book reviews: love is a mix tape

Synopsis:

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 they were married only five years when Renee died suddenly on Mother's Day, 1997 - is shared through the window of the mix tapes they obsessively compiled. There are mixes to court each other, mixes for road trips, mixes for doing the dishes, mixes for sleeping - and, eventually, mixes to mourn Rob's greatest loss. The tunes were among the great musical output of the early 1990s - Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Pavement, Yo La Tengo, REM, Weezer - as well as classics by The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Aretha Franklin and more.

Mixing the skilful, tragic punch of Dave Eggers and the romantic honesty of Nick Homby, "Love Is a Mix Tape" is a story of lost love and the kick-you-in-the-gut energy of great pop music. It's a deeply moving love story, and a testament to music's unique ability to guide us through the most important moments of our lives.

Review:

From reading this book you get a sense of how strong the emotional attachment to music is for some people. I am a big music lover, but for Sheffield music represented memories of his late wife and kept her presence alive. Based in the early nineties cassette culture was at its peak and sharing homemade mixtapes with a loved one was the trend. Not fantastically helpful to the project, but gave me an insight into how meaningful sharing music with a loved one was within the early nineties.