Scott plays back a hilariously earnest homemade cassette tape made by a listener’s ex-boyfriend in 2001, complete with romantic declarations, carefully curated love songs — and bewilderingly, “The Bad Touch” by the Bloodhound Gang.
A caller named Lisa brings in a mixed tape made by her boyfriend when she was 16, six years earlier in 2001. The tape is a genuine labour of love: he recorded lengthy, heartfelt messages expressing how much he loves her, interspersed with songs he’d personally selected because they meant something to their relationship. Scott plays excerpts from the tape, which features songs including Gabrielle’s “Don’t Need the Sun to Shine,” East 17’s “Stay Another Day,” and the Choral’s “Breathless.”
The humour emerges gradually: the boyfriend’s earnestness is so intense and repetitive that it becomes endearing and slightly uncomfortable in equal measure. He keeps insisting how brilliant Lisa is, how happy she makes him, and how he’s already thinking about their future together — all within six months of dating a 16-year-old. But the real comedy comes when Scott discovers the tape includes “The Bad Touch” by the Bloodhound Gang, a song explicitly not romantic at all, and most bizarrely, Richard Marx’s “Hazard” — which Scott reveals is actually about a man who murders his girlfriend. He even takes time to explain the entire dark narrative of the song to Lisa, who had no idea what the lyrics meant.
The tape itself is a time capsule of early-2000s romance, recorded on actual cassette and played back on equipment Scott had to hunt down in the building. Lisa admits the relationship didn’t last much longer after this tape — just a couple of months — though she’s good-natured about letting Scott broadcast her ex’s earnest teenage declarations to the nation.
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