What Is love? Great minds have been grappling with this question throughout the ages. According to Western philosopher Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield. Frank Sinatra would add that love is a tender trap. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them. But the answer is simple: Love is a mix tape. In the 1990s, when 'alternative' was suddenly mainstream, a shy music geek named Rob Sheffield met a hell-raising punk-rock girl named Rene, who was way too cool for him but fell in love with him anyway. He was tall. She was short. He was shy. She was a social butterfly. They had nothing in common except that they both loved music. Music brought them together and kept them together. And it was music that would help Rob through a sudden, unfathomable loss. In LOVE IS A MIX TAPE, Rob, now a writer for Rolling Stone, uses the songs on fifteen mix tapes to tell the story of his brief time with Rene before she died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism at 31.From Elvis to Missy Elliott, the Rolling Stones to Yo La Tengo, the songs on these tapes make up the soundtrack to their lives.
Rob Sheffield isn't a musician, he's a writer, and LOVE IS A MIX TAPE isn't a love song - but it might as well be. This is Rob's tribute to music, to the decade that shaped him, but most of all to one unforgettable woman.