This mixtape is called Valentines 2023

The highly anticipated followup to Valentines 2022 is here!

I am fairly certain I started dumping songs into a valentines 2023 playlist in the middle of summer. As per usual it is unclear what my criteria was but every so often a song would inspire me to file it away. Then there was then a long period where I kind of forgot about the list (cuz who beyond marketing teams think about valentines day in the off season?).

For Christmas Serena gave me an excellent book called Major Labels by Kelefa Sanneh and I have been enjoying it immensely. Awhile back I was reading the section on R&B and I was entertained by a section that involved the following quote from Solange Knowles.

"You really should know about deep Brandy album cuts
before you are giving a 'grade' or a 'score' to any R&B artist"

I was fascinated by this line for many reasons. The first of which being that I had honestly never thought about a "deep Brandy album cut". Like clearly she made full albums and stuff but I was definitely only familiar with her singles output.

On the day I read this section on I was out on a bike ride and when preparing to head home I thought I should find out what Solange was talking about...

And then guess what.. I opened Apple Music and searched "Monica".

Yep. I totally fucked up and went down a rabbit hole of deep cuts for the wrong half of "The Boy Is Mine".

I only learned of this mistake last week when I was combing back through the book to find the Solange quote. Sorry Brandy... I will do a deep dive into your catalog ASAP.

However, my Monica research landed me on some songs that made me remember the valentines playlist. And so here we are, another mixtape of love(?) songs for 2023.

Happy valentines y'all.