seemed to. And what I liked most was probably what others discarded--I liked hearing about the signifcance of all the songs and mixes and bands. But the love story? Sap-tastic and hit-me-over-the-head-repetitive.

Every tenth line of the first long chapter is heavy foreshadowing mixed with hipster melodrama--you know, "That music changed my life. But Renee was my life. And then my life went away." Then something like "Love isn't like a cassingle. It's lik...more

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Jan 03, 2012 Madeleine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, soothing-the-savage-breast, let-us-now-speak-of-great-men, mmxii, our-libeary

I started reading this book during the two-day buffer between the beginnings of both 2012 proper and the working year, thinking that I’d have to look no farther than the other end of the couch if the story really destroyed me to the point of needing my myriad mostly-under-control-but-always-threatening-to-surface spousal fears allayed by husbandly hugs. Turns out, catching up on laundry and tidying up our soon-to-be-vacated first home ate into my reading time and I wound up finishing this about...more I started reading this book during the two-day buffer between the beginnings of both 2012 proper and the working year, thinking that I’d have to look no farther than the other end of the couch if the story really destroyed me to the point of needing my myriad mostly-under-control-but-always-threatening-to-surface spousal fears allayed by husbandly hugs. Turns out, catching up on laundry and tidying up our soon-to-be-vacated first home ate into my reading time and I wound up finishing this about an hour after hubs left for work. (Luckily, this book wasn't the sob-fest I was fearing, which is a huge point for the "pro" column.)

But you know what? That lost solitary reading time was put to good use. Hubs and I giggled our way through the brutal minute-long walk to the laundry room, encountered a comedy of errors while corralling our smallclothes and turned vacuuming into a contact sport. And I think that, more than actually sitting down with “Love is a Mix Tape,” helped drive home the unspoken point of the book, which is that you never know how much time you'll have with someone so you'd better make the most of the present.

Every time I’ve seen Rob Scheffield waxing eloquent about music on television, he always seems to have this goofy grin and be a generally amiable person, an image which I’m sure is aided by how not pretentious he is about the music he loves (that's admittedly foreign territory to me). We can all agree that a personable demeanor is unusual for a rock critic and an avid connoisseur of music, right? Because you should believe everything you see on TV, I assumed he was a happy-go-lucky dude who just truly loves and is animated by music. So imagine my surprise when I realized there’s a heart-rending tale under all of that.

This isn’t a prettied-up-for-mass-consumption account of an individual's personal tragedy that is just, like, so super unique and deserving of publication because the author said so, thank God. It’s about Rob. It’s about other things, too, of course – music being chief among them – but mostly how they’ve left distinct and indelible marks on Rob’s persona. Renee gets a lot of mention, but she’s a living, thriving presence for most of the book. The reader wouldn’t get the full extent of the things that made Renee so magnetic if this was another pity-party strutting its stuff for affirmations of the author’s suffering. Instead, Rob displays enough of his late wife’s traits and habits to make us understand her without betraying all of her secrets. We see Renee through Rob’s eyes: She’s flawed but good-hearted, quirky but grounded, an individual who’s bubbling over with life.

It is so obvious that Rob is still smitten with Renee and probably has been since their first encounter. And it’s obvious that his love is motivated by who she is as a whole rather than what she represents to him. For someone with so little relationship experience, like Rob, that kind of selflessness is nigh impossible to either understand or execute. But you can tell that this boy is just wild about his girl by the way she’s framed within the book.

A memoir like this should be more of a tribute and less of a fishbowl therapy session, and it should exist to deliver a message rather than parade the author's personal tragedies in morbid self-congratulation; thankfully, this one rises above the usual credibility-killing narcissistic pitfalls. There are no excessive displays of grief and Rob doesn't rely on his wife's death as the storytelling vehicle, as either would be disrespectful to Rob and Renee’s short-lived union. Rob mourns his wife, of course, accepts that he’ll never be rewarded for dealing with his widower status by getting to have Renee back, and spends an appropriate amount of time in the fetal position, but he does so with dignity. He doesn’t want to wallow in self pity or spend night after lonely night in a cemetery because to do so would be to succumb to a dismissal of Renee’s joie de vivre, which was clearly one of her defining attributes.

There were definite divisions marking life before, during and after Renee, which certainly helped the story find a universally applicable element, but it’s Rob’s love of music that gives this books its strongest framework. Just like there was life with and without Renee, there’s music before and after Renee, too. For every milestone, be it as a child or a grieving adult, there’s a song or album or band to serve as the soundtrack. What is music’s greatest purpose if not to act as a personalized landscape for each individual, after all?

As someone who went through a rabidly elitist phase of music consumption (a phase that has, fortunately, waned over the years but still needs to assert its lingering presence at the least appropriate times) and is drawn to those who’ve traveled a similar path, I feel pretty confident in saying that the least musically talented music aficionados aren’t the most accepting folks. It’s easy to scoff at pop music and the bands who create it but Rob doesn’t fall victim to this. He admits to secretly loving some disco ditties as a teenager and accepts his phases of enjoying some truly craptastic tunes. The mix tapes’ track listings that open each chapter illustrate that he never really let go of that open-mindedness, which make his honesty and vulnerability regarding other facets of his life that much more credible. He doesn’t limit himself to the music that’s peripherally cool or only listen to what the radio spoon-feeds him, which, to me, demonstrated an unabashed affinity for all music, much to his credit.

One of the points that Rob subtly made was that when two people are just as sick about music as they are about each other, music gradually becomes a third entity in the relationship. Having that life raft of shared music (and, later, music he wishes he could share with Renee) is what kept the intimacy of his late wife close and, as I saw it, kept Rob from totally coming unglued. It always seemed like he knew he’d soldier on without his other half, but music seemed to be what kept propelling him forward, however stumblingly or reluctantly.

Music does emerge as the real hero and great unifier when it comes to the crux of the story, though the quiet messages of human kindness and self-discovery serve as its moral. I held myself together through Rob’s accounts of Renee’s death and funeral and his mourning period; what finally pierced my groggy heart was Rob’s awe over complete strangers’ acts of kindness toward him. I’m a sucker for the moment the veil of cynicism is lifted (probably because I’m pretty certain humanity comprises a bunch of selfish jerks and, therefore, get all warm and gooey when someone can convince me otherwise for a little while), and Rob’s realization that he can’t go back to his former skepticism over the goodness of people was a defining moment of the story. Yes, there is some goodness in the world: It just took a world-shattering tragedy for Rob to gain some firsthand knowledge of it. Human kindness helped him to move on while pointing out the places where some silver lining is peeking through.

It is hard to write about a loved one’s sudden death without summoning every cheaply sentimental cop-out to prey on the audience’s emotions, so Rob gets all kinds of kudos for offering up a good read rather than a cloying trick. This is a beautiful remembrance of a well-loved someone while doubling as a love letter to the music that will always be there through the highest highs, lowest lows and every small moment or long car ride between. (less)

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rachel My problem is that I don't get why it takes someone being a breath away from a breakdown or facing down a genuine tragedy to draw out that kindness fr...more
updated Jan 05, 2012 02:09pm

Madeleine But I've started to view that as ignorance and not malevolence, like they are so preoccupied with their thoughts that their reaction has nothing to do...more But I've started to view that as ignorance and not malevolence, like they are so preoccupied with their thoughts that their reaction has nothing to do with a personal slight but because they're not paying attention to things going on around them.
You know, this is actually something that I HAVE come to figure out on my own, thanks largely to how my job had me at my wits' end this time last year. And also by observing people who I've come to see as embodying a lot of my own lesser qualities. Nothing is quite as sobering and behavior-changing as that "Is THAT how people see me?" moment when someone displays a trait I can't even stand in myself.

The absolute best editor I've ever had was this mild-mannered, soft-spoken middle-aged guy who's staggeringly wise and just a really gentle soul. Among the countless gems of advice he offered me was The Five Percent Rule. It basically explained that, especially as journalists, we hear mostly about the five percent of the population who are beneficially active in the community or doing something spectacular, as well as the less savory five percent representing the dregs of society or those who just want to scream their misinformed pieces over the milder majority of the masses. The other ninety percent just want to go about their lives as smoothly as possible, take care of their families and fly under the radar, so it's not right to assume lousy things about humanity based on the actions of a highly visible but barely representative portion of the population. Your comments have definitely had me thinking about the truth behind that belief for the past couple of days.

If I step back from whatever or whoever is bothering me, I do know that sometimes you just encounter someone on a bad day. I can't tell you how many times I've immediately wanted to take back something I've said or done and be all "I swear I'm not usually this unprovokedly bitchy!" I don't know if I'll ever get to the point when a less pessimistic view of society becomes my default perspective but it definitely helps when someone points out that people really aren't as hopeless as I've got them pegged.

Frankly, the only actions that upset me -- really upset me -- are the ones that I know are personal attacks.
Amen, sister. A-freaking-men.(less)
updated Jan 06, 2012 08:21am

Jul 16, 2008 jess rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. spoiler: she dies

i'm feeling a lot of love, life & loss right now, so i thought, "What The Hell, Give It A Shot." and, well, this could be the hipster love story of the year... possibly that of the decade. littered with gratuitous references to the music of the 1990s, the uncensored grief of a sensitive hetero dude, the life of a quirky, curvy girl tragically cut short by an unexpected pulmonary embolism, all delivered straight from the keyboard of a Rolling Stone editor -- this book tallies...more spoiler: she dies

i'm feeling a lot of love, life & loss right now, so i thought, "What The Hell, Give It A Shot." and, well, this could be the hipster love story of the year... possibly that of the decade. littered with gratuitous references to the music of the 1990s, the uncensored grief of a sensitive hetero dude, the life of a quirky, curvy girl tragically cut short by an unexpected pulmonary embolism, all delivered straight from the keyboard of a Rolling Stone editor -- this book tallies up enough points to keep it on the "fave books" list for many socialite myspace pages for years to come.

okay! okay! i admit it! i boo-hooed, sobbed, snorted snot, and positively wept through entire chapters of this book! i read it out-loud to my sweetheart, choking every few words and probably providing a nearly unintelligible listening experience (she did not complain). however, this was not much of an accomplishment cause im a big ol tittybaby who loves to cry all day! i cry when puppies wrestle because it is so sweet, okay?! i read the whole damn thing aloud! it was so hard to read it out loud while i was crying! so, anyway, enough about my emotional shortcomings. it was contrived mostly, but i enjoyed the 90s nostalgia and the tragic saccharine tone. i was always been a sucker for the ill-fated romance, wasn't i?

the book did freak me out A LOT because rob & renee met one day before krista and i did (september 17 and september 18, respectively) and they got married the same day we did (july 13 --- by the way! i got gay-married!). also, renee was the same age (26) that i was when we got married. does this mean, uhm, that i'm going to die in five years of a pulmonary embolism at my sewing machine? not that long ago, i would have said HERE'S HOPING, FOLKS ! but actually, i guess only time will tell, and frankly, i hope not because i have a lot of shit to do. fortunately the book doesnt take itself so seriously so i dont think it has to stand as an foreshadowing omen of my death.

recommended: if you are bored and looking for an indie rock hetero love story set in the 1990s; if you cant get enuff romance from the pages of rolling stone but you love their style; if you wish you had found and lost the greatest love of your lifetime; warning: if you think you already HAVE found and lost the greatest love of your lifetime, this might just hit you *right there* maybe not in a good way. xoxxx(less)

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Mar 22, 2008 Kevin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Anybody who grew up in the 80s and 90s remembers making mix tapes. You made them for yourself, you made them for friends, you made them for her (or him, as the case may be). You took songs from records, cassettes, CDs, and the radio and mixed them into the order you wanted and, sometimes, you even had running commentary in the form of your own voice during the gaps or the DJ from the radio station from which you recorded the track.

But have you ever defined your life based on these recordings?

Tha...more

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Mar 12, 2008 Bryan rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book, despite my mild dislike for Sheffield's writing in Rolling Stone magazine. While the story is heartbreaking -- he becomes a widower earlier than anyone should be allowed to -- I was expecting much more insight than what's provided in this slim tome (I read it in one sitting.)

The story boils down to this -- music nerd from Boston meets awesome Appalachian girl who is everything he isn't. You know where the story is heading after he is instantly smitten when she...more I really wanted to like this book, despite my mild dislike for Sheffield's writing in Rolling Stone magazine. While the story is heartbreaking -- he becomes a widower earlier than anyone should be allowed to -- I was expecting much more insight than what's provided in this slim tome (I read it in one sitting.)

The story boils down to this -- music nerd from Boston meets awesome Appalachian girl who is everything he isn't. You know where the story is heading after he is instantly smitten when she is the only other person in a University of Virginia bar to recognize that Big Star's second album is playing.

They make a connection and later, much to his surprise, they fall in love and get married. After his wife is tragically taken away from him he spends the final half of the book telling the reader over and over to the point of irritation how awesome his wife was.

While each chapter begins with a playlist of a mix tape he or his wife had made, Sheffield doesn't write enough about the songs on the tapes. Why did he select certain songs over others? What makes a good tape. For a man who made tapes for such mundane chores as washing the dishes and walking the dogs, it's a cop-out not to write about the music itself. Of course, that may not be a bad thing. You would think that someone who writes for Rolling Stone would have high standards for determining what makes a good song. Not Sheffield. To him, all music is great, from the Replacements to Journey to the J. Geils Band. Makes you wonder how he wound up writing for a national magazine. Unfortunately we never learn because Sheffield is too busy telling how awesome his wife was. I wanted at least some idea of how he climbed out of his grief to become a columnist for one of the most storied music magazines in the country.

Sheffield likes to liberally sprinkle his writing with pop culture references as a way to show cool and ironic he is, and this book is no exception. While sometimes the references make you smile, most of the time they come off like the junior high social outcast who tries to show how hip he is by making jokes about the Dukes of Hazzard or Star Trek.

(less)

7 likes · like · see review

Andrea I agree with your comments. I wanted to love this book. I am a bit (!) older than the author but love music and have strong associations with songs, l...more
May 01, 2008 02:18pm

Bryan Andrea,

Thanks for the nice comments. It's the first time I have every received any sort of reaction from a blog post of any kind.

I am sorry about your...more
May 04, 2008 11:01pm

Feb 01, 2013 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: funny, kindle, light-read, memoir, own, quick-read, rock-gods-and-goddess, takes-me-back, nonfiction, southern-fiction

This book is hilarious! I thought it would be sad, but wasn't. I'm loving it and can relate to Rob's style of writing. He speaks in music and lyrics, and that I feel connects us on a spiritual level =) I LOVED this book! Even when I was arguing with him on his timeline (yeah, I talk to my books sometimes haha), I couldn't help but love his conviction on how right he thought he was. This book made me laugh, and smile and send quotes to everyone I know. Even when the book turned sad, it wasn't ove...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Jennie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I’m having a really hard time reviewing Love is a Mix Tape and I can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s because this book was as near to perfect as I could ever hope. Or maybe it’s because, as anyone who is familiar with the late 90s tour de force Playing by Heart (all 10 of you) knows, talking about love is like dancing about architecture. I don’t know if that’s true or not, because Rob Sheffield talks about love just fine. Maybe he has a dance about The Sears Tower, too, and that’s what his next boo...more I’m having a really hard time reviewing Love is a Mix Tape and I can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s because this book was as near to perfect as I could ever hope. Or maybe it’s because, as anyone who is familiar with the late 90s tour de force Playing by Heart (all 10 of you) knows, talking about love is like dancing about architecture. I don’t know if that’s true or not, because Rob Sheffield talks about love just fine. Maybe he has a dance about The Sears Tower, too, and that’s what his next book is about. Fingers crossed.

When I “met” my husband on Match.com, we spent a week emailing each other before meeting in person. We spent most of our first date talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, David Sedaris, and Rushmore. It’s how we bonded, how we got to know each other and I think that’s true of so many of our generation, especially now that the Internet, home to All Pop Culture Knowledge Ever, exists in such a way that we can access any aspect of pop culture at ANY TIME. Did you forget how Alex Mack got her superpowers? Wikipedia has the answer. Want to know how many companions The Doctor has had? Easy. Well, sort of. My point is (if I have to have one), it’s all pop culture all the time in our house. My husband and I are still finding random bits of pop culture (POP POP) to bond over. It’s why we recently purchased Hey, Dude and honestly, it’s akin to a secret language at this point, our ability to converse in movie and TV quotes, quotes that have mated with other quotes and given birth to brand-new-baby quotes at this point, leading to inside jokes that even we don’t really understand anymore and yet still never fail to make us laugh.

This was true of Rob and Renee in Love is a Mix Tape, only replace movies with music. I had no idea what Love is a Mix Tape was about when I picked it up, which is weird because someone bought it for me BECAUSE IT WAS ON MY WISHLIST. Most likely I’d heard good things about it (for good reason) and put it on my wishlist, or I was drunk online-window shopping again. The world may never know. Anyway, I didn’t even know this was a memoir until I started reading it and thought, “Hey, the main character’s name is Rob, just like the author’s! Oh, and the cover says memoir on it.” Duh-DOY.

Rob Sheffield is a writer for Rolling Stone and knows more about music than anyone in the world (I’m assuming). Love is a Mix Tape was published in 2007, which means, as usual, that I am super late to the party, a party that probably had the most epic mix tape imaginable. The story begins with Rob, freshly widowed, sitting in his apartment, listening to a mix tape, and missing the hell out of his wife, Renee. Objects that remind him of her litter the apartment. He doesn’t actually say outright that she’s died, not right away. In fact, at first, I thought he was reminiscing about an ex-girlfriend. And while it’s true that I’m not very observant, I think the reveal is spectacularly done.

Each chapter of Rob’s memoir begins with a mix tape that leads the way into the narrative. Stories throughout the book flash back to before Renee died, how the two met and came to be married, to her death and the days and years afterward. It’s heartbreaking and funny and I was not only in awe that a person could make it through something so terrible with such wit and humor intact, but it made me wish I’d known Renee. One of her favorite movies, after all, was The Cutting Edge and I think I’ve already made it obvious that I have a soft spot for wonderawful 90s movies.

Having read this, I’m adding Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut to my Wishlist immediately. Five stars all around!(less)

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Sep 02, 2008 K Nolfi rated it 2 of 5 stars

The early stuff about Renee was so good and I like the '90s love. Everything else is boring and self indulgent.
I like looking at the playlists on the mix tapes.

6 likes · like · see review

Jan 30, 2011 Rachel C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fic, music

I watched "It Might Get Loud" and then wanted to read a music book. I started this one, and got a third of the way through before coming up for air. It's wonderful - romantic and sad, pop culture-y, with just enough literariness to keep me on my toes.

Last fall, I was sitting at the kitchen table of two friends who have been together since 1972. They tell me a story about how they got together. She couldn't decide between two suitors, so she left New York City to spend the summer in an ashram. (D

...more

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Aug 14, 2008 Cami rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: music lovers

Recommended to Cami by: the great title

Shelves: biography-autobiography-memoir, favorites

I loved this book. If you know me well, you know I am obsessed with music and the old mix-tape was the medium that introduced me to most of the stuff that I love.
This isn't really a spoiler as the book cover makes no effort to hide that Rob Sheffield will become a widow over the course of this memoir. Rob tells us about a girl named Renee and all of the wonderful idiosyncratic things about her and how music and mix-tapes were the glue that held them together, until her untimely passing and yet t...more

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Jun 20, 2007 Shanna rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: music dorks, mixtape lovers, young widows

Shelves: music, biosmemoirs

One of my friends told me to read it and said I would enjoy it.
I liked parts of it a lot: the discussion of the nature of mix tapes v. other mediums and the way that music can define relationships, the fun new songs I found for the first time/remembered, and the really poignant description of his wife's death. This was in some ways more unsettling for me than The Year of Magical Thinking, mainly because they were both so young. They didn't get a chance to live their lives together. It was very,...more

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Mar 01, 2009 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Leah

Shelves: read-in-2009, i-own-read, loaned-out, biographies-and-memoirs, nonfiction

I dare you to try and not like this book. I guarantee you'll fail. This book is a beautifully crafted mix of everything. It's about music, yeah. There's talk of some pretty sweet tunes in there and anyone who grew up in the 80's and 90's knows the significance of the mix tape. The book is also one of the greatest unconventional love stories I've ever read.

Reading Love Is a Mix Tape is like listening in on the soundtrack to Rob Sheffield's life. He takes you through the music of his youth, failed...more

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Jul 29, 2012 katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read_12

someone once very astutely described van morrison's "brown eyed-girl" to me as a song that every girl wants someone to put on a mix tape for her and I feel like, appropriately, this book is the literary equivalent of that idea. the way that sheffield writes about his wife, falling in love with her, being married to her, and losing her is evocative and both captures the way you can feel about someone you love, as well as being exactly the way you would want someone to describe you/being in love w...more

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Apr 08, 2008 Frank rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Any book that describes the summer of '94 as a series of drunken southern barbecues populated by mod-girls and indie rock dudes who always ended the party with the girls singing along to the entirety of Liz Phair's 'Exile In Guyville' on the back porch (word for word) while all the guys listened intrigued and obsessed and befuddled in the kitchen is A+ in my book. See also, the tragic passage inspired by Sleater-Kinney's 'One More Hour', the eulogy to the '90s, and the author's recipe for the pe...more

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May 15, 2008 Phyllis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Holy Smokes . . . if you've never had a heartbreak where a CD / tape / or album didn't get you through, then this book isn't your calling . . .

Yet, have you ever lost one you've loved and that damn tune makes you shutter when you believe you've escaped the loss, but to have it be relived with recall . . .

This book made me think so much of my college roommate / & high school friend, Amber . . . we swore the only reason we got such crappy grades in college is that we had too many song lyrics...more

3 likes · like · see review

Feb 17, 2009 Wesley rated it 2 of 5 stars

I think music junkies would appreciate this book much more than I did. It felt like an inside joke, as such I couldn't connect to the storyline and characters.

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 13, 2008 Chelsea rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Chelsea by: Hillary

Shelves: memoir, own, recced, othermedia, non-fiction, 2008

A touching book about Sheffield's all too brief marriage and the music that helped define it. I liked the idea of framing his life - and, specifically, his relationship with Renee - around mix tapes, and I think it was a great touch to include the track listings at the beginning of each chapter. He did a good job of making Renee come alive to readers who have never met her, and I think he did nearly as good a job trying to convey just how broken he was after losing her.

It was an interesting comp...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 02, 2008 Autumn Joyce rated it 5 of 5 stars

loved this book. It mentions a lot of bands from the 90s but I don't think that you need to have a lot of background regarding this music to appreciate the book. It is a human story about falling in love, losing it and how music played an important part in the journey. Anyone that relates specific music to a memory, whether a good or bad memory, would enjoy this book. I feel like I could say so much more about this subject...but it is a review not a blog entry. SO READ IT and discover its greatn...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 10, 2009 kthread rated it 4 of 5 stars

I spent Saturday afternoon reading in the sun in Charlottesville, Virginia, the way I spent many weekends when I lived in this little town.

Dar Williams refrains filled the cul-de-sac, and the wireless networks were named "TJistheman", "PabstBlueNetwork", and "moonbaker" (the last, perhaps belonging to a baker at Mellow Mushroom pizza near campus).

I thought about how hard it is to leave this place, and the first time I heard the author's name of the book I was reading, Love is a Mix Tape. Rob S...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

like · see review

Apr 20, 2013 Leonel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Before there were playlists, there was the CD mix, and before that, the mix-tape. I have a big fondness for the cassette tape. Maybe because my mom gave me a Walkman and it changed my life. All of a sudden, I could listen to something anywhere and everywhere, and it felt like these singers were only singing to me! I used to do mix tapes all the time, where I would cull favorite songs, and there was an artistic science to how I would order the songs. Some tapes are so embedded on my mind that eve...more

1 like · like · see review

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About Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. In addition to writing music reviews and profile stories, Sheffield also writes the Pop Life column in the Mixed Media section of the magazine. His work has also been featured in The Village Voice and Spin. A native of Boston, Sheffield attended Yale and the University of Virginia, and is six foot five.

His first book, Love is a Mix...more

More about Rob Sheffield...

Books by Rob Sheffield

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut

Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke

UC Turn Around Bright Eyes: A Karaoke Journey into the Mysteries of Music, Love, and the Universe

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Quotes from Love is a Mix Tape

“It’s the same with people who say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you incredibly annoying.” — 509 people liked it

“When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.” — 415 people liked it

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