Recent threads here in TV & Media and Misc. have made me think more about the phenomenon of mash-up music. (Forgive me if I'm rambling, I'm having difficulty sleeping tonight.)
It all seemed innocent enough in the beginning: take two or more songs and mix them together to form a new track that combined the best bits from those songs, usually with a "witty" title playing on the song titles or artists involved, and spread them among the masses. Reusing old songs to suit the performing artist is the sort of thing that's been happening for decades in various forms, from I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue's "One Song to the Tune of Another" round, to artists like Eric Carmen referencing elements of the works of the likes of Sergey Rachmaninov in his songs (heck, classical music composers also were alleged to have done this all the time - listen to the beginnings of the respective "scherzo" movements of Dvorak's Symphony no. 9 "From The New World" and Beethoven's earlier Symphony no. 9 and you'll notice a similarity... but I digress). Even in clubland, DJ sets of seamless segues of dance tracks contained an element of what was to come. But Mash-Up, also known as "bastard pop" was an experiment in making pop music more interesting in a "novelty" sort of way, and the sort of things commercial DJs could play as a once-off to the masses - witness the numerous "Eminem vs. Britney Spears" or "50 Cent vs Justin Timberlake" efforts around.
Then came the issues of intellectual property - something that's been a problem since the days of M/A/R/R/S's landmark dance hit "Pump Up The Volume" and the works of the JAMMs (later known as the KLF) among others. Artists didn't like their precious works of art being plundered and twisted this way without their permission, and if they did, they wanted royalties and/or financial compensation. Furthermore, the mash-up movement of the early 2000s was seen as a flash in the pan, something that wouldn't seem to catch on with the public. Mash-up became a purely "underground" movement - it was there on the tips of everyone's earlobes, but no-one dared mention it.
But something happened. Maybe it was the huge success of the Sugababes' "Freak Like Me" (based on a mash-up of songs by Adina Howard and Gary Numan's Tubeway Army), or a remix of Kylie Minogue's massive hit "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" featuring the backing track and iconic drumbeats of New Order's "Blue Monday". Maybe it was, certainly in the UK, radio stations starting to play unofficial mash-ups, independent music events featuring little-known DJs playing their mash-up sets and subsequently releasing them as free downloads on their own websites, and CDs of such mash-ups appearing on the shelves. Maybe it was the release of DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, a landmark mash-up album combining Jay-Z's "Black Album" and the Beatles's self-titled double album a.k.a. the "white album", and the legal fallout surrounding that experiment. Maybe it was the Internet itself, allowing people to visit music sites and YouTube for the latest mixes and video mash-ups. Maybe there was no one single event that one can pin down. But mash-ups began to be more popular. Furthermore, artists such as Jamelia and Kid Rock could be seen using old songs and samples to spice up their own latest singles. To me at least, people were trying to jump onto the Mash-up bandwagon for commercial success, and the recording bigwigs, sensing a market in pop nostalgia, decided to promote this sort of activity. The mash-up artists would become stars in their own right and go on to greater success: the aforementioned Danger Mouse going on to form Gnarls Barkley, for example.
So, now what? Thanks to improved domestic computer technology, anyone can make a mash-up (or even a video mash-up) and be fairly good at it. (Heck, I've even made a few of my own, but never for public consumption.) It has its limitations at least historically - it's the same old rap guys and the same RnB/pop/rock acts, sometimes an obscure rock or dance act thrown in, mashed up in different combinations, with a few bolder experiments in the mash-up format with varying degrees of success. (In my opinion, the better mash-ups are those where the songs involved are so different to each other, either in musical form or in terms of genre or its musical historical period, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.) It's also highlighted, in its own subversive way, the limitations in mainstream pop music writing: the same old chord progressions, melodies, harmonies, drum beats, even the odd lyric, reused in a new incarnation, but done so because it's cool and it sounds great and people will remember the originals and buy the old albums, etc. For better or for worse, mash-up music has hit the mainstream and is here to stay.
Personally, I can't get enough of it.
Anyone have any thoughts about it? Anyone have favourite mash-ups, or favourite mash-up artists and DJs? Anyone think it the work of the Devil itself? Anyone care?
It all seemed innocent enough in the beginning: take two or more songs and mix them together to form a new track that combined the best bits from those songs, usually with a "witty" title playing on the song titles or artists involved, and spread them among the masses. Reusing old songs to suit the performing artist is the sort of thing that's been happening for decades in various forms, from I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue's "One Song to the Tune of Another" round, to artists like Eric Carmen referencing elements of the works of the likes of Sergey Rachmaninov in his songs (heck, classical music composers also were alleged to have done this all the time - listen to the beginnings of the respective "scherzo" movements of Dvorak's Symphony no. 9 "From The New World" and Beethoven's earlier Symphony no. 9 and you'll notice a similarity... but I digress). Even in clubland, DJ sets of seamless segues of dance tracks contained an element of what was to come. But Mash-Up, also known as "bastard pop" was an experiment in making pop music more interesting in a "novelty" sort of way, and the sort of things commercial DJs could play as a once-off to the masses - witness the numerous "Eminem vs. Britney Spears" or "50 Cent vs Justin Timberlake" efforts around.
Then came the issues of intellectual property - something that's been a problem since the days of M/A/R/R/S's landmark dance hit "Pump Up The Volume" and the works of the JAMMs (later known as the KLF) among others. Artists didn't like their precious works of art being plundered and twisted this way without their permission, and if they did, they wanted royalties and/or financial compensation. Furthermore, the mash-up movement of the early 2000s was seen as a flash in the pan, something that wouldn't seem to catch on with the public. Mash-up became a purely "underground" movement - it was there on the tips of everyone's earlobes, but no-one dared mention it.
But something happened. Maybe it was the huge success of the Sugababes' "Freak Like Me" (based on a mash-up of songs by Adina Howard and Gary Numan's Tubeway Army), or a remix of Kylie Minogue's massive hit "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" featuring the backing track and iconic drumbeats of New Order's "Blue Monday". Maybe it was, certainly in the UK, radio stations starting to play unofficial mash-ups, independent music events featuring little-known DJs playing their mash-up sets and subsequently releasing them as free downloads on their own websites, and CDs of such mash-ups appearing on the shelves. Maybe it was the release of DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, a landmark mash-up album combining Jay-Z's "Black Album" and the Beatles's self-titled double album a.k.a. the "white album", and the legal fallout surrounding that experiment. Maybe it was the Internet itself, allowing people to visit music sites and YouTube for the latest mixes and video mash-ups. Maybe there was no one single event that one can pin down. But mash-ups began to be more popular. Furthermore, artists such as Jamelia and Kid Rock could be seen using old songs and samples to spice up their own latest singles. To me at least, people were trying to jump onto the Mash-up bandwagon for commercial success, and the recording bigwigs, sensing a market in pop nostalgia, decided to promote this sort of activity. The mash-up artists would become stars in their own right and go on to greater success: the aforementioned Danger Mouse going on to form Gnarls Barkley, for example.
So, now what? Thanks to improved domestic computer technology, anyone can make a mash-up (or even a video mash-up) and be fairly good at it. (Heck, I've even made a few of my own, but never for public consumption.) It has its limitations at least historically - it's the same old rap guys and the same RnB/pop/rock acts, sometimes an obscure rock or dance act thrown in, mashed up in different combinations, with a few bolder experiments in the mash-up format with varying degrees of success. (In my opinion, the better mash-ups are those where the songs involved are so different to each other, either in musical form or in terms of genre or its musical historical period, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.) It's also highlighted, in its own subversive way, the limitations in mainstream pop music writing: the same old chord progressions, melodies, harmonies, drum beats, even the odd lyric, reused in a new incarnation, but done so because it's cool and it sounds great and people will remember the originals and buy the old albums, etc. For better or for worse, mash-up music has hit the mainstream and is here to stay.
Personally, I can't get enough of it.
Anyone have any thoughts about it? Anyone have favourite mash-ups, or favourite mash-up artists and DJs? Anyone think it the work of the Devil itself? Anyone care?
