Comments on: DJ Earworm and the “Legofication” of Pop Music

By: Nadya

Nadya — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 07:56:50 +0000

For some reason I keep feeling compelled to come back and comment on this post further… possibly because it’s one of my favorite things posted this year. I still listen to this song at least once a week. Anyway, I found an example of the same thing done horribly wrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-jtnB4iAKA

By: Nadya

Nadya — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:58:18 +0000

Just re-watched this… one of the videos in this song has the Tower Theater in it! Love that theater. Amazing.

By: Mer

Mer — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:16:14 +0000

I think his 2007 mashup is clever and fun, but as Elise put it, "the hand-picked melancholy is really what stayed with me" in regards to the 2008 piece. I keep bringing up Oswald (a pioneer of mashup/collage technique) but I'm not sure who all is familiar. Here are a couple interesting examples of his work. Again, not necessarily moving on a heartfelt level, but impressive and worth checking out: And here's a beaut from Sven Koenig, which reminds me of some Aphex Twin stuff:

By: Nadya

Nadya — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:57:18 +0000

In the middle of this year somebody stole my iPod from my car, so I listened to a *lot* of radio over this past year, and I’ve absorbed most of the songs in this mashup completely. From Groonk’s comment I followed the link to Earworm’s State of Pop 2007, a year in which I didn’t listen to any pop music whatsoever, and I have to say that it’s a lot more fun to listen to when you know the source material. I will also say that I think that some of the music he had to work with for this isn’t that bad. You might laugh at me, but I actually really like Rihanna and T.I. Shut up. But as far as Legofication goes, it’s still dead-on. I’m not saying that you can’t do a convincing mashup of the Top 25 of ’84 with Prince, Madonna, Chakha Khan, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Yes, Tina Turner, etc. But I feel like the top pop songs back then had more range – lyrically, melodically, emotionally. We’d have to ask someone who does mashups all the time, but it seems to me that it would be more of a challenge to come up with a mashup as smooth and cohesive as this 2008 one with pop songs from back in the day.

By: Mer

Mer — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:50:24 +0000

Andi, there are tons of classical “mashup” style pieces out there that I bet you’d enjoy: work by Charles Ives and PDQ Bach (“Unbegun Symphony”), and that guy John Oswald I keep mentioning did a series of compositions called “Rascali Klepitoire”.

I mean, there’s an absolutely VAST world of mashup music out there… most of it’s clever, some of it’s brilliant, but very little (for me) resonates on a heartfelt level.

By: R.

R. — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:42:27 +0000

Pop music is pretty much cut and paste these days and that video showcases that. Hopefully this year something new will come along and the masses will have a new opiate for their souls.

By: Andi bowler

Andi bowler — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:31:55 +0000

“I’m pretty sure that this could be done with any genre, or any similar bunch of noises.

I’d genuinely love to hear you have a go at it!
Certainly, it has been done before, but not as well, or with such lovely results, in my opinion.”

Ah, to be a musician! I failed music theory in the worst way, but I would do it all over again if it meant I could come out of it able to write a music smashup. I’d head straight to the classical section and see if I could wed Mozart to the Rite of Spring (ok, the results might not be pretty, but you know what I mean.)

However, to make up for it, in my nonexistent free time I will search the net for anything someone else has done along those lines. It has to exist somewhere!

By: Ponnie

Ponnie — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:20:30 +0000

hey, i’m that friend!

By: Chris L

Chris L — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:56:59 +0000

Mer, I want to live in your brain.

Re: John Oswald, I’ve never really had a chance to hear any of his stuff (though he gave a short talk at my college, and I think played a small excerpt – it was years ago), but thanks to that link you posted, Plunderphonics will soon be on my hard drive.

To Doubting Pete, I was able to recognize a couple of the songs in there (mostly via a friend’s little brother), and they sounded largely intact. I guess the only way to tell if they were severely pitch-shifted would be to ask Mr. Earworm, himself.

I agree that it might be possible to do this with some other genres, I’m thinking of punk rock in particular – but you’d probably have more difficulty finding the same unity of rhythm and vocal style, if only because punk tends to be a more raw. This is especially true if you restricted your selection process to the top 25 songs. (Does such a chart exist? Somewhere, probably.)

I think that is what makes this work so impressive – the fact that he didn’t just go searching willy-nilly through every popular single that was put out this year – his list of ingredients was restricted to an arbitrary list of top-sellers.

By: Laura Dale

Laura Dale — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:13:17 +0000

He being Chris Martin, since it’s part of Viva la Vida. I need coffee. Sorry for the incoherence.