So the end of 2009 brought with it a great crop of mash-ups, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to share some of them with you all. The Super Bowl is as good an excuse as any, for what is football but a mash-up of soccer and rugby? (What?)
Anyway, if the trip to your Super Bowl party of choice today takes roughly 14 minutes, this little mix has you covered. It includes:
- “Down with All the Sober Freaks,” Mashup-Germany. Disturbed was a very influential band in my life, in the sense that they were played so much on alternative radio back in the day that I was influenced to buy an iPod and stop listening to alternative radio. That said, I think we can agree that the part on “Down with the Sickness” where the lead singer goes, “ooh-AH-AH-AH-AH,” like some sort of crazed chimp, is the defining moment of the band’s catalog. It is their Pet Sounds, literally. Well now a DJ has sampled the monkey noise and a bit of the chorus to punctuate Missy’s immortal “Get Ur Freak On,” and then brings in a little Pink ballad (“Sober”) and some Kanye guest rhyming, and what looks on paper like a giant mess turns out to be gorgeous and oddly affecting.
- “Use the Same Old Song,” Mighty Mike. For as many mash-ups as get made these day, surprisingly few blend together older songs with more contemporary ones. This mash-up is an argument for bootleggers to start paying more attention to Motown: the Four Tops’ “Same Old Song” gets invested with fresh urgency when paired with Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody.” Simple and effective.
- “Everybody’s Everyday Girl,” dj BC. Of all their late-period works, Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere” seems to have captured the most hipster hearts. Vampire Weekend covered it last year; more recently, so did A Sunny Day in Glasgow. Here dj BC uses those shimmering synths as a platform for Snoop Dogg, Kanye, Q-Tip and Capleton to do what they do best. An effortless summer jam for the dead of winter.
- “Robots Stunt Too,” Andrew John Long. Birdman & Lil Wayne’s original “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy” is plenty of fun in its own right, with a swaggering, cinematic beat and a video in which Birdman gets a tattoo during the song. But Andrew John Long had an idea that every mash-up artist has at some point — “How would these rhymes sound next to Daft Punk?” — and one interpolated sample of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” later, you’ve got some excellent driving music. The secrets here are subtlety and speed; Daft Punk stays mostly in the background, and Wayne’s sped-up vocal comes fast and furious.
