It’s about time I threw another couple mash-ups into the mix. From Christina Aguilera’s 2000 album My Kind of Christmas, the track “Christmas Time” represents a particularly crass kind of expression of the Yuletide. It’s hip, it’s commercial, it pretends to celebrate an innocent time. It’s not hugely sappy, employing minor chords and evoking carol [...]
A Velvet Christmas
Longtime readers will recall that every year I post MP3s of Christmas music (or you can look at this post from 2005 for background). I’ve been collecting such works since the early Eighties; I always feel like I don’t have enough, even though I have quite a bit. I have my prejudices. I tend to [...]
Smokey Goes Underground for the Holidays
It’s probably safe to start this off with a mash-up, right? What could go wrong? For background, read this post (or this one), but the short version is that I’ve been collecting holiday music for decades and at this time of the year, I share ‘em with you. The Swedish producer Divide & Kreate has [...]
“I’m the realest that run it, I just happen to rap.”
My new Spot-on column is up: A Revolutionary Soundtrack. It examines the relationship between politics and pop music and looks at an example from a few weeks ago when Barack Obama channeled Jay-Z. A lot of pop music ignores politics altogether. Some pop music is very earnest about pop music. You don’t often see artists [...]
The Beating of Wings
I haven’t posted any mash-ups in ages. Haven’t had any news ones for quite a while. I’m sort of out of the loop on the whole scene, but I suspect it’s still going along. There’s a D.C. radio station that plays them late on Saturday nights and you can certainly find them on the Net. [...]
Mash-ups in the news
For all you mash-up fans (you know who you are), here are two examples of mash-ups in the news. Via Poplicks, here is a report on the ABC Evening News on mash-ups. I must take exception with one point made in the report. As is made clear in this previous post, mash-ups go back to [...]
Year One: Rising Tide
Wrapping up, here’s one last memory of my first year of blogging. Hurricane Katrina sticks deeply in my mind. I posted about it quite a lot. There were several posts that quoted from the classic Rising Tide, such as this one that gave a historical view and this one that looked at New Orleans’ racial [...]
“Run for cover, mutha…”
I made a casual offer this week, so now I gotta pay up. Here you go, girish: Two Missy Elliot mash-ups. Actually, these were two I could lay my immediate hands on. I know I have more, but I couldn’t locate them. Perhaps in the future… AgentLovelette was one of many bootleggers who tackled the [...]
“I want the whole beehive…”
To finish off the week, here are a couple of mash-ups, since I know some of you love ‘em as much as I do. Beyoncé Knowles has been with Destiny’s Child since the group started in 1990, but she has clearly outgrown them and it’s unlikely we see them together again, except for the inevitable [...]
Behind the facade…
Earlier this week, whilst discussing the competing versions of Fiona Apple’s new album Extraordinary Machine, I made the point that I have no allegiance to one version of any particular song. If you’ve got something better, bring it on. (This is a point I made back in August, explicitly discussing remixes.) So, I will provide [...]