...In which our heroine makes a mixtape.

I tend to contextualize everything in my life around music. I’ve been doing this since I was around 12, ever since I really started getting into music. My favorite English teacher, Mrs. Harding, understood this and I wrote two major papers last year around songs.
I’m not the only person who does this. Chuck Klosterman does it. Joe Meno does it. Stephen Chbosky does it. But the person who does it and understands it the most is Rob Sheffield. He writes for Rolling Stone and his book, Love is a Mixtape, came out this past year.
In the book, Sheffield writes about his relationship with his wife Renee, his musical (and otherwise) soul mate. The book is written as Sheffield listens to mix tapes that epitomize their relationship. It’s often painful to read, as Sheffield uses music to deal with his grief and his descriptions of certain songs will. It’s a great book, full of musical references and sweetness—it certainly made me cry.
The thing that really stuck from Love is a Mixtape, however, was a quote towards the beginning of the novel:
I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I'm always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with--nothing brings it all to life like an old mixtape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mixtape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life.
This quote sums up my life to a tee. The very reason I fell in love with music was because I found a box of old mixtapes. Since then, winter of sixth grade, music has been what I turn to constantly, perhaps the only companion I can always count on. Music and memory are synonymous in my head and one rarely goes without the other.
With all that being said, I’ve made a list of 101 songs that sum up my past four years in high school. I don’t love all the songs on the list, but all of them hold a memory for me, and some of the memories aren’t so great either. Nonetheless, I felt like I had to make a genuine list, not just one in my head, to record all the songs that meant something to me as I moved through high school.
So here’s the list. Most of the songs won’t mean anything to anyone else but me. This is the ultimate high school mixtape, which would take up six of my supercool Memorex cassettes, broken into four convenient categories:
-People and Places: Songs that make me think of individuals or events.
-Years: Songs that sum up an entire year, that make me think of summer nights with the windows open or frosty mornings waiting for the bus.
-Concerts: From concerts I’ve attended
-Firsts: The first time I did things in high school. There were a lot of these things.
-Transcendent: The songs explain the ends of things.

People and Places:
Nights in White Satin- The Moody Blues
Paint in Black- Rolling Stones
The Time Warp- The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Smells Like Teen Spirit- Nirvana
Bela Lugosi’s Dead- Bauhaus
Love Will Tear Us Apart- Joy Division
Mr. Wendall- Arrested Development
California Stars- Wilco
Build Me Up Buttercup- The Foundations
Wait For You- Elliot Yamin
Fire and Rain- James Taylor
Stand by Me- Ben E. King
I Will Follow You Into the Dark- Death Cab for Cutie
The Distance- Cake
Modern Love- David Bowie
Lover I Don’t Have to Love- Bright Eyes
Backstreet’s Back- Backstreet Boys
Step Into My Office, Baby- Belle and Sebastian
Across the Universe- The Beatles
Is This Love- Bob Marley
I Don’t Really Love You Anymore- Magnetic Fields
Book of Love- Magnetic Fields
New Year’s Day- U2
Cruel to be Kind- Nick Lowe
Knights of Cydonia- Muse
Surrender- Cheap Trick
Johnny Appleseed- Joe Strummer
Anyone Else but You- The Moldy Peaches
Fake Empire- The National
Level- The Raconteurs
Need You Around- Smoking Popes
Free Bird- Lynyrd Skynyrd
I Could Be Good For You- 707
Hey Jude- The Beatles
In The Cold Light of the Morning- Placebo
The Bitterest Pill- The Jam
Last Christmas- Wham!
Jungleland- Bruce Springsteen
Creep- The Afghan Whigs
Sunday Bloody Sunday- U2
Dig for Fire- Pixies
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight- Postal Service

Years:
Ceremony- Joy Division
Creep- Radiohead
Layla- Derek and the Dominoes
I Write Sins Not Tragedies- Panic! At the Disco
Honey White- Morphine
Everybody Knows- Leonard Cohen
My Sweet Lord- George Harrison
The Hand That Feeds- Nine Inch Nails
Hey There Delilah- Plain White Ts
Johnny and Mary- Placebo
One More Cup of Coffee- Bob Dylan
Melissa- The Allman Brothers Band
Mother- Danzig
Bitches Ain’t Shit- Ben Folds
Yr. Mangled Heart- Gossip
I Feel You- Depeche Mode
Temple of Love- Sisters of Mercy
There is a Light That Never Goes Out- The Smiths
Black Metallic- Catherine Wheel
Swamp Thing- Chameleons UK
Neighborhood #3- Arcade Fire
Cortez the Killer- Neil Young
Know Your Rights- The Clash
Imagine- John Lennon
Bad Time- The Jayhawks
Notorious- Duran Duran
Standing Outside a Broken Phonebooth with Money in My Hand- Primitive Radio Gods
Rise- Public Image Ltd.
More Adventurous- Rilo Kiley
The Promise- When in Rome
4th of July- X
The Mercy Seat- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Where the Wild Roses Grow- Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue
Umbrella- Rihanna
Earth Angel- Death Cab for Cutie
Monkey Gone to Heaven- Pixies

Firsts:
I Write Sins Not Tragdies- Panic! At the Disco (repeat)
Stairway to Heaven- Led Zeppelin
Wrong Way- Sublime
Burn- Usher
The Artifact & Living- Michael Andrews
Fire Woman- The Cult
Eleanor Rigby- The Beatles

Concerts:
In the Kitchen- Pomegranates
Harder Faster Better Stronger- Daft Punk
One More Time- Daft Punk
Wake Up- Arcade Fire
World Where You Live- Crowded House
Persuasion- Richard Thompson
Sway- Bic Runga
Time is Running Out- Muse
Gloria- Patti Smith
Smells Like Teen Spirit- Patti Smith
State of Love and Trust- Pearl Jam
Yeah- LCD Soundsystem
New Grass- Talk Talk
Jean Genie- David Bowie
Stop Me if You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before- The Smiths
Spitting Venom- Modest Mouse
The Seed 2.0- The Roots
Young Ones- Peter Bjorn and John

Transcendent:
Can’t Hardly Wait- The Replacements
In a Lifetime- Clannad and Bono
Float On- Modest Mouse
Good Riddance- Green Day