Celebrity Playlist: Adam F. Goldberg, creator of The Goldbergs

Last week, we celebrated the return of ABC’s The Goldbergs for its sophomore season with a Celebrity Playlist from Sean Giambrone, a.k.a. Adam Goldberg, and although we’d had the idea to reach out to someone from the series well before we knew anything about the plot of the season premiere, it couldn’t have been more thematically appropriate: in the episode, Adam follows up on the momentous occasion of his first kiss with Dana Caldwell, played by Natalie Alyn Lind, by creating a mixtape to express exactly how he feels about her.

But here’s the thing about The Goldbergs: quite a lot of the events that take place in the series are ripped directly from the real life of the gentleman who created it, a fellow by the name of – wait for it – Adam F. Goldberg.

(Didn’t see that reveal coming, did you?)

As you already know if you saw the closing moments of the season premiere, the real Adam really did have a girlfriend named Dana, and the real Dana really was the recipient of an emotion-laden mixtape made by the aforementioned Mr. Goldberg.

#FirstKiss #FirstMixTape = 1980's Correlation noted. @TheGoldbergsABC @adamfgoldberg @thegoldnerds pic.twitter.com/u8lITmQYJP

What you don’t know, however, is that, in addition to our interactions with Giambrone, we also made a point of reaching out to Goldberg himself once we found out that the season premiere was called “Love Is a Mixtape.”

Now, given how crazed things were for Goldberg in the days and weeks leading up to The Goldbergs’ momentous return, we weren’t entirely surprised that he wasn’t able to find the time to pull together a playlist for us before it aired, but he more than made up for the delay when, only a few hours after the episode aired, he dropped us a line and said, “I know you wanted a playlist from me, so how about tomorrow I go through my old tape and give you my playlist that I gave to Dana?”

Needless to say, we accepted.