Brake Up the Breakup!

click playlist to stream mixtape

That's the thing about breakup mixtapes. Emotions change so fast. I swim through the various levels of heartbreak: feeling devastated, still feeling in love with her, not understanding anything, getting wasted to deal with not understanding anything, feeling the rage come over my body like a fever, the anger, the SPITEFULNESS, the realization that nothing will come from the situation but terrible and sad memories, the almost vengeful return to what you think might be sanity, only to come to terms with the fact that you won't have a happy ending.

I started this about three months ago. I probably switched these songs around so much that only three or four or a handful of them are part of the original draft. I don't think I feel like this anymore. Nonetheless, it's a great fuckin' mix, and part of me feels embarrassed to share this spinning ferris wheel of feelings with phantom friends and foes. They're not my words, obviously, but I wrote them.

Notes: I first ended with "Give Up The Ghost," but thought the chorus for "Cars Can't Escape" better fits what lingering emptiness manifests in the small, private moments of my every day ado. I don't know if Ben Gibbard does it better than Phil Collins (he doesn't). "Against All Odds" appears on the Give Up 10th Anniversary release, which I purchased on vinyl on Record Store Day. It still amazes me how Ben was pretty much making dubstep before dubstep was dumbstep. If there's any song that I live the most, it's probably "I Walked." While bullshit critics talked mad shit about Age of Adz, it is one of the best breakup albums of 2009. However, "Sluttering" is still my favorite breakup song of all time. It's what a real heartbreak is: stingingly ugly and permanent. Ashanti is terrible, but the bridge was written for me and all the women who don't know how to take themselves out of a detrimental situation. The acoustic version of "You Oughtta Know" isn't as annoyingly girl-anthemy as the original. Alanis is more hurt than she is angry, and you feel compassion for her instead of spite for Uncle Joey. "Beer" is the song I pretended to write and execute throughout my every day life. It's also the reason I'm being sober for six months. And I chose "Anyone's Ghost" instead of "Sorrow" solely for the third verse. I'm starting to wonder if Matt Berninger and I are both meant to be miserably, brilliantly, mediocrely muddling through society's expectations of human growth. I'll say yes just to make myself feel better.

Notes part 2: "Cars Can't Escape" doesn't appear on the Spotify stream because it's a local file. AKA it's on the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos (NOT the Engineered Demos) and I should have made and uploaded a sound file for this. But. I didn't. The only way to make up for things I didn't do is to never make the mistake of not doing them again. But. I probably won't do that either.

Notes part 3: I am the saddest I have ever been in my entire life.