There is one thing, though, that bothers me whenever I listen to the music long enough, and I don't know if it's intentional or if I'm reading too much into it.
Namely, is the mere act of creating a mash-up a commentary on how stagnant the music industry is becoming?
Not all songs fit under this idea, and certainly the lyrics between songs are often quite different (unless you listen to a lot of modern pop music). Certain songs such as "Free Falling Boy" are simply mind-blowing because they take two songs from different time periods and blend them together seamlessly.
Personally, I think one of my favorite mash-ups will always be this one:
There's absolutely no reason those two songs should blend so well together, but they do.
However, a lot of mash-ups are of modern songs, usually taking ones from the past year or two and combining them together. In fact, every year DJ Earworm takes the biggest hits of the previous year and blends them into one song which, to be fair, usually has very little to do with the original source materials and finds interesting ways to break the lyrics apart.
There are enough, though, that I'm curious if the artists aren't trying to make a point and criticize the music industry as well as celebrate it. When you can take two songs that came out in the past year and put one seamlessly over the other with similar singing styles and key points in the music, are they trying to point out that, for the most part, a lot of music is simply interchangeable with little to no innovation in the major markets?
I'll always have... well, it's not exactly a soft spot for the song, but I'll admit it can be fun to just listen to Vanilla Ice's biggest hit Ice, Ice Baby, but when I see it can, with little editing, be mashed with everything from Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines to Ke$ha's Tik Tok, it really makes me think about the big hit songs that come out these days.
You have the same beats per minute, same breaks where the chorus comes in, same moment where the music dies down to let the singer show themselves off, same gap before the music comes back strong, leave a space for the "guest" singer to do their rap or other short lyric over the same music. It's like there's a generic formula that the music industry uses to make their biggest hits.
This isn't to say there aren't some truly innovative artists out there or ones who seem to elevate themselves above this "formula." I've found myself digging deeper and deeper in the past few years into music that's known (at least to Time Warner, anyway) as "Adult Alternative." I'm not sure what makes it more "adult" than regular alternative music, but I'm not going to argue it.
If you know, though, leave me a comment explaining it.
Anyway, in this category of music I've found artists who are willing to try new things. People who bring the tempo up where most songs bring it down. There are artists who completely throw away the idea of build-up to the chorus and simply let you find yourself deposited in it with no ceremony. There are artists who completely eschew the standards of "pop" music and create music from instruments that bring a unique sound or voices that don't blend as well into "mainstream" radio.
Maybe I'm just reading too much into the mash-ups, maybe it's simply a case of some DJs not being as creative as other ones when it comes time to create something new, or perhaps it's just a side project while they work on another big song.
I guess they can't all be as mind-blowing as Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre singing along with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
You'll never be able to unhear that.
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