Mixtape: Margot Tenenbaum, Chapter 1

Earlier this week, Aaron reminded me of a fun mixtape challenge we worked on a couple years ago. The idea was to take two female film characters and create mixtapes for them – stuff we imagine they’d listen to in their car, things that seem to belong to them even though we could never be sure. In a lot of ways, the experiment has no right or wrong answers until you’ve really found a lot of good fits. One or two solid matches paves the way for the rest of the exercise, and obviously the strength and appeal of the character helps shape that process.

Aaron chose Urban Cowboy‘s Sissy, which initially made me really jealous because I was totally head over heels for Boz Scaggs at the time. I knew he’d get to use “Lido,” (even though that’s cheating, because it was on the soundtrack) and it killed me. His mix turned out great, and includes tracks from Heart, Anne Murray, Randy Van Warmer, Dolly Parton and one of my favorite duets ever (not ironically, not as a guilty pleasure, for real): “You Belong to Me” by Michael McD and Carly Simon. Great mix, which you can download at Elastic Heart.

I chose Margot Tenenbaum, which is probably obvious at this point. I tried to choose songs that straddled the line between being things I feel like she’d like, and things that could easily be about her. I think I found a nice balance. This version has been cleaned up a bit, has new art than it did when I originally posted it on (now defunct) Swoon, and I removed a couple tracks that always nagged at me. There was a Feist song, it just didn’t work in the end. I removed John Cale’s “Antarctica Starts Here” and used “You Know More Than I Know” instead. Seems better to me. So, here’s the track list:

01 Elvis Costello & the Attractions “You Belong to Me”
02 Lou Reed “Perfect Day”
03 John Cale “You Know More Than I Know”
04 Silver Seas “Imaginary Girl”
05 Yes “Sweetness”
06 Big Star “I’m In Love With a Girl”
07 Crowded House “Not the Girl You Think You Are”
08 Cat Stevens “Wild World”
09 The Soft Boys “I Wanna Destroy You”
10 The Modern Lovers “Hospital”
11 Pavement “Summer Baby” (7″ version)
12 The Rolling Stones “Love in Vain”
13 Van Morrison “And It Stoned Me”
14 MC5 “Come Together”
15 Bob Dylan “4th Time Around”
16 Colin Blundstone “Say You Don’t Mind”
17 The Zombies “The Way I Feel Inside”

DOWNLOAD: VA – Margot Tenenbaum, Chapter 1 (zip)