This mixtape is called The 1983 One

The whole idea of this began awhile back when I was looking at the timeline portion of my site. Like many things I work on, the timeline started out as a silly “what if” thought. Initially I thought I had a rough idea of what it might look like but I also was completely unsure. I also wondered how it would evolve over time.

So, at some point in early 2023 I was looking at the timeline thing and I noticed that 1983 was empty. Of course a lot of other years are blank, but this one seemed like it should at least have one song by now. From time to time I would look at that page and yet... nothing.

As an August Baby I spent two thirds of 1983 being three and the back half as a four year old. I can’t tell you much more about what I was up to that year aside from the fact that it seems to be the year I got a toy space shuttle that I remember loving.

Culture wise I wasn’t really hip to what was going on in 1983 due to being four. And thus a mixtape prompt was born.

The obvious first step was searching my music library for songs/albums from 1983. This yielded good results but I wanted to go further.

I began referring to this page over many months. I opened countless tabs for albums. Some I was familiar with and more I’d never listened to. Whenever I was at a loss of what to listen to I would pick an album from one of these tabs.

I kept this “1983” prompt in my back pocket but doing so introduced an issue. What if I randomly grabbed a song from 1983 and put it on a mixtape before I did this one? Obviously the stakes here are through the floor low, but, I was always a bit nervous to check the timeline after I’d made a new mixtape for fear of nullifying this project.

At this point you might be asking yourself... “Hey Larson? Did you ever catch that you were about to put a song from 1983 on a mixtape and then retract it?”.

Look. This relationship is built on trust and I value you as a person.

It did happen once.

It was when I was working on the previous mixtape. I already knew that I planned on doing “the 1983 one” next and I was testing out a song when I looked at the date on it and had a small internal crisis… BECAUSE THAT’S HOW MY BRAIN WORKS!

I knew nobody cared and at this point nobody even knew about any of this. But hey, caring way too much about a silly idea is big me energy and I suppose it’s what brought us here.

So with that out the way, please enjoy this mixtape of songs I listened to constantly when I was four.