Ode to the Mashup

Yesterday's Friday Random Ten, which included "Boulevard of Broken Songs", reminded me that I've been wanting to write about this: I have recently been rather obsessed with mashups, those home-brewed remixes that, yes, "mash up" two or more songs into one new creation. I'd read about them, but had never really searched them out until Theo hipped me to The Beastles, dj BC's brilliant collages of (as if you couldn't figure this out) Beastie Boys and The Beatles.

(I know I'm a little behind the curve on this front, but, let's face it, no further behind than I am on anything else that can be considered remotely cool.)

"Boulevard of Broken Songs" is from the Dean Gray creation, American Edit, which, while not my absolute favorite, is certainly the most ambitious mashup I've heard, a collage of Green Day's American Idiot album with I-don't-know-how-many other songs. I do really love one track from teh project, "Whatsername (Susanna Hoffs)", and I think that song encapsulates why I dig the mashups in general so much.

The original Green Day "Whatsername" is a bittersweet song about lost love and memory, in which the protagonist tries to reconcile his past with his present, reflecting on the way another person, long gone from his reality, has in some way remained a part of him. At least, that's my interpretation of the lyrics:

I made a point to burn all of the photographs
She went away and then I took a different path
I remember the face but I can't recall the name
Now I wonder how whatsername has been
. . .
She's in my head
From so long ago

So, in the mashup, we segue from "I wonder how whatsername has been" straight into The Bangles' "Manic Monday":

Six o'clock already
I was just in the middle of a dream
I was kissin' Valentino
By a crystal blue Italian stream
But I can't be late
'Cause then I guess I just won't get paid
These are the days
When you wish your bed was already made

Suddenly, it's like we've jump-cut to "whatsername's" life today, waking up from her own dream (maybe it was even about our hero? probably not), dealing with her own daily life. There's something oddly effective about it. It changes the whole perspective of the song. Suddenly, it's like the listener has become an omniscient observer, able to be in two places at once (this effect is heightened by the continuity of the music behind the lyrics, I think), and now, instead of being a song about one person's memories of yesterday, it's about two people's lives today. "Whatsername" suddenly has an identity (Susanna Hoffs, duh!), a personality, a solidity that she doesn't have in the original song.

And that information gives us a different perspective on the guy, too. It puts him into a context that didn't exist before. We're moved outside of the guy's head and into the world, where they are, of course, just two people among many. To me, this new perspective changes the song from a sad-bastard story into a song about life going on, about two people whose problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Since I think that's always a good thing to remember when trying to get perspective on one's own life, I find the whole thing weirdly moving.

Also, it sounds pretty neat.

But all the mashups I like work similarly. I probably couldn't explicate most of them (which I'm sure will come as a relief to the reader), but there is something deeply pleasurable about seeing a new connection between two songs that you knew before and would never have thought could be put together. My thinking is probably influenced by a book I've been reading, John Carey's What Good Are the Arts?, in which Carey says that they aren't much good at all, except to the extent that the audience exercises its own creativity. Makes sense, though he says this type of creativity takes place only, or mostly, in literature, and I'm not sure I agree with him about that.

He says that language is by its nature "indistinct" and so when we read, say a description of someone's face, we have to draw on our own memories and imaginations to create a picture in our heads. But I think that can be true of other media, as well, and I think that's part of the pleasure I'm finding in these mashups. I mean, let's face it, all that stuff I wrote above about "omniscience" and "perspective"? None of that's in the song. But the song prompted my thoughts in that direction, because I was trying to make sense of the connection between two wholly-different songs. I mean, Dean Gray made the connection, but I was trying to understand the connection. And I think the attempt at understanding necessarily involves creativity (on top of the creativity of the DJs who put the things together for us in the first place), and that's why the mashups are just so much damn fun.

Also, they sound pretty neat.