Summary: "The author of Love is a Mix Tape returns to share the soundtrack to his eighties adolescence. When he turned 13 in 1980, Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music and himself, and here he offers a glimpse into his transformation from pasty, geeky 'hermit boy' into a young man with his first girlfriend, his first apartment, and a sense of the world. It's all here: Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Members Only jackets. Girls, every last one of whom seems to be madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran. Sheffield's coming-of-age story has a playlist that any child of the eighties or anyone who just loves music will sing along with. These songs--and Sheffield's writing--will remind readers of that first kiss, that first car, and the moments that shaped their lives."--From publisher description.
Booklist Reviews
Music journalist Sheffield is best known for Love Is a Mix Tape (2007), which dealt with the sudden death of his young wife. Here he revisits the decade everyone loves to hate, the 1980s. Sheffield makes a convincing argument that the eighties were ruled by inauthenticity in everything except pop culture, which accounts for why its music and films (especially those of John Hughes) continue to exert such influence. Here Sheffield takes the decade year by year, naming each chapter for the seminal pop song that defined his experiences during that time. The Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed" leads off the chapter about his older, more knowledgeable sisters, who taught him how to dance and what to wear, while Madonna's "Crazy for You" introduces the summer he visited Lourdes, which leads into a discussion of the way his Catholic faith was the perfect preparation for being a pop fan—"lots of ritual, lots of ceremony, lots of private obations as we genuflect before our sacred spaces." Heartfelt and funny, this collection is most likely to appeal to fellow Gen Xers. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
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