The mixtape currently leaving the solar system

In 1977 we pressed a mixtape and flung it out of the solar system. A gold-plated copper record, twelve inches across, riding on each Voyager — ninety minutes of music plus a diagram explaining where the needle goes. It is the most confident playlist ever made.

The committee, led by Carl Sagan, had to compress all human music into ninety minutes. They gave Bach two slots and Beethoven two slots, then argued their way to exactly one Chuck Berry song. The old joke — that the aliens cabled back "send more Chuck Berry" — gets attributed to somebody different every time it's told.

The deep cuts are the good part. Blind Willie Johnson moaning a wordless 1927 lament. A Navajo Night Chant. Javanese gamelan, Azerbaijani mugham, Peruvian panpipes. Whoever sequenced this understood a mixtape truth: the risky obscure track is the one that defines you.

Equally instructive is the tracklist's absence. The Beatles reportedly didn't make it because of licensing — even a message to the stars couldn't clear the rights. Somewhere in that room an artistic instinct fought a lawyer, and the lawyer won at interstellar scale.

Then the extras: greetings in dozens of languages, a kiss, the sound of a heartbeat. Ann Druyan recorded hers days after falling in love with Sagan, as she has told the story — arguably the most romantic metadata ever committed to a spinning disc.

Will anyone play it? Almost certainly not; space is mostly empty and the odds are bleak. But that misses the point, because no mixtape is ever really for the recipient. It's an excuse to say who you are out loud, once, at full volume.

Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in 2012 and keeps going. My opinion: the record's real genius is the packaging — a stylus included, play instructions engraved on the sleeve. We told the universe that music matters enough to ship with liner notes.