Something in the explanation cheapens them.

are important things, essential things really, but they are not transferable. This is the point where I’m supposed to stop and tell you all the things that are great about having a kid, but I don’t think I’m going to. (This is the essential premise of, for example, Rob Sheffield’s Love Is A Mixtape: that deeply dissimilar people can use songs as a medium, even a substitute, for communication.) “Music had been a kind of thought to me,” wrote Offill, and in the absence of songs about the profound ambivalence of new parenthood-“There should be songs for this, I thought”-language fails her:

Makes the moment less terrifying because, though matching the music to the mood may be solipsistic, somehow, it’s less lonely.Įven writers, whose articulacy is their calling card, use music as ready-to-hand language. Matching the music to the moment contextualizes it, labels it, boxes it in velvet for display. The only treatment for sadness is sadder music. Only newbies and the naïve would try to cheer themselves up with music. This is an article of faith for almost anyone whose music fandom is central to their identity: let jocks and soldiers use music to pump them up or cool them down. “I’d always believed that if you were patient enough you could find the perfect song for any emotional weather,” wrote novelist Jenny Offill in an essay for the recently revived music blog Moistworks.

Love is a mixtape rob sheffield