33 years ago, during my sophomore year of high school, I put together the first of what would eventually become a nearly 20 volume collection of mix tapes, containing my favorite songs that I had gathered either from the radio, a cassette tape, or (eventually) CD. Today, we revisit those mix tapes for the fourth time and see how, or if, the soundtrack of my youth still resonates in today’s digital world and how much has changed over the past four years.
At some point during the 1995-1996 school year, I noticed a slowdown in the tape players on my boombox. It bothered me enough that I brought it in for repair multiple times, getting new heads installed, but nothing seemed to work. Or, at least nothing made me feel like they worked and I, at least, still heard a lag. On the plus side, I did manage to come home with a Blizzard of Oz cassette, which one of the techs must have used for testing it and left in the compartment when it was returned to me. But, my frustration with the ongoing effort led to end for this series of tapes, with the last volume just barely stretching on to Side B.
We wrap up our look back with Volume 20, which stretches over late 1995 and the fall semester of the first of my two senior years of college, while I was living in Hilltop Apartments.
Side A
Smashing Pumpkins – Bullet With Butterfly Wings
iTunes stats: 22 plays, most recently on 7/13/2022
Winner of the 1997 Grammy award for Best Hard Rock Performance, the first single from the Pumpkins double album opus picked up only five new listens over the past four years.
Melissa Etheridge – Your Little Secret
The first single from Melissa Etheridge’s under-performing follow-up to her smash hit album continues to be missing from my collection.
Lisa Loeb – Do You Sleep
iTunes stats: 23 plays, most recently on 2/11/2020
The third single from Lisa Loeb’s major label debut, which peaked at #18 on the Billboard charts, was last heard prior to the global shutdown in March of 2020.
Goo Goo Dolls – Name
iTunes stats: 13 plays, most recently on 8/24/2022
A mere eleven play increase over the past decade for this breakthrough hit, which reached #5 on the Billboard charts.
Collective Soul – The World I Know
iTunes stats: 14 plays, most recently on 9/12/2022
The band’s highest charting single in Canada, it has picked up only five listens since mid-2018.
Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You
iTunes stats: 10 plays, most recently on 7/8/2021
Featured on the Empire Records soundtrack, the song went years without being heard, but managed to pick up an additional five plays in the last four years.
Garbage – Queer
iTunes stats: 28 plays, most recently on 5/14/2021
Originally recorded off of Q101, the breakthrough hit, which led to nine concerts over the past 20 years added just five listens since 2019.
