Puja Patel Photo:
New York music journalist Puja Patel says it's a complete accident her Mixtape song selections are all about "the complicated nuances of love".
"It's possible that the heat and the airport - two things that make me kind of nostalgic - infiltrated my brain and sent me down this path," she tells Music 101's Charlotte Ryan.
Patel, who recently spent six years as editor-in-chief at Pitchfork, says music journalism was quite an unusual path for a first-generation Indian American girl.
Living between two cultures, she understood early on though that "cool" was chronicled through music and that she could study this by reading the Rolling Stone Album Guide and Spin magazine at the local library.
"Honestly, I think I was trying to understand American youth culture through music. That's what took me to music journalism."
Although her parents were at first hesitant about her chosen career, Patel says, they then became generally encouraging.
"It is such a specific and niche area to be very, very passionate about and try to pursue a career in. [My parents] knew that I really, really loved it and that it was something that I felt like I could be quite community-oriented about. I love storytelling and music, in my mind, is a way of storytelling."
Back in the '90s, Patel was inspired by young female musicians like Alanis Morissette and Lauryn Hill delivering a message of "Look, we are multidimensional people that have brains. Please give us the respect that we deserve".
She noticed, though, that unlike their male counterparts, chart-topping female artists were often made out as "cutesy" even when they were rocking out.
"You'd see mentions of who they were dating, what clothes they were wearing, how cute they acted, if they seemed shy. There were comments on their general demeanour, the expectation for them to be sweet."
In the early aughts, Patel had already made the conscious decision that it was her job to tell the stories of underrepresented musicians.
When she told NYC's legendary local paper Village Voice that their live music column should be following suit, they hired her to write it.
"I wrote to them and said 'Look, you call [your music column] The Sound of The City but you don't write about any of the places that I go to and those often happen to be spaces that are primarily people of colour or women headlining shows. At the time voguing and queer nightlife was booming and that was exciting here so they took the bait."
After "owning her own lane" at the Village Voice, Patel succeeded in bringing much greater diversity to Pitchfork's music reviews and festivals in her years there.
Overseeing 1200 annual album reviews at Pitchfork, she learnt to become "methodical" about listening to new music, which she prefers to do via headphones on an early morning walk.
"I kind of need the contextual energy of what is it like to live with this music instead of staring at a wall with this music. It's nice to feel music in the world."
Puja Patel played:
'Never Too Much' by Luther Vandross
"My dad came to the States in the early 80s and just consumed all of American culture through the radio, and this was one of his favourite songs… This song, to me, is just such a bop and it's such a reflection of New York City in in the summer.
"This song is an all-time classic in my mind, just like unimpeachable funk, soul, R&B."
'Dude' by Beenie Man featuring Ms Thing
"Beenie Man is a dance hall king from Jamaica. He has a slew of bangers. And if you are someone who visits dance hall or reggaeton venues, it's very, very likely that you will hear a Beenie Man track at some point in the night.
"This is just one of his many hits, I'd say, and it gives every single thing about summer to me. You can feel the humidity and the heat in the air. You can feel the crowd. You can feel the energy, but most of all, you can feel this flirtation. And that's what makes me want to party. The chance of a fun romp that is transient is what makes me want to party.
"In this song you can hear this call and response between him and Ms Thing. And I'll say this in the most PG way possible, she is looking for someone to satisfy her and he is offering to step up to the plate. Once the song starts you can't help but start tapping along or moving your body. I just love it."
'You Oughta Know' by Alanis Morissette
This is Patel's go-to karaoke song and Morissette's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill was her very first cassette tape.
"That album holds up through and through, front to back. Alanis's voice and both the nonchalance and the rage within that album, you can hear that this person is fully in control of her life.
"It's also funny, you know. There's so much sarcasm and under the breath chuckles on that album that you pick up on when you're a little bit older. I just love that album still."
'With Every Heartbeat' by Robyn
"This song kills me. I almost cry every time I hear this song.
"It works in two ways with me. One is just that it so perfectly encapsulates what it's like trying so hard to make a relationship work. Because in your brain, you can imagine this fake reality where your relationship is beautiful and perfect and last forever… You can kind of hear Robyn turn to being resolute and purposely walking away from a thing that is so meaningful to her.
"But this is so embarrassing.... I saw Robyn live at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on assignment by myself about a month after my first real boyfriend and I broke up... I just sat quietly crying as she sang the song, and then went to go find a friend who was DJing at a bar downtown, and asked him to play it and danced... That's exactly what this song represents, the real sadness and then the coming through it out the other end and being okay."
'Book of Love' by Magnetic Fields
"'Book of Love' is a song for a wedding, both because it references a wedding but also because I had an experience with it at a wedding.
"This song is so so moving to me because it's Stephen Merritt at his rawest. It's like his voice is gravelly. It feels like he might cry.
"I was introduced to this song by a boy when I was in college…over the years we stayed in touch, and would have one night of intense emotion and then not talk again for three years. It was that kind of thing.
"We ended up being friends, and he asked me to make the playlist for his wedding 15 years later. This was his wedding song to with his wife. It was their first dance. And it was such a bittersweet moment to see this person that I knew so intimately well, and who I had grown to love as a friend and not a romantic partner, have this like beautiful moment with his wife."
'Right Back to It' by Waxahatchee (feat. MJ Lenderman)
"I've been a fan of her for a while. Her last album Saint Cloud was released in 2020 and would have been my album of the year had Fiona Apple not released Fetch the Bolt Cutters. But I am just such a fan of hers, her voice, her songwriting. I think she is such a star."
