Mashups
Teenage Pain
Justin Timberlake vs. Fleetwood Mac
Timbaland’s tracks are so good. The chords almost never change but the production never stops evolving either. The strings in “What Goes Around” kind of echo the slow-attacking guitar in the Fleetwood Mac song. Fun!
Teenage Pain
Katy Perry vs. Dinosaur Jr.
Fun fact: this was first posted to my old blog on the 10th anniversary of 9/11!
Soul Jamz
Kanye West vs. Death Cab for Cutie
Rap instrumentals are hard, because usually it’s just like a 4 bar loop, with little variation over the course of the track. Gotta include this just for the cover art, which I think is very good considering how little I knew about Photoshop at the time.
No Dives till Brooklyn
Sonic Youth vs. Madonna
Another one with a cooler concept than end result. You really hear Madge’s vibrato when you speed her up this much.
No Dives till Brooklyn
Beastie Boys vs. Dio
Early on I was very inspired by ToToM’s Bootwards album, which took rock acapellas and put them over rap and pop tracks, a complete 180 from what most everybody else was doing. Plus he did it before any of the Rock Band/Guitar Hero games (which are now commonplace mashup sources) were even released, meaning he really had to get creative. This is my tribute to that concept, although I did use Guitar Hero rips for both of these songs. Still, I’ll wager that the ratio of mashups with Beastie Boys instrumentals vs. acapellas is still about 1:100.
Running Up That Lifetime
Kate Bush vs. Talking Heads
My reach may have exceeded my grasp on this one. Technically, “Running Up That Hill” is in the relative minor key to “Once in a Lifetime”, so it makes musical sense, but it’s pretty rough. Points for trying, self.
Noise of Nazareth
Justice vs. Refused
Man, I feel like I could lift a car listening to this, which makes sense, because ✝ and The Shape of Punk to Come are two albums made for lifting cars to.
You Belong with El Scorcho b/w Island to Burn
Weezer vs. Taylor Swift
Very silly stuff. “You Belong with El Scorcho” is pretty shaky on the verses but really brings it on the chorus.
Can't Be Shipped Off To Boston
Dropkick Murphys vs. Miley Cyrus
You could probably put any 6/8 song over “Shipping Off to Boston” and it would sound cool. I was familiar with the Miley song probably because of my sisters, this isn’t groundbreaking stuff but that wasn’t my goal!
