I Made You a Mixtape

No one makes mixtapes for each other anymore. But I still make them. Mixtapes for brewing coffee. Mixtapes for my parakeets. I love finding mixtapes people accidentally leave public. Mixtapes for long train rides. For cooking pasta al dente. I recently saw a mixtape of a McDonald’s order in songs. I love mixtapes so much that I think I’d love anyone who made me one, even if the songs hurt. There’s something about the intention, that someone put the songs together while thinking of you.

Lately, I’ve been looking for a playlist that captures the phase I’m in right now, a transition where I’m caught in between the push-and-pull of intensity and numbness. I thought there had to be a collection of songs to echo the feeling of being stalled, like the same track is looping. That feeling that no matter where you go, you keep hearing a chorus you can’t get out of your head, even if you don’t like the music.

Then, I realized, there is a playlist for that – a soundtrack the world is always adding to. Every year the world chooses a single song as the most-listened to song of the year. It’s played so much that it becomes an agreed-upon anthem, like yeah, this is the one. This is who we are! I had no idea what those songs would be until I put together this playlist – a time capsule of sorts – of songs that hit number 1 in my lifetime.

As I listened to the playlist, I realized something: I don’t like any of these songs, but I have very vivid memories associated with almost all of them. The thing about number 1 songs is that they’re almost impossible to avoid. They’re so overplayed that even if you don’t listen to mainstream music, you’ll still hear them in the grocery store, on television, at sporting events. And without even realizing it, these songs ear worm their way into your memories, becoming part of the soundtrack of your life. 

So here are the most played songs of the last 33 years. Why 33? Well, I’m 33. The age of Jesus Christ. The age of transformation. Each song is paired with a footnote of how the tune carved its name into my life. Maybe you’re older than me, maybe younger; your recollections will be different, and that’s kind of cool, that something so mainstream can spark completely different memories. That in spite of the commercialization and autotune, these songs might even stir real human emotion.

Everything I do (I do it for you), Bryan Adams (1991)

Picture this: you’re born, the world is loud and bright and Bryan Adams is playing everywhere. It’s 1991 and everyone has decided this song is the absolute jam. I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now. Seriously, it’s six minutes long! Was everyone ok?

End of the Road, Boyz II Men (1992)

More sap! But there’s something kinda sweet about the world making the number one song a trio of guys – not boys, not yet men – who are ready to break down and cry.

I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston (1993)

This is not a song for my breakup playlists – those are for the rage tracks – but “I Will Always Love You” is on some pre-breakup playlists, for those times where you think if you stay gentle, the heartbreak won’t sting. Spoiler: it’s gonna more than sting. 

The Sign, Ace of Base (1994)

I heard this song while strapped into a car seat, as my mom complained about her ex, the one who gave us an orange and white cat I named Lucy. The cat was a male and, like the boyfriend, turned out to be the devil. They both got re-homed and the cat was renamed Lucifer. (don’t freak out, he got adopted by my aunt, and I knew him the rest of his life) 

Gangsta’s Paradise, Coolio (1995)

I don’t remember listening to Gangsta’s Paradise as a kindergartener in Colorado. I don’t think Colorado even knew Gangsta’s Paradise. 

Macarena, Los del Rio (1996)

I learned the Macarena at a sleepover in Virginia Beach with a girl who owned that one slime green Nickelodeon alarm clock every 90s kid wanted and had cable television to watch endless episodes of Rugrats. Childhood bliss was eating Lunchables and forcing someone’s parents to watch a group dance of the Macarena.

Candle in the Wind 1997, Elton John (1997)

The summer after Princess Diana died, I ran laps in a satin shirt around St. James’ Park while my aunts timed me. Each time I beat my record, I got a coin. They were trying to tire me out, but I remember the thrill of racing, the heaviness of a pound in my palm, roses stacked against palace gates. I don’t remember “Candle in the Wind 1997,” but it must have been in the air, playing from boomboxes and darkened pubs.

Too Close, Next (1998)

I was 7 when this song came out, too young to appreciate how ridiculous it is that the world made this the number one song.  

Believe, Cher (1999)

Many years after hitting number one, this became a staple of my pre-breakup playlists. 

Breathe, Faith Hill (2000)

One of my first CDs. What is Faith doing with her arms? Is she holding something up? Is she barely hanging on? We may never know.

Hanging by a Moment, Lifehouse (2001)

I’m nine, small enough for the back seat where I got shuttled between divorced parents. The scenery changes from lakeshore houses and suburban-cut lawns to Chicago’s unisex salons and diners. Hearing this song always makes me a little carsick. 

How You Remind Me, Nickelback (2002)

Another song that reminds me of being in the car, after failing the swim test at summer camp. 

In Da Club, 50 Cent (2003)

I first heard this song on a middle school trip to Washington, DC. It was on a real mixtape, playing from someone’s discman, between “Roses” and “She Will Be Loved”  

Yeah!, Usher, Lil Jon, Ludacris (2004)

Age fourteen, waiting to get picked up outside of Barnes & Noble while this song plays over the mall speakers. I’m drinking a Frappuccino and just spent all my babysitting money on a shirt I’ll never wash so it doesn’t lose that Abercrombie smell. 

We Belong Together, Mariah Carey (2005)

I hated freshman year of high school and can’t listen to this song without being reminded of eating lunch alone in the library and failing geometry tests.  

Bad Day, Daniel Powter (2006)

I admit I contributed to whatever fortune Daniel Powter made off this one-hit wonder when I bought it on iTunes. It sounds like teenage depression and waiting to grow up so that I, too, could get coffees to-go and have someone serenade my bad days. 

Irreplaceable, Beyoncé (2007)

This song was everywhere, and as a sixteen-year-old who’d never been in love I dreamed of having a romance so dramatic that I could throw someone out the way Beyoncé did. In a few years I’d realize there was nothing romantic about someone leaving a box of crap at your house. 

Low, Flo Rida, T-Pain (2008)

At my high school homecoming there were no posed photos or formal dresses – just Apple Bottom jeans, boots with the fur, and one huge mosh pit. Every year someone from my cross-country team had to wear a cheetah print top to the dance that was so hideous I think it might be trending again on Shein. When my turn came, it was a friendless year when I showed up to homecoming alone, which was somehow more humiliating than the actual hazing ritual I went through a couple years later getting drenched in BBQ sauce and Natty Light. 

Boom Boom Pow, Black Eyed Peas (2009)

I have only hazy memories. I guess this is my first year of college?  

Tik Tok, Kesha (2010)

The original Tik Tok. I can’t hear this song without feeling like I’ve just taken three shots of bottom shelf vodka in someone’s dusty dorm room.

Rolling in the Deep, Adele (2011)

I didn’t give Adele credit for years. I think you have to go through at least three heartbreaks or one divorce to “get” her music. So if you don’t, count yourself lucky.

Somebody that I Used to Know, Gotye, Kimbra (2012)

One boyfriend told me that he hated this song. We were stopped at a light in my hometown, a few blocks from my high school. I’d grown so far from my days wearing cheetah print and eating alone in the library, but I still had a lot to learn about heartbreak. What did he hate about this song? Was it the dreamscape music video? Goyte’s metrosexuality?  I tucked the critique away like an old love letter. A year later, I was the one saying, “You didn’t have to cut me out,” and finally realizing that every song on the radio is just someone’s heartbreak or revenge story. 

Thrift Shop, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (2013)

This song reminds me of a friend who shook me out of my breakup with spaghetti carbonara, a non-educational trip to DC, and fashion honesty only true friends give.

Happy, Pharrell Williams (2014)

This song came out the year after I graduated – and something nobody tells you in commencement speeches: that year totally sucks. You’ll get bed bugs twice. Your college peers, who you saw passed out in their own vomit a few months ago, are pulling in six-figures on Wall Street. You’ll wait tables in Brooklyn and pass out in your work clothes that smell like brunch’s duck-fat biscuits. You’re doing it to support your unpaid internships and dreams of New York media. Nobody tell her how it ends.

Uptown Funk, Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars (2015)

Is there anything more confusing than being twenty-six? I ran circles in Viveros Coyoacán trying to figure out how I was gonna get my life together by thirty – complete with a house, spouse and progeny – while listening to this song on repeat. 

Love Yourself, Justin Bieber (2016)

Such a petty song. I miss the “Baby” era when my friend Andrea and I played that song on repeat at our college radio station. Bieber was a baby to us then and now, somehow, he’s somebody’s father. 

Shape of You, Ed Sheeran (2017)

The first time I went to Paris alone, I didn’t eat for a week, ashamed of my bad French. When I dropped my phone in a toilet at the Louvre, I knew it was time to say au revoir. I fled to London to feast on clotted cream scones and listen to this song on a light-up dance floor, where I momentarily felt like a king until I followed some idiots up a mountain in Spain and nearly died. 

God’s Plan, Drake (2018)

I once dated someone who was really into Drake. Did I need more red flags? No – but I’ve never been good at learning lessons the easy way. 

Old Town Road, Lil Nas X, Billy Ray Cyrus (2019)

I kinda like this song. Is that my red flag? In my book, a horse is always > a porsche 

Blinding Lights, The Weeknd (2020)

It’s 2020, and I’m listening to this in Paris while walking off another breakup. RIP.

Levitating, Dua Lipa (2021)

Age 30, and I still don’t have my life together, but in quarantine years, I’m only 28. 

Heat Waves, Glass Animals (2022)

Too high on a pink cloud to hear any top hits

Flowers, Miley Cyrus (2023)

This would be a great one for a breakup mix – in case you ever need it

Welcome back to the present. Hope that brought back some good times. And can I just say, the next time you want to call millennials cringe, just remember this playlist – and the psychic damage we’re untangling from our undeveloped prefrontal cortexes being hammered with THIS IS HOW YOU REMIND ME OF WHAT I REALLY AM 🤮

The blessing here is that everything is temporary. Listening took me back to tough times, but it also reminded me that like number 1 hits, the hard times fade. Whatever transition you’re in now might seem like forever, but soon it’ll just be an old song.