First Love Mixtape: Side A (Encore)

Modern Love

The New York Times

Nytimes, Redemption, Society & Culture, New York Times, Love, Essay, Storytelling, Loss, Nyt

4.4 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode of “Modern Love” features Lisa Selin Davis’s essay “What Lou Reed Taught Me About Love.” She writes about how the song “I’ll Be Your Mirror” became the soundtrack to her summer romance with a floppy-haired “rocker kid” who inadvertently helped her find healing. Then, we hear from some members of the “Modern Love” team about the songs that influenced them as teenagers and about the memories — funny, empowering, nostalgic — that they carry with them. Stay tuned for next week’s episode, where we’ll hear from our listeners about the songs that taught them about love. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now and...
0:03.3	Love was stronger than anything.
0:06.7	I feel of love.
0:07.8	And I love you more than anything.
0:10.5	What is love?
0:11.5	There's to love.
0:12.7	Love.
0:13.7	Love.
0:14.7	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love.
0:24.8	So summer is coming soon. It's getting warmer. I'm spending more time outside. And just like every year, when the weather gets like this, I find myself feeling nostalgic.
0:35.9	For summer flings, for vacation romances, for first loves.
0:40.9	It all makes me think about the modern love essay, what Lou Reed taught me about love by the writer Lisa
0:46.8	Selen Davis. We made an episode about this essay back in 2022. It's actually the very first
0:53.6	episode of modern love that I ever hosted,
0:56.2	which is wild to think about, and the essay is still one of my favorites. It's about all the songs
1:01.7	that accompany our love stories, how one track can instantly take us back to a time and a place,
1:08.2	to a feeling. It's a beautiful, sunshiny story,
1:11.8	so this week we're bringing you that essay again.
1:14.9	Plus, I talk with a few of my colleagues
1:16.6	about the songs that taught them about love.
1:19.8	This episode is a two-parter,
1:21.8	so you'll want to look out for the second part next week.
	...

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