Every Good Story Needs a Banging Soundtrack

Johnny Galvatron, lead singer of the long running Australian rock band The Galvatrons and creative director of a new and beautiful coming of age story Mixtape, once also gave a girl a carefully crafted mixtape in high school. It was a collection of mixtapes, actually, and part of a misguided gesture in a courting process with the girl who would become his wife and mother to their child. 

“The first mixtape I gave her was a very, very sad excuse of me trying to make a mixtape of the music she would like,” admits Galvatron, whose actual name is Jonathan Mole. “Has nu metal started? I might [have been] listening to Limp Bizkit.”

He had no idea what girls were listening to, let alone his wife. But it proved memorable, and crucially, it’s a story she hasn’t forgotten. They’d talked about it the night before our interview. 

Moments like that—making emotional mountains out of molehills—are what Mixtape is about.

Mixtape is a new game from Beethoven & Dinosaur, the studio behind 2021’s whimsical musical adventure The Artful Escape. Now, tell me if you’ve heard a version of this story before: three outcast high school students—one boy, two girls—are best friends preparing for a party on the eve of the rest of their lives. Stacey, who lives with headphones on, has splintered the group r because, in the morning, she leaves for New York on a quest to become—gasp—a music supervisor. For years, she’s talked about going on a road trip with Slater and Cassandra. Instead, she’s going out of town. 

For now, there’s a party—and you can’t have a party without booze. It’s Life Is Strange (absent the supernatural) by way of John Hughes. 

“Every day is the biggest day,” said Galvatron. “The highs are the highest and the lows are the lowest—because you're a teen. You don't know anything else. You're not paying bills. You don't need to rest for the weekend. You can just live your life. […] There's something so pure and wonderful about kids who define themselves by the art that they like and just like…”

“Just being into something,” chimed in the game’s producer, Woody Woodward.

“Being into shit is cool,” said Galvatron.

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Mixtape is not a game with a game over screen, and it’s primarily a story about Stacey, Cassandra, and Slater grappling with a friendship that’s on the verge of changing forever. But for now, in this one moment, it can be exactly how it always was, which is spending most days thinking about music, listening to music, and, when possible, partying. 

“The thing that's interesting and heartfelt and persuasive about coming of age stories is that things are universal,” said Galvatron. “These feelings of inadequacy or feeling left out or looking to find your place—or being obsessed with music. These things are what makes being a teen interesting and those coming-of-age stories interesting. Universality. […] Not really the setting or the time. It's showing that people's experiences are the same, no matter the era.”