Mixed Tape: The Art of Saying Something Without Saying a Word
Part of the Music & Memories Collection by DeElla Hoberg
Beatles or Stones?
That used to be a perfectly reasonable way to size someone up.
I'm a Stones girl. My husband is a Beatles guy. Somehow, we've managed to make it work.
But if you really wanted to know someone, you needed to listen to their mixtape.
For those of us who grew up before streaming music and carefully curated Spotify playlists, making a mixtape was practically an art form.
And I don't mean just throwing a bunch of songs together.
A good mixtape told a story. It told someone who you were, what you loved, what you thought was cool, and sometimes, if you were feeling particularly brave, how you felt about them.
It was a little piece of your soul, recorded on magnetic tape.
The Lost Art of the Record Button
My earliest memories of making mixtapes involve sitting beside the radio, waiting for the Top 40 countdown.
You had to be ready.
Fingers hovering over the record button, waiting for the DJ to play the song you wanted. Then you'd hit record and pray that he didn't talk through half the introduction.
And heaven forbid he started talking before the song ended!
There was no downloading it later. You either got a decent recording or waited until the next time the song came on.
I even remember getting blank cassette tapes in my Christmas stocking.
And I was excited about them!
Imagine giving a teenager a package of blank tapes today. They'd probably wonder what kind of weird antique-store Christmas you were having.
But to me, those tapes represented possibility. Hours of music waiting to be discovered, recorded, and shared.
Road Trips, Bootlegs, and Being Cool
Whenever my friends and I took a road trip, somebody made a mixtape for the drive.
The music was part of the adventure.
You wanted songs everybody could sing along to, songs that made you feel like you were going somewhere exciting, and maybe a few surprises that would introduce your friends to something new.
Because sharing music wasn't just about listening.
It was about discovery.
There were albums you could buy at Tower Records, of course. But even more coveted were the bootleg concert tapes that got passed from person to person.
Someone knew someone who had recorded a show. A copy was made, then another copy, then another.
By the time one of those tapes made its way into your hands, the sound quality might have been absolutely terrible.
But that almost made it better.
You had something special. Something you couldn't just walk into a store and buy.
And if you were the person who introduced your friends to some amazing band they'd never heard before?
Well, you were officially cool.
At least for a little while.
When a Mixtape Meant Something More
Of course, there was another kind of mixtape.
The romantic kind.
I remember having a boyfriend who gave me a mixtape and signed his love notes with a perfectly drawn Metallica logo.
Which, when you think about it, is a pretty fantastic combination of teenage romance and heavy metal.
But what I remember most is how receiving that tape made me feel.
I felt seen.
Someone had spent time thinking about me.
He had listened to songs, considered the lyrics, thought about the order, and decided which ones might tell me something about how he felt.
Maybe he wanted me to understand him better. Maybe he wanted to tell me something he couldn't quite put into words.
Maybe he just wanted me to know that I was on his mind.
Whatever the reason, the tape was proof that he'd been thinking about me even when we weren't together.
And isn't that really what makes a gift romantic?
Not how much money someone spends, but how much of themselves they put into it.
A mixtape was a gift of time and thought.
And sometimes, a little vulnerability.
Turning the Memory into Art
When I first started painting Mixed Tape, I was thinking about the broader experience of sharing music.
Road trips with friends. Discovering new bands. Making recordings and passing them around.
All those memories of a time when music was something you could actually hold in your hands.
But as the painting developed, I started remembering what it felt like to receive a mixtape from someone who cared about me.
That's when the painting became a little more romantic.
The cassette sits at the center of the composition, surrounded by expressive marks, handwritten words, and little doodles that recall the way we used to decorate tapes and love notes.
I wanted it to feel personal, imperfect, and handmade.
Because that's what made those tapes special.
They weren't professionally produced. They weren't polished. Sometimes the songs cut off too early or the sound quality was awful.
But somebody made them for you.
And that was enough.
A Little Piece of Someone's Soul
I hope people still do this with playlists.
I hope there are still people who spend hours choosing just the right songs for someone they love, or for a friend who needs cheering up, or for a road trip they'll remember for the rest of their lives.
The technology has changed, but I don't think the impulse has.
We still want to share the things that move us.
We still want someone else to hear a song and understand why it matters.
And sometimes, we still need music to say the things we can't quite find the words for.
That's what Mixed Tape means to me.
It's about friendship, discovery, romance, and the wonderful intimacy of letting someone hear a little piece of your soul.
And if somebody takes the time to make you a playlist?
Listen to it.
They might be trying to tell you something.
About the Artwork
Mixed Tape is an original 20 × 20-inch mixed-media painting on watercolor paper mounted to canvas. Part of my Music & Memories collection, it celebrates the friendships, romances, and memories created through sharing music.
I'd love to know: Did you ever make or receive a mixtape that meant something special to you? Do you still have it? I'd love to hear your story in the comments.
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