Mashups

About a month ago, I became fascinated by the idea of mashups, when someone edits together the instrumental track of one song with the vocal track of another song. They were a big phenomenon about 5 or 6 years ago, and I was interested (if not surprised) to find out that people were still making them. I started thinking about the possibilities that came with collapsing two pop songs together, the ways that could change their meanings. I quickly ascertained that I did not have the technical skills or software to make my own mashups, but I figured out something I could make: fake mashups. Here's what I came up with (in the order I made them, the first three over a couple of days and the fourth a week later):

Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" vs. Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love"


Britney Spears' "Piece of Me" vs. Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music"


Robyn's "With Every Heartbeat" vs. Girls Aloud's live acoustic cover of "With Every Heartbeat"


Lil' Wayne's "Lollipop" vs. Aqua's "Lollipop"


As you can probably tell, these are not mashups at all, but simply the two songs played over each other. My method is to import two songs into Garage Band, line them up, then cut off the longer song when the shorter song ends. Then they're finished.

When I figured out how to do this, I was excited by the idea of posting them to YouTube disguised as "real" mashups so people would watch them and leave comments. I wanted to see if I could trick people into thinking I genuinely thought I had made mashups. To this end, I was trying to make combinations that people would want to listen to (at least until they heard them). At the time, "Touch My Body" and "Bleeding Love" were the two most popular songs on the Billboard Hot 100. I made the "With Every Heartbeat" video to see if a more obscure song would get more views because it would have less competition in search results. The Mariah/Leona video has the most views, 463. Britney/Rihanna has 195, Robyn/Girls Aloud has 282, and Lil Wayne/Aqua has 184. Here are some of the comments I've gotten:

this is absolute fucking shit

this is so terrible, i love it. overlapping two songs whether they match in any way or not? excellent dj skillz!

WTF??

Do you really think this sounds good? It's nothing but gibberish! I have a headache!!!

who did this? a 6 year old? I have to vomit now, excuse me.

This is truly awful! lol

its basically 2 song mashed 2gether with no editing. soz but thats basically what it is

doesnt really fit

wow this is trash

not really a mashup- just the two songs playing over eachother.

this is one of the worst "mash-ups" i've ever heard. they don't even fit together

I've gotten a lot of joy out of these comments, but I think I could do more with these than just getting comments from people who think I'm trying to make real mashups. I've been thinking a lot about the possibilities of changing the meanings of songs by mashing them together. I have a few ideas for playing with this, so I might try making some new ones soon.