2004 Single Ladies – Beyoncé

2009 Closer – Ne-Yo

2013 Lie in Your Barn – JustKiddingFilms

2014 Honeymoon Avenue – Ariana Grande

2015 Snow Fairy – FUNKIST

2016 So Sick – Ne-Yo

My Mixtape Autobiography
(2002-present) 2016 Water – Ugly God

by Zach Manalo 2018 Likey – TWICE

Beyoncé – Single Ladies

The Mixtape 2004

My mom always tells me that I loved to play with
Tupperware when I was around two years old. I
would take them out and make a mess. She said that I
played with them while “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé
was on. I never really understood why this was, I
guess I just liked the way the song sounds.
I don’t really have a connection towards the song and
its lyrics, it’s more of a connection to memories
produced by the song. Whenever my mom brings up
that memory, my family is always in high spirits. It
brings laughter to the family.
Even though I don’t remember actually doing this, I
like that it makes my family happy. It reminds me
how I really like to make my family laugh and enjoy
their time. I’m always joking around and having a
good time. I feel like I’ve been this way since then.
Closer – Ne-Yo
2009
In 2009, the television show America’s Best Dance
Crew was airing. It was about the ten dance crews that
competed for a cash prize of $100,000. During that
year my favorite dance crew was on the show known
as “Quest Crew.”
Quest Crew was a group of dancers of all different
styles, but the most prominent style was break
dancing. They had their ups and downs on the show
but in their redemption round near the end of the
season, they performed a routine called “Decathlon”
and the song, “Closer” by Ne-Yo was used. The
whole routine wowed me and still does till this day.
The reason why I chose the song Closer was because
it began my fascination with dancing and Quest Crew.
I looked them up and learned that one of them was a
YouTuber. He was known as D-Trix. He was the
power move break-dancer of the group and he was the
funniest too. I watched all of his YouTube videos. I
also followed a lot of the group on social media
because they all still inspire me today.
Overall, I guess you could say I got “Closer” to the
whole dance and internet culture through this
experience.
Lie in Your Barn – JustKiddingFilms
2013
This song is a parody of “Die in Your Arms” by
Justin Bieber, but I think this version represents me
and my memories more. This parody was created by
JustKiddingFilms, one of my favorite YouTubers. I
saw this back in 2013 and it’s still one of my favorite
parodies. I thought it was hilarious and creative.
In my life, this song symbolizes my expansion to the
YouTube world. Around this age is when I began to
become more and more invested into YouTube. It
brings so many memories because each and every
video that I liked brought me so much happiness.
From there on out I learned more about other
YouTubers who I became obsessed with. My love just
kept going because there are endless amounts of
content, creators put out.
A line that I like was, “Basically, I love it here. Life
really sucks way out there.” because I loved watching
YouTube and didn’t want to stop. That was pretty
much all I would do. Life definitely didn’t suck, but I
just found more joy from these videos than whatever I
was doing at school or in sports. Everything and
everyone on YouTube inspire me.
Honeymoon Avenue – Ariana Grande
2014
Back in 2014 was when I made my first Spotify
account. I wasn’t really sure what to listen to because
I didn’t listen to music to that often except for when it
was on in the car. I only added songs that I heard on
radio. So, one day I heard an Ariana Grande song on
the radio called, “Problem,” and I really liked her
voice. I thought she was a great singer. This led me to
look her up on Spotify. It revealed her first album,
Yours Truly, which I fell in love with. The music just
sounded different to me.
The first song on the album is called, “Honeymoon
Avenue,” and the first song of any album should be
amazing because it’ll grab your attention and want
you to listen to the rest. I really just loved the music
she made. This pretty much started my love for
Ariana Grande’s music.
I listened to every album and song she’s come out
with since then. I’ve listened to her music so much
since, that she’s been my Artist of the Year for three
years and Artist of the Decade on Spotify.
Snow Fairy – FUNKIST
2015
2015 was the first year I actually invested time into
watching anime other than Pokémon on Cartoon
Network. The first anime I started with was Fairy
Tail. I didn’t really know what to expect, all I heard
was that it was about fantasy and I liked that. I got
hooked on the first episode and continued to watch
almost every episode. As I watched more of the first
season, I started to really enjoy the opening song. This
is called, “Snow Fairy”. It was super catchy and
upbeat.
However, I never really started to appreciate it until I
heard it years later in a YouTube video of popular
anime openings. When I heard the song, it brought so
many memories of me just staying up all night
watching episode after episode. It reminded me of
times of where I really had nothing to worry about in
life because of how young I was. I was young and
didn’t know much about anything. Now that I am
seventeen and am more knowledgeable about myself
and life in general, I start to worry sometimes. I wish
times were like that again.
Since I never got to finishing the whole series, one
day I will and won’t be worried in life anymore.
So Sick – Ne-Yo
2016
Up until this point of my life I never really had
specific music genre that I referred to as my favorite.
One day I had just been listening to music while doing
homework and ran into the R&B genre. I had
recognized so many songs because these were songs, I
heard my mom play in the car or I would just hear it
on the radio.
I started an R&B playlist with tons of these songs in
it. It was small at first, but every time I listened to the
playlist, I got recommended new songs every day and
added to it. The song, “So Sick,” was added pretty
early into the playlist, but I didn’t really think of it
much because I just kept adding new songs every day
and I would forget about the old ones I added. I have a
total of 135 songs on the playlist.
Not until a year ago, I started to listen to “So Sick”
almost every day. I really liked the instrumental
behind the song and Ne-Yo’s voice was so interesting.
I have no emotional connection towards the lyrics, but
it’s the fact that this song reminds me that I love R&B
music. I won’t ever get, “sick,” of R&B music.
Water – Ugly God
2016
In 2016 the song, “Water” by Ugly God was released,
it was a new type of music that not many had heard
of. This was called meme rap. Ugly God was great at
it because he was funny, but also had flow. The song
blew up and jump started his career.
This song symbolizes the year I started to listen to
Ugly God. He’s my favorite rapper. He’s really funny
and we have the same interests. When he came out
with “Water,” I searched up other songs he had
released and those were catchy as well.
Since then, I’ve listened to all his music he’s released.
However, he doesn’t have that much music released
so it’s hard to listen to his music over and over again
like Ariana Grande, but I still appreciate him as a
rapper. I look up to his humor because I think he’s
funny and I look up to his work grind because he’s an
independent music artist. He does most to everything
for himself as an artist which is very inspirational.
Likey – TWICE
2018
2 years ago, I was watching YouTube and ran across
video recording of a livestream from the livestreaming
platform, Twitch. The livestream was under a
streamer named Pokimane. I found it so interesting
and fun to watch because people were interacting with
the streamer as they played video game or just talked
to the viewers. I did more research into who the
streamer was and found OfflineTV which was a group
of streamers who lived in a house together.
OfflineTV had a mix of different people but most of
them were of the Asian ethnicity. A lot of them
enjoyed K-Pop or Korean Pop Music. “Likey” is a K-
Pop song they loved at the time because it was
popular. They would learn the dance to this song on
stream and then perform it for the fun of the stream.
Fedmyster, one of the streamers part of OfflineTv,
was really good at the dance and always made me
happy when he did it because it was so funny. This
whole experience jump started my interest in K-Pop
music, but more importantly Twitch. I use it every
day and enjoy all the content I watch. I am very
grateful that I ran across OfflineTv because they are
all so hardworking and talented which is how I want
to be.