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It's Cas' idea.
Too many phone calls from Dean, griping about his mom. Not that she's back, he's thrilled if a bit in shock still. No, it’s that he doesn't know how to make her understand that he isn't the son she left behind and more difficult still, that maybe he's okay with that. It’s during the third call that Cas recalls to him that the one thing that's really helped Cas understand him was that mixtape Dean made for him. Thirteen songs to say what he meant.
If there's two things Dean knows in this world, it's hunting and music. Hunting is his ground state. It informs how he wakes up in the morning, how he moves through the day, how he goes to bed at night.
With music, it's different. He's spent more time behind a wheel than a retired long haul trucker, and music has filled those moments without fail. Zeppelin and Metallica and Kiss and Van Halen. Those long drives, gusts of wind broken up by guitar and drums and bass and singing. Sometimes it feels like that’s the only chance he’s had to be himself.
More than anything else, his life feels like a song on repeat. Every period of his life has its own soundtrack.
Cas isn’t wrong. If Dean can’t figure out how to say what he means through hunting, then the only other way he knows how is through music.
Still, it takes him almost a week and the bullshit with Ramiel to decide to do it. Then another week between hunts to sort through his cassette tapes to find the right songs.
i. Julia.
Paul McCartney’s mom died when he was fourteen. In some respects, he should be able to understand Dean’s experience with loss better than most. Except Paul doesn’t write about his parents, not really.
But John? John’s parents split when he was a toddler and his mom faded out of his life soon after. He was raised by his aunt and in Julia…
There’s a longing there that Dean can’t describe.
Because he loves his mom, he does. And he's been calling out for her since he was four years old, and like Dad, she never responded. That is, until now, and he doesn't know what to do with that. Who the hell knows what to do with that?
When your parents die, they should stay dead. When anything dies, it should stay dead. Dean’s on borrowed time, he’s well aware. Half the time, most of the time, the only thing keeping him going is Sammy.
And isn’t Julia kinda about Sammy too? Dean would go to Hell again before he admitted it, but he knows what it means, the way Sammy looks at him sometimes. It’s the same way Dean looks at pictures of his mom.
Julia’s on the White album. Released ten years after Julia died for real.
Dean doesn’t know any other way to start than with a message to his dead mom.
ii. Nowhere Man.
In the same way that Julia is about his mom, Nowhere Man is about himself.
It’s shitty, right? Telling your not-dead mom that you’re no one, going nowhere.
But hell if it ain’t true.
Dean hasn’t had a chance to think for himself for years. Not that his opinions ever mattered, not to Dad anyway.
Dad wasn’t around. He needs her to know that. It’s urgent, it’s under his skin. Dad wasn’t around so Dean picked up the slack everywhere he could.
He kept track of how many diapers Sammy had left. He washed Dad’s clothes. He made dinner, he cleaned the car, he got Sammy got enrolled in school.
He trained and he hurt and he worried.
He’s not sure what Moms are supposed to do, but he’s certain that he did things that Brothers weren’t meant for.
He doesn’t know who he is, he doesn’t know where he’s going.
Up until recently, at least. He wishes he could say that her coming back has changed some of this, righted some wrongs. But she’s not the heavenly being that’s changed him for the better.
iii. Helter Skelter
Because there’s no better way to describe what it was like being a kid. On paper, bit of a rollercoaster ride but the screaming and the terror and the excitement and the murder all come together to create this sense of urgency that kept Dad’s foot on a gas and Dean’s head on a swivel. Looking for a hunt or the next landmine that would cause Dad to blow up.
She has to know that she’s failed him.
Not because he’s cruel but because it’s the truth. She failed him and she failed Sam.
He tried to keep everything together. When he was three and playing with Sammy to keep him from crying and them from fighting. When he was thirty and traveling back to the night she made that nail-in-the-coffin deal with Azazel.
Her John was not his dad. Her John died in that fire too and Dean’s always had to mourn two parents, since Sammy didn’t get a chance to know either.
He loves her and he resents her and he misses her and he hates her.
He and Dad kept her spirit alive for Sammy, but they both knew that their lives were broken because she died. And while Dad never discovered it, Dean knows that she had the chance to stop all of this from happening and she still chose her boyfriend over the world.
‘Course, Dean doesn’t have much of a foot to stand on there.
iv. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
Dean killed before he could drive. It's a simple fact. He shouldn't have to tell his mom this, it's something she has to know already. But after Asa’s funeral it feels important that she understands that he's not a little boy. Everyone she knew is dead and that includes him.
He likes this song because it's happy, funny. The bright music doesn't match the dark plot and isn't joking the real only way to deal with the ugly shit?
He wants to get it out of the way, to rip off the bandaid. So maybe she's not what he remembers. She's not the story Dad told him, the one he tells himself, tells Sammy. So what? He's not supposed to be what he is either. Maybe they can call a truce.
v. She’s Leaving Home.
Dean's probably got more defining moments in his life than most. Hell, he's probably got more defining moments than he can remember.
Sammy leaving though… that's the one he's never gonna forget.
It's complicated, is all. Because he damn proud Sammy got out and he's so damn sorry he pulled Sammy back in. Because he thought he'd done everything he could to make Sammy happy, to take care of the kid, and he still ran away. Because damn if he didn't want to run away himself.
Paul isn't writing about Flagstaff or Palo Alto or Kermit, but he might as well be.
There's no way to say I lost my kid when the kid is your brother and you're talking to your mom. Maybe Mom gets it. She lost them in a way. But she didn't have to live it like Dean has.
vi. Tomorrow Never Knows.
Helter Skelter coulda gone here too. Got hell practically in the name and there's the whole Manson connection. While his childhood was non-stop screaming, Hell was…
Dean likes that the bird sound was actually Paul's laugh warped beyond recognition. In Hell, nothing was what it seemed. The song drones on and on, slowly pulling you down into a brainwashed haze. Pain kinda feels that way to Dean now too.
Hell rebuilt Dean and it destroyed him and everything in between. Moms don't want to know about the shit their kids get into, not really. 'Specially not when it's their fault.
He can't actually listen to the song anymore, makes him nauseous. Alistair would play it sometimes when digging through Dean's intestines or
He has Sammy add it to the tape for him and doesn't answer any of his brother's questions about what the tape is for or why he needs help or what the song has to do with anything.
Sam hums the intro while researching for their next hunt and Dean spends half an hour in the bathroom trying to calm down.
vii. Calico Skies.
He doesn’t know why he adds it. It’s not even a Beatles song and he’s doing Beatles songs because Mom sang him Hey Jude as a kid and he remembers it as something special.
It’s a Paul song from after his second band broke up. Nobody knows it. Mom died before it came out.
He only discovered it after Cas pulled him from Hell Sam installed that dumbass iPod thing in the Impala.
She doesn’t need to know about the bar he dreams about. She doesn’t need to know about Cas.
He doesn’t know why he adds it.
viii. Blackbird.
Dean's always kinda liked Blackbird. It's one of the two Beatles songs that wouldn't immediately cause Dad to switch off the radio when they came on. The other was Get Back. Dean's never really understood Dad's taste in music. Or Dad in general. Didn't stop him from trying.
It used to make him feel connected to his mom, more than Julia ever has. Made him think that she was watching over him, broken wings keeping her aloft.
Nowadays, it makes him think of Sam and Cas and Charlie and Benny and Kevin and everyone else who tried to do the right thing and got hurt for it.
It makes him think of himself.
He likes to joke that he invented free will, even though it's mostly Cas and Sammy.
He adds Blackbird to say look at what I did, look at who I am. To ask are you proud of me? I'm proud of me.
ix. Norwegian Wood.
He knows what the song’s supposed to be about. Some girl John was fucking on the side.
But to Dean, it’s always been about being used. Sometimes the lyric she once had me will play on repeat in his head, persistently echoing ‘til he drinks enough booze to drown it out.
He's been thinking about being a kid a lot lately. With Mom back and Dad gone.
It's kinda muddy, his past. Just a series of grimy rest stops, dusty campsites, smoke-scented jackets, hunger pangs, and taking care of Sammy.
He probably shouldn't let Mom in on this. He hasn't even told Sammy about it, shuts down every conversation his brother tries to start about how they made it out of childhood.
But something in him needs his mom to know. 'Cause while everything he's ever done in this life has been for Sam, he only lives it for Mom. And he needs her to know what living has meant for him.
x. Don’t Let Me Down.
Could be about Cas or Sam or Dad or whoever. Today it's about Mom.
Title says enough, lyrics even more.
Dean’s kinda of the mind that while a song may be about romantic love, it doesn’t have to be limited to that.
For John, Dont’ Let Me Down is a plea to Yoko and a fuck you to Cynthia.
For Dean, it’s a commitment to Sam and a follow through to Dad and a promise to Cas.
It’s an ultimatum to Mom.
He loves her, can’t help it.
But he can’t keep getting disappointed. He can’t keep losing parents.
If she’s going to be back, then she has to be back one hundred percent. She can’t keep one foot in the door, one foot out. She can’t be a hunting partner and a friend and a mom. He can do any of the three, but he can’t do them all at once.
If she’s going to be back, then he needs to be able to rely on her, to trust her. And right now, he can’t.
xi. Calico Skies.
He goes on a hunt after taping the last song, doesn’t cross off his list correctly and now he’s got Calico Skies on his tape twice. He only meant for there to be twelve songs, but now he’s got thirteen and praying he’s got enough tape left in the cassette so that he doesn’t have to start all the way over.
He shouldn't have added it in the first place and now it's on there twice.
She's gonna read into it. He doesn't know how, but she'll know it's about Cas. About how for the first time he feels like he has a reason to just stop. To make a life he loves instead of the one he's got.
Hunters bar, Cas at his side.
Not that- he's not gay. He thinks Mom would've said something if he was.
To be honest, he's not really sure how any of this works.
You like girls all your life, get fucked by men to make a buck, and then some guy comes and stops the world.
Sometimes it feels like it doesn’t matter. Cas is an angel. Probably doesn’t even know how to fall in love. ‘Sides, world’s always falling apart left and right. No way for either of them to give up the life.
But sometimes it feels like the only thing that makes sense in the world.
He doesn’t know why he adds it, but now that it’s on there, it feels like something Mom oughta know.
xii. Carry That Weight.
Abbey Road is the last album the Beatles recorded. Mom was fifteen when it came out.
Dean wonders if she listened to it. If she laughed at Octopus’s Garden. If she felt the hope behind Here Comes the Sun. If she was surprised by the mastery of the medley. If she held her breath after The End.
He wonders who she listened to it with. If she skipped around to pick her favorite songs or listened to the whole album over and over.
He wonders if she ever thought that her children would play it without her. That they would have to listen to it in secret because Dad hated the album.
He wonders if Dad hated the album because Mom loved it. Loves it.
He could ask, now. He won’t.
He’s pissed, okay? He was four when he had to take over for her and it’s been non-stop ever since then. Raising Sammy, finding Dad, going to Hell, stopping the apocalypse—he’s shouldered it all.
Dean is ready for it to be done. He’s tired, he’s ready to break down. He’s ready to be out.
His mom is the reason he’s carried on like this. The reason he had to carry it all in the first place.
Problem is, he doesn’t know how to let go.
xiii. Let It Be.
Let It Be is the last album the Beatles released.
Bobby played it for him sometime in the ‘90s and Dean hasn’t been able to get it out of his head since. It’s coincidence, that Paul’s mom and Dean’s mom have the same name, but shit if it doesn’t sting.
Paul got fourteen years with his mom. Maybe, if Dean plays his cards right, he can have that many years too. There’s a lot possible now that wasn’t possible before.
He wonders if his mom can learn to love this version of him. If he can learn to love this version of her.
They’re both rougher than they’re meant to be. He’s too old and she’s too young. She spent thirty years in Heaven and he spent forty in Hell. He raised Sam when she couldn’t. She saved Dad when he wouldn’t.
He needs her and he hates her and he loves her and he forgives her.
He forgives her.
When he’s done, before he’s even given her the tape, he feels calmer. Each song feels like the truth and together they tell a story he didn’t know he had.
He gives it to her as he and Sammy are leaving the British Men of Letters’ HQ. He tells her that he can respect her choices, and he thinks he can, really. He’ll try at least.
Cas isn't there and Dean kinda wishes he was. Sammy's there though and something like understanding comes over his face when he sees Dean pass the cassette tape over.
Mom looks grateful but confused and Dean can't make himself explain more than it's a bunch of Beatles songs he wants her to listen to.
They leave and Dean doesn't see Mom for a while. Not until he’s inside her head. When he does, there's something like understanding on her face too.