DJ Earworm - United State of Pop Mashup 2008 (Viva la Pop)

The 2009 one is *amazing* - it manages to be a lot more than just "really clever" by the end I think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNzrwh2Z2hQ

Agreed. The first two were interesting curiosities, but this manages to coalesce into a proper song to some extent - not one with discrete meaning, but infinitely more listenable than the first two installments.

Whats the song at about 1:54 with the dude singing "I found God"? The only one I didn't immediately recognize.

The Fray - You Found Me. You can see the full dissection here: http://djearworm.com/united-state-of-pop-2009-blame-it-on-the-pop-lyrics.htm - the only top-25 song he seems to completely tuck away into a corner is 'Kiss Me Thru The Phone', which is kind of lols.

That would explain why I wasn't familiar with that song. Cool little breakdown in that link.

DJ Earworm's been making complicated multi-song mashups since way back when (2004?). Even his first few releases were way more ambitious than the typical "Stroke of Genius"-style vocal-vs-backing-track A+B that most people (even most music fans) think of as the beginning and ending what you can do with a mashup.

Back when people around here paid attention to mashups (2002?) their critical cachet was based on juxtaposition ("aha" trainspotting and/or irony) and democratization/popularization (we the people making our own cut-and-paste pop music from the tools/trash we found on the internet). That was true of the first wave of mashups. The most-used vocal tracks were hip-hop, meaning there was no need to match melodies to chords, which made it easy to learn to make simple tracks but hard to do anything more complex than put Eminem's "Without Me" vocal over something wacky. A few pop vocal tracks worked ("Stroke of Genius" was perfect), but most of them were a mess.

A year or two later, a few artists got really good at stiching together multiple vocal-oriented songs into a relatively seamless whole. I gather (not sure how accurate this is) the use of software to analyze WAV files for chord patterns and melodies helped the process along -- at the same time, the repertoire of songs used as sources for mashups expanded beyond the obvious pop choices to include all sorts of deep cuts from classic rock/pop/reggae/soul. One of the main innovations was quick-cutting between vocals from different tracks so they end up finishing each other's lines. Despite the more complex/ambitious construction, the mood was usually pop, not prog. Loo and Placido were probably my favorite example of the style: "American Lapdance" and "Safari Love" are 2 of my favorite tracks of the decade, and their XFM Superchunk mix from 2004 is completely untouchable (especially the last 5 minutes).

DJ Earworm showed up at about that time. One of his first releases, "Stairway to Bootleg Heaven", is a great example of the possibilities of the style. It's built on Dolly Parton's version of "Stairway to Heaven", using most of her vocal and most of the backing track -- and therefore the overall crescendo structure of the song. Before Dolly shows up there's a lovely floaty 90 second intro drawn from "O Superman" and "Moments in Love" and the Beatles' "Because" which sets the stage for the classic (acoustic) guitar riff and Dolly herself. Multiple vocal interpolations from the Eurythmics' "This City Never Sleeps" expand the verses which float on the breathy "ah-ah-ah"s from the Laurie Anderson track. As the track builds, the organ riff from "So Whatcha Want" comes in, John Lennon and Annie Lennox reappear, and some Pat Benatar vocals get layered into the mix. The first time I heard it I'd never heard the Dolly Parton cover, and it just about knocked me over -- beautiful stuff.

I long ago lost track of the scene, but it surprises me not one bit that DJ Earworm has a smash pop hit on his very talented hands (4.2 million hits for the Youtube in 2 weeks). Nicely done!

Unfortunately I hate most of the songs he uses on these things so the end results, tho clever, are useless to me.

Can't help but think that autotune makes blending everything into a more-or-less seamless whole a hell of a lot easier given that everyone essentially sounds the same in the first place.

Revive!

Good fucking God this song is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLA7JMPE_xU

DJ Earworm - United State of Pop 2010 (Don't Stop the Pop) is out now!