Melanie Grace

Tag: Mixtape Mindset album

  • Lisa Frank Folders and the Art of Living Out Loud

    Lisa Frank Folders and the Art of Living Out Loud

    Hot pink. Electric blue. Rainbow tiger. Neon leopard on a hot pink sky. If you know, you know.

    Lisa Frank Folders is the most purely joyful song I have written in years. It started with one specific memory: five dollars at the Scholastic table, my mama saying yes, and the absolute queendom of carrying that folder down the hall.

    But here is what the song is really about: the unapologetic boldness of childhood before the world teaches you to tone it down.

    “Nothing matched and everything did, because that was just the rule when you were a 90s kid.”

    Kids don’t second-guess the rainbow tiger. They don’t wonder if the neon leopard is too much. They live in the color and the conviction. We spend so much of adulthood learning to edit ourselves. The Lisa Frank folders remember who we were before we learned any of that.

    I never threw mine out. They are in a box. I have no regrets.

    Stream Mixtape Mindset on Spotify! Tag me with your Lisa Frank memories!

  • Mixtape Mindset Is HERE and I Have a Lot of Feelings About It

    Mixtape Mindset Is HERE and I Have a Lot of Feelings About It

    It is August 1st and the album is out and I am barely holding it together.

    Mixtape Mindset is available right now on all streaming platforms and I want to tell you what this album is before you press play.

    It is twelve songs that flow together as one continuous experience — the way songs on a great mixtape always belong together. Not in sections or categories. Just one song leading naturally into the next the way a really good mix always does. You let it take you somewhere.

    Where? Somewhere specific. The school bus pulling away on the first day of school. The Blockbuster parking lot on a Friday night. 3am with the modem screaming and a blank CD in the drive. The living room floor on a Saturday morning with cereal and cartoons. A phone number you still know by heart that you haven’t dialed in twenty years.

    This album surprised me. It started with one song and kept going until it was twelve, and somewhere in the middle I realized I was building something about memory, connection, and the specific rituals of a decade that shaped everyone who lived it.

    It is funny. It is heartfelt. It will make you text someone. Go listen.

    Stream Mixtape Mindset on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora! Follow me on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook! Join my email list for behind the scenes content!