‘Mixtape’ Summary & Ending – Find Out All The Songs On The Tape

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Our favorite films, music, or novels tell us a lot about ourselves. Maybe we resonate with it or find ourselves going through similar feelings of love, loneliness, melancholia, or rage that it portrays. Sometimes we feel we can express ourselves better through these curated lists than in words. Like a mixtape, which is usually a message from its maker to the listeners. The songs’ order hides a message between those fades out, microseconds between segues, and tempo changes.

In the Netflix film, Mixtape, a teenage girl, Beverly Moody, finds a mixtape created by her deceased parents and decides to listen to all the songs on it to get to know her parents better. Set in 1999, the film dives into nostalgia and brings back the era of recorded tapes, way before the internet affected us all. This tickling yet the emotional tale is directed by Valerie Weiss.


Plot Summary

A teenage girl, Beverly Moody, lives with her grandmother, Gail, who works as a mailwoman in Spokane, WA. Beverly lost her parents, Kim and Zack, in a tragic car accident when she was just two years old. Since then, she has been living with her young grandmother, a teen mother like her daughter (Beverly’s mother). Beverly’s mother was a rock musician and made some pretty grave mistakes in her life. Gail doesn’t want Beverly to grow up like her mother and raises her in an overprotective environment.

Beverly discovers a mixtape called “New Beginnings” prepared by her late parents while going through her parents’ old belongings. In her excitement, Beverly plays the cassette instantly on her Walkman, but to her worse luck, the tape breaks down. Inside the cassette box, she finds a list of eight songs from the 80s that are on the mixtapes and decides to find them in a nearby music store. The store owner, Edward, tells Beverly that all mixtapes are messages from the creator to the listener, and thus she should listen to them in the correct order.

Beverly, who lives a mundane life with her grandma, decides to find these eight songs to understand the message her parents wanted to convey. The pursuit becomes the journey that keeps her entertained and takes the viewers on a roller coaster ride of emotions filled with 80s songs without the modified DeLorean.


Also Read – ‘Mixtape’ Review

All The Songs in the Mixtape

Every song that Beverly listened to changed her a bit in a subtle yet noticeable way. The way she moved, the way she flipped back her hair or the way she started smiling more. These songs gave her confidence to fight the world and a sense of belongingness in it. Because of these songs, Beverly approached her neighbor, Ellen, and even befriended a rebellious girl in school named Nicky.

Let’s find out the songs that changed Beverly’s life in the most beautiful of ways.

  1. Getting Nowhere Fast, by Girls at our Best
  2. Linda Linda, by The BlueHearts
  3. Better Things, by The Kinks
  4. I Got a Right, by The Stooges
  5. Teacher’s Pet, by The Quick
  6. “The song that remined Kim of the day she met Zack on the hill for their first date.”
  7. Crash Right Through, by the Murderous Ambersons
  8. The Wrong Song, by Beverly’s Parents, Kim & Zack
All The Songs in the Mixtape
Netflix

The Sixth Song on the list “day on the hill” was an incomplete song that Beverly found in her mother’s notebook in which Kim wrote her songs.


‘Mixtape’ Ending

Beverly and her friends attended an actual rock concert to learn more about Beverly’s mother from the lead singer, Wes Kelly. The arrogant musician told Beverly that her mother fell in love with a guy and got pregnant, because of which she abandoned her dreams. As the revelations hit Beverly, she blamed herself for her mother’s unfulfilled desires or unsuccessful career. The happiness inside the little soul just vanished.

In melancholia, Beverly threw away the mixtape and the list of songs. Her grandma found them in the trash can and understood the reasons behind Beverly’s changed behavior. Gail surprised Beverly with the last song, “The Wrong Song.” She told Beverly that her parents were really proud of her. Her father lit the firecrackers, and they hugged each other and wrote the song together in celebration. It was a special song because it was written for one person and one person alone, Beverly Moody.

As the new happiness arrived at the door, Gail decided to give more time to Beverly and enjoy her as much as she enjoyed her job. She even met Edward, the record store guy, and the charming encounter suggested a blooming romance between them.

At the New Year’s Eve party, Beverly and her new band, “Us Dudes and Sisters,” dedicated a song to Gail. And Gail actually danced on it instead of “just” watching it. The film ended with firecrackers in the sky, like the ones Beverly cherished. The song, the setup, and the crackers reminded her of her parents, but she didn’t feel alone anymore. She had her friends and her grandma, and together they decided to embrace the beginning of new millennium, filled with music, happiness, and a little love.


Mixtape is a 2021 Musical Dramedy film directed by Valerie Weiss. It is streaming on Netflix.

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Shikhar Agrawal
Shikhar Agrawal
I am an Onstage Dramatist and a Screenwriter. I have been working in the Indian Film Industry for the past 12 years, writing dialogues for various films and television shows.

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