Don’t have anything ready for tomorrow?

Make a mixtape for your beloved! This way you get to impress them with your taste & seduce them at the same time! Of course, it doesn’t have to be on an actual cassette — make them a playlist for their MP3 player or burn them a CD if it makes more sense. Remember to decorate the case!

“To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with “Got to Get You Off My Mind,” but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and… oh, there are loads of rules.” — Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

Because putting songs together is fun, here is my prototype mixtape for you, my nonpareils!

Michael Jackson – This Place Hotel
Timbaland – Give It To Me
Notorious B.I.G. – Another
Madonna – Nobody Knows Me
DJ Magnet – Love Comes Running Up That Hill Quickly
Atmosphere – The Woman With The Tattooed Hands
Mary J. Blige – About You
Souls Of Mischief – 93 ’til Infinity
Flight Of The Conchords – Bret You’ve Got It Going On
Magnetic Fields – I Wish I Had An Evil Twin
Otis Redding – Try A Little Tenderness
Garbage – The Trick Is To Keep Breathing
Atmosphere – Say Hey There
Dryft – Avatar
The Dead Texan – When I See Scissors, I Cannot Help But Think Of You
Antony & The Johnsons – You Are My Sister
Tegan & Sara – Back In Your Head

Though if I was making a mix for my lover, it might go something like this…

Placebo – Bubblegun
Madonna – Waiting
Felt – Woman Tonight
Cat Power – Where Is My Love
Che Fu – Scene 3
David Bowie – The Wedding Song
Kate Nash – We Get On
Lush – For Love
Bic Runga – The Be All & End All
N.E.R.D. – Stay Together

What would you put on a mixtape for your #1 crush?