Weekend reading: Making mixes; Megadeth Q&A; and the top cover songs

When it comes to making a mix, it’s hard to avoid the elephant in the room, “High Fidelity,” Nick Hornby’s great book, which found its misguided protagonist explaining the practice so well.

“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do,” Hornby wrote. “It takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch. But you don’t want to blow your wad. So then you gotta cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.”

He speaks the truth.

Unsurprisingly, the music supervisor for the new indie romantic comedy “(500) Days of Summer” points to the soundtrack to “High Fidelity” as a source of inspiration in her work: compiling mixes.

Read about her job by following the links.

“(500) Days of Summer” music supervisor says you gotta start with the joy. (Time)

Arlo Guthrie is glad to live in a world with “American Idol.” (New York Times)

Far as Dave Mustaine knows, Metallica planned to fire drummer Lars Ulrich, although obviously that never ended up happening. (Rolling Stone)

Ed Droste isn’t as weird and ugly as he looks in the awe-inspring video for Grizzly Bear’s great single, “Two Weeks.” (Pitchfork)

Fifty great covers include Sonic Youth’s take on the Carpenters and Tom Jones tackling Prince. (Spin, but heads up, frustratingly, they only list and stream Nos. 41 to 50)

Twitter and Jimmy Fallon are the best things to ever happen to Roots drummer ?uestlove, he says. (Wall Street Journal)